二十年前今天：柏林圍牆被推倒

二十年前今天：柏林圍牆被推倒

柏林圍牆是在二十年前的一九八九年十一月九日被推倒的。「 Die Mauer ist Weck,」人們不停地叫喊着，在勃蘭登堡門前的攝像機前揮舞着拳頭。「牆沒有了！」
毋庸置疑，這是二十世紀最具有標誌性的事件之一。可以看做是冷戰以來具有圖騰標誌性的勝利。然而，當時的我作為《新聞週刊》的記者在現場，那時的情形確實是偶然。

一件小事改變歷史

十一月九日傍晚，東德當時的領導人，上任還沒幾周的改革派克倫茨正沉浸在難得的欣喜之中，共產黨的發言人君特．沙博夫斯恰巧路過。「有甚麼要對外發佈的麼？」沙博夫斯隨口問道。克倫茨停頓了一下，給了他一張新聞稿。這是幾個小時之前強行在議會通過的一項重大改革方案，這也是國人們幾周以來一直在街頭要求的權利：自由旅行的權利。克倫茨原本是想在第二天，也就是十一月十日才給他的。

小事往往改變歷史。沙博夫斯隨即離開，並對外宣佈了新聞稿的內容。「甚麼時候能生效呢？」記者問道。沙博夫斯由於沒有注意這個重要的時間點，隨口說道「 so fort,」就是「立即」的意思。轉瞬之間，局面發生了逆轉。欣喜若狂的東德人立刻滙成了人海，大家紛紛向邊境湧去。守衞國境的士兵們由於沒有得到指示，顯得有點不知所措，他們還是打開了大門，歷史就此而改變。

意外事件一直在改變人類的進程。即便這樣，我們也可以問問。如果沙博夫斯當時沒有搞錯時間呢？可以想像，第二天，克倫茨的旅行法將會按照德國式的秩序且有效率的方式執行。

嚴格來說，柏林圍牆不是被推倒的。大門是被打開，而不是被打破缺口而形成的。如果沒有在那天晚上戲劇性的場面出現，沒有這樣的示範效應，一周之後，天鵝絨式的革命會在布拉格出現麼？一個月之後，羅馬尼亞人是否有勇氣起來反對壽西斯古呢？東歐的多米諾效應可能會不一樣地發生。也許一些國的政權不會被推翻。

整整一個寒冷的晚上，我和幾千名西德民眾站在泥濘的無人區──這裏曾經叫波茨坦廣場的地方。一名東德建築工人試圖在拆除柏林圍牆，這真是一項艱苦的工作。一個巨大的挖掘機吃力地舉起十二英尺高的水泥板，猛烈地收回它的手臂，就像恐龍正在撕咬着獵物。

電視鏡頭聚焦在破落的牆面上，上面畫滿了塗鴉。牆上最為醒目的是一個單詞： Freiheit（自由）。

無數人作出的選擇

這個單詞，這個大塊的牆壁和這個晚上是多麼的特別啊。這一刻使我幾乎相信了命運的存在，這是一個充滿幽靈的土地。
我們常常認為歷史是不可避免的，重大事件有着必然歸宿。但一九八九年的現實是：「任何問題，任何時間，我們都可能改變事情的發展進程。」
為甚麼這樣，而不是那樣？答案就在無數的個人在歷史關鍵時刻的選擇。人類的一些小差錯，例如像沙博夫斯這樣的「小失誤」，雖然小得可以接受，但意義非常重大，在他們中間，是勇敢的抗議者走向街頭，大聲疾呼，這也是他們的選擇。或者說，正如一個示威者告訴我的，為的是我們再不用對下一代人這麼說，「我們只是坐着等待」。
那些二十年前在柏林圍牆上舞蹈的人們，他們做出了自己的選擇。

Michael Meyer
1989年《新聞週刊》德國東歐部主管

Project Syndicate, 2009.

Original article in Chicago Tribute

What if?: The communist collapse 20 years ago now seems inevitable, but ...

Freedom's quick unfolding wasn't inevitable

By Michael Meyer

November 8, 2009

For weeks, the scene has played and replayed on TV screens around the world, as if the events were live: joyous Berliners dancing atop the infamous wall, toppled 20 years ago on the night of Nov. 9, 1989. "Die Mauer ist Weck," the people cried out, punching their fists in the air before the cameras at the Brandenburg Gate. "The wall is gone!"

Without doubt, it is one of the iconic images of the 20th century. For Americans, especially, it was the totemic emblem of victory in the Cold War. Yet if you were there that night to remember, as I was for Newsweek, the moment is more ambiguous, especially with the hindsight of two decades. Why? Because, simply put, it did not have to be. History could easily have happened very differently, and almost did.

Egon Krenz called it a "botch." The communist boss of the German Democratic Republic was savoring a rare moment of triumph when his party spokesman stopped by in the late afternoon of Nov. 9. "Anything to announce?" asked Gunter Schabowski, innocently. Krenz hesitated, then handed him a press release. It was to announce a major initiative that he had forced through parliament only hours earlier, and which the country's restive people had been demanding in the streets for weeks: the right to travel. Krenz intended to give it to them -- but only the next day, Nov. 10.

Oblivious to this critical fact, Schabowski went off and read it out to the world. "When does it take effect?" reporters asked. Confused, Schabowski read off from the release, neglecting the all-important date: "sofort," he said instead. "Immediately."

In an instant, the damage was done. Astounded East Germans surged in a human sea to the crossing points to the West. Border guards, receiving no instructions and not knowing what to do, opened them up. The crowds poured through, and the rest is history.

Accident has always shaped human destiny. Even so, it's worth asking. What if Schabowski had not messed up? Imagine that, the next day, Krenz's travel laws had taken effect in an orderly, undramatic and efficiently German way. Strictly speaking, the wall would not have fallen. It would have been opened, not breached. The communists would have done it, not the people. Change might have come by evolution, not revolution.

Might Krenz and the communist reformers who had seized power just weeks earlier have been able to then channel popular unrest, even defuse it? Instead of a unified Germany today, could there still be two Germanys, east and west?

The "what if" game is treacherous, particularly because it can be teased out endlessly. Without the drama of the fall, with all its inspiring visuals, would the Velvet Revolution in Prague have come one week later? Would Romanians have found the courage to rise against Nicolae Ceausescu a month later? The dominoes of Eastern Europe might have toppled differently. A few might not have toppled at all. Forty-eight hours after the first Germans clambered atop the wall, I stood through a freezing night with several thousand West Berliners in the muddy no-man's-land that was Potzdammer Platz, the old heart of pre-war Berlin. The hump of Hitler's bunker curved softly under the earth a football pitch or so away. An East German construction crew was knocking a new passage through the wall, and it was tough going. A giant crane strained to lift a 12-foot-high slab, yanking it back and forth like some dinosaur gnawing its prey. Finally it gave way and was raised above the crowds, twisting slowly, as if from a gibbet. Television spotlights illuminated its broken surface, scrawled with graffiti. All the unresolved conflicts of Europe were on that chunk of painted concrete: a neo-Nazi swastika, surrealistic faces of ... who, Europe's dead from war and Holocaust and secret police purges? Most notable was a word. Freiheit, it read. Freedom. How odd that it should be that slab, that word, that evening.

As the sun settled into the west, a huge and perfect orange ball burning into the earth, the moon had risen in the east, as perfectly full and round as the sun, cool and bluish white. It was as though they were in balance, moving on an invisible axis, with Berlin poised between them equidistant, at once suspended and a fulcrum.

Freiheit.

It was almost enough to make one believe in destiny, there in that haunted land of ghosts. So often we think of history as something inevitable, a culmination of great, grinding forces that can only lead to where they end up. Not so. The reality of 1989, one of the organizers of the mass protests at the time told me, is that "it was possible at any point, at any time, for events to take a different course." Why this, not that? The answer seems to be those countless individual choices at key moments, the accidents of human messiness, such as Schabowski's "botch," so small and so understandable yet so earthshaking. Among them, too, were the choices of courageous protesters to go into the streets, to speak out, not to stay quiet anymore -- or, as this particular protester put it to me, not to have to explain to the next generation, "We sat and waited." For those dancing on the wall, 20 years ago, that was indeed the choice.

Michael Meyer, Newsweek's bureau chief in Germany and Eastern Europe in 1989, is author of "The Year That Changed the World."