Mr. Taylor, following your book about the bombing of Dresden, you turned your attention to the Berlin Wall. What do you find so fascinating about German history?
As for my personal attachment, I suppose it has to do with my fascination with the language. At school we read Goethe, Schiller, Mann, Kafka, Zweig and so on, and I found the whole German-speaking Central European culture extremely rich. As for Germany’s history, the fascination lies in its contrasts – an extraordinarily sophisticated society, a beacon of European humanism for centuries, that could also harbour frightening brutality, at least during the first half of the 20th century. Why? I’m still finding out. That’s what keeps one reading and thinking.
When and how did you first hear about the Berlin Wall?
I first saw it, as I relate in my book, as a 13-year-old on the day it was being built. I recall the TV images. I remember it especially vividly because my father suffered a heart attack on that exact day and died the next. I then visited the Wall four years later, in 1965, as a member of a school trip.
Where did you experience 9 November 1989?
Strangely enough, I scarcely experienced the fall of the Wall. On 9 November 1989 my wife and I were staying in London at an apartment belonging to some friends who had gone on vacation (we live in the far southwest of England, some 450 kilometres from London). Their television was being repaired and so there was no way we could see the TV news. We had an early dinner and went to bed, not realizing what was happening in Berlin. Only the next morning, when I went down to fetch a newspaper, did I realize what had happened overnight. I was of course very delighted but sad not to have seen the whole wonderful event “live”.
For your work as a historian you spent time researching in the GDR. How did you experience the country?
From the negotiations for a visa (which was very restrictive), it was a rather exhausting business throughout. The East German archive staff at Potsdam and Merseburg were correct but very cool. The main people who did talk frankly were the workers from the Leuna chemicals works, who were quite open about their dislike of the communist managers. The workers, unlike the middle-class career minded archive officials, seem to have felt they had nothing to lose by talking with Westerners. Again, the overwhelming impression of myself and other Western visitors was of narrowness and claustrophobia. One was always relieved to be back in the West. One breathed easily again.
You visit Germany regularly. Has Berlin – and has Germany – grown together again 20 years after the fall of the Wall?
Slowly. The task of re-integrating Germany has undoubtedly been much more difficult than most observers thought in 1989. Areas such as Thuringia, Saxony-Anhalt and Saxony, parts of which had been among Europe’s most advanced and prosperous industrial centres a hundred years ago, lost large amounts of human, financial and intellectual capital to the West after 1945. So, it may take a lot more hard work and time until the re-united Germanys feel truly equal. If Germany can come successfully through the current economic crisis and continue to give its citizens in the “new Länder” social security, then I think the new generation that is coming to maturity without memories of the Wall will indeed “grow together”. There is no question that Berlin is now one city again and an exciting place to live compared with, say, London or New York.
Is the peaceful revolution in the GDR an example for other countries?
One thing is certainly true. The generation of communist leaders in the 1980s that was forced to concede freedom to the country’s citizens was not prepared to slaughter its own people in order to maintain power. And the determination and political skill of the civil rights movement that developed in the GDR were also extremely admirable. German intelligence and humanism at its most exemplary. Whether the lesson is universally applicable, however, I am not sure. In other parts of the world, the elites are more ruthless and the opposition less disciplined.
Frederick Taylor
His great knowledge of German history is based on a number of research visits that first took him to both German states for longer periods in the 1970s. The 62-year-old studied history and modern languages and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society of Great Britain. Taylor has made a name for himself as a writer and translator. Published in 2004, his book about the bombing of Dresden during the Second World War, Dresden: Tuesday, 13 February, 1945, is an international bestseller.
