Learning from History

In spring 2009 part of the Alexanderplatz in Berlin was transformed into an exhibition space: the open-air exhibition “Peaceful Revolution, 1989/90” will be showing from May 7 to November 14, and commemorates the atmosphere of upheaval in the GDR through original documents and films. Co-initiator is the Berlin Robert Havemann Society, which has been fighting since 1990 against the forgetting of the opposition movement in the GDR.

“Perhaps the numerous reports appearing on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall will weary many people”, surmises Uwe Richter, press spokesman for the Robert Havemann Society. But, he says, the whole remembrance marathon, which will enter its second round in 2010 with the twentieth anniversary of German reunification, might naturally also be an “initial spark” for a long-term and deeper engagement in German-German history. That would then be a concern of the Robert Havemann Society, which was founded as an educational association in 1990 by the citizen’s movement “New Forum” and since then has collected everything having to do with the opposition movement in the GDR, from pamphlets and banners to films and radio broadcasts.

Emotionally moving key scenes

On the table in front of Uwe Richter stands a model that represents the Society’s own contribution to the commemorative celebrations: together with sponsors such as the German Lottery Foundation and the Federal Commissioner for Cultural Affairs and Media, the Society has commissioned a pavilion that is currently taking shape on the Alexanderplatz, hard by the world time clock. Its outer shell consists of movable partitions that are imprinted with photographic motifs and important quotations of the time. Inside the pavilion, monitors show contemporary news reports and key scenes from 1989.

“We’re attempting to create an emotional atmosphere at Alex”, stresses Richter, and he believes that just this world-shaking mood of the time will rub off on the unreal Alexanderplatz. For example, when visitors see performed again the scenes before the West German embassy in Prague where, in the late summer of 1989, the Foreign Minister of the Federal Republic, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, was unable to bring to an end his announcement of the imminent departure of the GDR citizens present for all the jubilation and euphoria.

Commemoration of the largest mass protest in the history of the GDR

It is no accident that the Alexanderplatz was chosen as the site for the exhibition: the biggest demonstration in the history of the GDR took place here on November 4, 1989. The exhibition commemorates the nearly 500,000 demonstrators that then filled the Alexanderplatz with an aluminium construction that imitates a banner. On May 7, 1989, a throng of courageous citizens first gathered at “Alex” to protest against the falsified results of the GDR local elections. It was decided to gather there on the seventh day of every month: on June 7, there were thirty protesters, and on October 7 already 3,000, who then marched from Alex to the Palace of the Republic.

Archiving protest and making the archives public

An important stimulus to founding the Havemann Society was given by prominent members of the GDR opposition such as Katja Havemann, Bärbel Bohley and Freya Klier, who directly after the Wende got hold of their Stasi (secret police) documents and brooded over the prospect that in future the existence of the GDR opposition might be known only through the sober and cynical reports of spies. Thus the idea was born to archive their own activities and make the archives publicly available.

Today the Havemann Society houses three archives: the Matthias Domaschk Archive, which arose from the holdings of the East Berlin environmental library; the GrauZone Archive, with its holdings on the East German women’s movement; and finally the Robert Havemann Archive, which essentially comprises Robert Havemann’s literary remains and material documenting the activities of the New Forum. Although the chemist Havemann was perhaps the most influential figure of the resistance to the GDR, his work is increasingly threatened with falling into oblivion. Yet he was of great importance for many years as a contact and reference for other members of the opposition such as Jürgen Fuchs, Wolf Biermann, Rainer Eppelmann and Bärbel Bohley – a personality with an extremely varied biography. Havemann was a convinced anti-fascist, representative GDR scientist, and for a short time even a Stasi collaborator before he became a dissident and finally an icon of opposition and resistance.

Five safes full of Stasi documents

Havemann died in 1982 in Grünau, near Berlin; in 1992 Katja Havemann bequeathed her husband’s entire literary remains to the Archive. The remains consist of a safe full of documents, which stands across from the five safes in which the Havemann Archive preserves the Stasi reports on Havemann.

Those who wish to view these and other writings have to seek out a nondescript courtyard in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg. The rooms of the Society are spread over several converted flats; it would like to set up here something in the way of a permanent exhibition, but room and especially money is currently lacking. The Society is funded in a small part by donations and mainly through cultural projects such as the soon-to-begin exhibition at the Alexanderplatz. The Society also publishes books on GDR history and organises regular discussions.

At present, the Society is endeavouring to acquire permanent funding from the state in order to secure its holdings. But in order to get at the desired funds, it is necessary to conduct successful lobbying and block other institutions that have been hitherto receiving monies. In this the Archive is somewhat reminiscent of the political activists of the New Forum who were increasingly out-manoeuvred and marginalized by others who knew how to use their elbows. It is to be hoped that the remembrance of the events of 1989 will give courage and confidence to precisely these forgotten heroes and their supporters.