Postcard from Berlin

Walking from my home in former East Berlin to the local underground station, I pass concrete blocks, remains of the Berlin Wall, now overgrown on the edge of a company´s car park. I take the train to the former Garrison Church, near the Olympic Stadium built by the Nazis for the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The grave history of the 20th century is still visible in Berlin, despite massive building projects undertaken since the fall of the Berlin Wall, a history that is etched in the Berlin and German self-consciousness. Appreciation to the Allies (especially Britain and the USA) for the liberation of Berlin in 1945, the management by the Western powers of the transition from police state to democracy in West Berlin and West Germany (not least the Berlin Airlift), the vision and scope of the Marshall Plan, run deep in the minds of how many Germans see their country.

Of the more than 30 million people who passed through Berlin´s airports in 2015, many are coming to see the scars of 20th century history. One sight is the Holocaust Memorial built 15 years ago just meters away from the Brandenburg Gate. One British commentator quipped: how many countries put up memorials to victims of their own crimes in the heart of their capital cities? The European Union grew out of this post-war consciousness, and a determination especially by Germany and France that the resolve “never again” must be more than the conviction of one generation.

“Solidarity” is the name of the tax introduced to pay for the improving (rebuilding) of the infrastructure of the former East Germany. If not popular, it is accepted as the price to be paid for reunification and the bloodless revolution of 1989. Solidarity with refugees from war and persecution is the motive behind the “Welcome Initiative” introduced across the city and country in 2015 by thousands of volunteers (120,000 Protestant Church members in Germany was the figure I heard, no doubt matched by Roman Catholic and other/non-believers). When the Queen visits Berlin, the city buzzes with excitement: “Our Queen too!” was one newspaper headline.

Into this context the debate about a possible Brexit causes alarm. Mrs Merkel´s centre-right coalition government has declared it will do all that is possible to stand in solidarity with British wishes to reform the EU within the principles of standing together with the whole European Community.

What is not understood by mainstream thinking here, is the argument to leave the EU because it is not “in the national interest.” This rings alarm bells already being rung by the new political party “Alternative for Deutschland” and anti-immigration demonstrations in Dresden. The challenges that Germany has faced in the last 70 years, and continues to face with the arrival of one million refugees in 2015, have been met on the basis that solidarity is a key, if not the key, national interest.

It is on the basis of standing together as Europeans in difficult times, that the Merkel government is seeking to find a way ahead with David Cameron, as it did, albeit in different circumstances but equally controversially last year with Greece. Fears of an unravelling of the EU, of a weakening of the European voice in the world, and of a southerly shift of the centre of gravity of the EU which would lessen the influence of the more competitive northern European economies, are shadows that are not lost on a country which had to remake itself within living memory.

About the author

Christopher Jage-Bowler is Anglican Priest in Berlin, and co-chair of the Council of Anglican and Episcopal Churches in Germany. Former University Chaplain in Bristol. He is currently involved in welcoming refugees and asylum seekers to Berlin. He introduced Vicars vs Imams Football to Germany in 2006, and is now working with other religious bodies to set up an inter-faith network of churches and other religious houses in Berlin that recognize the need for spaces for silence in the city.