Where the World Ended

The year is 1990 and things are drastically changing in the European theater.  In Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, but especially in Germany, everyday life is changing with the fall of the Berlin wall.  And as Timothy Garton Ash illustrated in The Magic Lantern, there is an overarching global perspective that seems to exist in each of these countries as they seek to try and reform their political structure and return democracy to these countries.  But to couple with that global perspective is Daphne Berdahl's Where the World Ended where she examines the individual implications that the fall of the Berlin wall has on the German people and how they are directly impacted by the changes that are coming to them. 



Berdahl examines many different perspectives, expecially of those people living in the towns that border the Berlin wall.  What does it mean to turn the page, to pick up and try to restore and rebuild the Germany that was?  Berdahl makes an interesting statement as she reflects on the "Eichsfeldlied",  which is a song, but also what meaning it serves for the people.  When she refers to this ballad, she states, "it is, moreover, a ballad of belonging, reflecting the complex, ubiquitious, and emotional concept of the Heimat" (82).  As you read further, you see too that the term, 'Heimat' also carries special significance.  Essentially, Berdahl credits it to, "[have] provided emotional as well as ideological common ground for the construction and maintenance of local identities, and has been the focus of explorations by various writers, politicians, scholars and filmakers" (83).  As Celia Applegate (1990) mentions, the term 'Herimat', "has never been a word about real special forces or real political situations.  Instead, it has been a myth about the possibility of a community in the face of fragmentation and alienation.  In the postwar era, the term 'Heimat' meant forgiving and also a measure of forgetting" (83).  It seems so interesting that in a changing Germany, that this concept of single idea carries so much weight to the restoration and forgiveness of one to another. 
The important piece of the 'Heimat' was this idea as well that it focused on the local traditions in a changing political structure.  This term emerged at "a period of rapid social transformation in the second half of the 20th century.  The whole idea of the 'Heimat' tried to make sensible at least small pieces of a changing society, brushing them with a false patina of fixedness and familiarity" (84). 
It was piece that helped as re-unfication took place.
There was a lot of healing that needed to take place, as Berdahl writes, "it is both forgiving and forgetting" that needs to take place to move forward.  For Germans in early 1990, this is what is being rebuilt, it is not just the wide overarching need for a unified political and global structure but also a need and a call to remember the individual and the implications that this global perspective has on the people.  And whether it is an economic, religious, or social perspective, these are all intertwined to try and rebuild what was lost by a piece of concrete.

Discussion Questions

1)      How has the structure of the Berlin wall itself affect the people, especially in the border towns, as they try to unite both East and West Germany??

2)      Berdahl states, “since German re-unification, the church has lost a lot of its power and influence” (96).  What is it specifically that would cause this?  Was it the mindset of people as re-unification took place or was it something else?
  ***the implications of socialism on religion

3)      The permeability of the border is a very interesting concept that serves as an element of fear that people had to wonder if they could cross.  It was a process indeed for the border to become less and less permeable; however, it still perpetuates this prisoner mentality with the guard dogs and watch towers.  How do you find forgiveness in the wake of 1990 when you remember what it was like before 1952?

4)      It seems that through the process of reunification, there are things that should innately belong to the people, but yet, for so long, these basic rights were taken away.  How do you cope with changing these pieces and moving forward? Connection to Jewish reintegration?

References
Berdahl, Daphne. Where the World Ended. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999. Print.