The speed of change in Eastern Europe is almost frightening.
In October 1989, the Berlin Wall was still standing, cutting through squares and boulevards, separating East and West, a concrete symbol of all those other divisions - ideological, political, and military - that had already lasted for one generation and seemed destined to outlive the next. The first symbolic brick, so to speak, was dislodged by Hungarian border guards who decided that it wasn't worthwhile anymore to check the travel documents to Austria. A small trickle of refugees from East Germany swelled into a flood.
Now bulldozers are clearing away the rubble from what used to be the Berlin Wall. Cheaply mounted fragments of it are on sale in all the souvenir shops. There are no longer any queues outside the crossing points. There is, however, much Cold War debris that cannot be so easily swept away - the sense of injustice, of wasted lives, of dashed hopes and vain sacrifices.
Practical problems have been so great that the authorities decided to encourage the spirit of belonging to one nation before there actually was one. They turned for help to the arts. It seemed the sensible thing to do. German-speaking countries are renowned for their love of music and theater, of opera and literature - and for the enormous subsidies West Germany had devoted to promoting them, a generosity envied throughout Europe.
Cultural Unity
The cultural links between the two Germanies had been strong. The East German dramatists Bertolt Brecht and Heiner Muller are as well known in the West as the West German directors Peter Stein, Peter Zadek, and Claus Peymann are in the East. Celebrating German cultural unity at this tie seemed an obvious first step on the road to reunification.
For the past twenty-seven years, West Berlin has staged a festival of the best German-speaking stage productions from Western Europe, including Switzerland and Austria. Originally, when West Berlin was an enclave surrounded by East Germany, the Theatertreffen (as the festival weeks were called) was a gesture of defiance toward the East; but since 1989, in the new spirit of international friendship, the jury, composed of West German critics, considered productions from East Germany as well.
In 1990, the rapprochement went further to include an East German critic on the panel of selectors and to embrace both parts of Berlin, East and West. Public meetings were arranged at the Hebbel Theatre, on of which I took part I, to discuss the role of the theater in German reunification. From these, it emerged that culture was not such a soothing ointment for social sores as the authorities may have wished. Indeed, in some respects, it may have inflamed them.
There were some difficult questions to tackle. How, for example, could the drain of talent be stopped, when starts of East Germany theater discovered that they could earn far more in the West? Also, with unification, Berlin would have too many state theaters. In the past the two sides had competed to demonstrate the vitality of one cultural approach over the other. At least two of the eleven state theaters in Berlin would have to close - but which
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