I had dinner night before last with Alexandria Hildebrandt, the "Direcktor" and owner of the "Mauer Museum" a/k/a the Check Point Charlie Museum at the Check Point Charlie site in Berlin. The Mauer, or "Wall" museum is dedicated to keeping alive the stories of those who perished attempting to cross from tyranny to freedom during the Berlin Wall period. Over several floors of exhibits, one finds the actual devices people used to make their escape. Homemade airplanes. Homemade gas balloons. Secret compartments in the smallest of automobiles. Underwater getaway devices used in the Spree River, and so on. Frau Hildebrandt kindly provided a tour of the museum beforehand, and we had a long talk about freedom. I mentioned those three pillars of a free society: speech, religion, and property rights which were trampled in the East by Communism. But she added a fundamental element that hit me like a 2 by 4. Travel. 

   In the U.S., there is no "express right" to travel in the Constitution. But the right to travel is still a fundamental right in the U.S., as case law has determined that the right to travel is encompassed by a "penumbra" or unspoken shadow right guaranteed by the First Amendment free speech clause. But in Germany, the right to travel is an enumerated right in their law. It is also an enumerated right in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And where would the right to travel be any more relevant than at the Berlin Wall? Our dinner included a leader in the Christian Democratic Party in Berlin, a Herr Dorrman. Herr Doreman and I had to speak through a translater. We got to a discussion about the fall of the Wall, and I asked, "if you took a poll today, I imagine both East and West Berlin would overwhelmingly support the opening of Brandenberg Gate." Herr Dorrman surprised me. He said, "No," most people would say they don’t like it open. Hit by another 2 by 4, I asked him to explain. Dorrman said it is common for Berliners from both sides of the Wall to complain today. He says some Easterners have nostalgic ties to the prior system that guaranteed their jobs and a low pressure life. Low pressure, but with little material benefits. On the other hand, he said some Westerners resent the emphasis the goverment puts on investment in the East portion, and that the City Council is now controlled by East Berlin politicians, some of whom were in fact Communists from the former German Democratic Republic. Then he said he was kidding. He said in a true poll, from the heart, probably 90% of West Berliners would support the fall of the wall, and perhaps 80% of East Berliners. They have their doubts of some the results, not the concept. 

   In the U.S., we discuss the idea of building a wall at the Mexican border. The purpose of that wall is to stem the tide of illegal immigration and provide domestic security. That good idea in no way matches the purpose of the Berlin Wall. The purpose of the Berlin Wall was not to keep West Berliners out of East Berlin. It is little known that they could freely travel across the border by havng papers and paying 25 marks. Instead, the purpose of the Berlin Wall was the East German government restricting their own citizens right to travel. The Berlin Wall was intended to keep citizens in the country, and not the other way around. That is a pretty big difference. 

   Last night I went to the Opera and saw Wagner’s Tannehauser. During the second act, a curtain caught on fire and the Opera House was evacuated for about 15 minutes, after which the show resumed. During the evacutaion, my associate and I tumbled out a door to a square called "Bebelplatz." My associate asked me if I knew what Bebelplatz was. I said, "tell me." He said "this is where Nazi students burned the books in 1933." I hope to make one more post before my trip ends….

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 27th, 2008 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.