▲ The freedom of an East German soldier before the Berlin Wall was built
In 1949, Germany split into East and West. The eastern part was called the GDR, but the people did not want to be its masters, but tried to flee by all means. By 1961, a total of 3.5 million people, or one-fifth of the GDR population, had run away. The exodus of people is not an invasion by a foreign enemy, and it is a good thing in terms of saving food rations.
However, this is not the case for the cause of laundering: all the propaganda machines are doing their best to boast that their system is the best, their country is the happiest, and the West is hell, but every year an average of 300,000 people run to hell, which cannot be washed away even if 10,000 Goebbels are reincarnated. If it can't be washed, the lie will go bankrupt and the power will collapse. Building walls to prevent their own people from fleeing and shielding the outside world has become an inevitable choice.
In 1961, under the name of the "Anti-Fascist Wall", the East German erected a high wall that divided the city of Berlin in two, which was called the Berlin Wall. The name of the "anti-fascist wall" is full of absurdity in itself.
This is not only because the builders of the wall themselves are the successors of the fascists, but also because from the day it was built, it has never stopped an enemy who tries to attack, because no one from the west wants to enter the east and enjoy its most superior system.
On the contrary, the construction of the wall certainly curbed the frenzied exodus of East Germans, but it did not extinguish the idea of East Germans fleeing: from the completion of the Berlin Wall in 1961 to 1980, 170,000 East Germans still managed to escape from prison.
▲The Brandenburg Gate, which is half-surrounded by the Berlin Wall
In order to escape from hell, the East Germans racked their brains to invent a variety of ways to "escape from prison": digging tunnels, jumping high buildings, hot air balloons, catapults, and so on. During this period, 201 East Germans with names and surnames died at the hands of East German soldiers.
The only explanation is that the so-called heaven is a prison, and the people in it are prisoners, and leaving heaven is an escape from prison, which is a crime. The wall was built to build a prison, and this is the absurdity of the Berlin Wall.
Built on ridiculously high walls, it can't stand forever. On June 12, 1987, then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan delivered a speech under the Berlin Wall, shouting to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev: Tear down the wall! In his speech, he said: This wall will fall in Europe, because it cannot resist faith, it cannot resist truth, this wall cannot resist freedom.
More than two years later, on November 9, 1989, it really fell. A historical fact about the fall of the Berlin Wall, which is not a secret but few people pay attention to, is that it did not happen in the elaborate planning and momentum inherent in that kind of historical events, but in a misunderstanding, hesitation and swallowing, with a strong absurdity.
The immediate cause of its collapse was an oolong incident. On the evening of November 9, 1989, Schabowski, a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of East Germany and first secretary of the East Berlin branch, was overwhelmed by a question during a live international press conference, when an aide handed him a note.
He opened the note and read it: citizens are free to apply for private travel abroad without meeting any preconditions.
The reporters at the scene were dumbfounded, and a West German reporter asked: When will it take effect? Shabowsky clumsily replied: As far as I know ... Now, right away.
Then he left the venue, leaving a room full of stunned reporters.
▲ Shabowski
The East German authorities were indeed planning to ease restrictions on the exit of citizens, but the decision was not finalized and the plan was not completely free to move around. At Shabowsky's level, his remarks at the news conference were obviously purely "unmistakable" and unmistakable incidents, which occurred in a very absurd manner.
What is even more absurd, however, is that this oolong statement was not denied by the East German authorities, which have always been known for their tight organization. Tens of millions of East Germans watched the live broadcast on television, and in the midst of sudden happiness, they gathered to the border with doubts, hesitations and trepidation.
At the Bernhomer Straße border post, the main checkpoint between East and West Germany, Lieutenant Colonel Jager, who was having dinner, also saw the live broadcast. He didn't believe his eyes and ears and immediately called his superiors to ask for verification, who was just as overwhelmed as he was. The lieutenant colonel repeatedly asked his superiors for orders to deal with what happened next, but the superiors refused, saying: I can't conjure a document out of my hat.
In this way, the GDR, a country that knew the minds of every citizen well, was suddenly paralyzed on this night, and there was no order to let it go, and there was no order to stop it, and everything went according to its course. At one point, the lieutenant colonel and his soldiers opened the arsenal and wanted to fulfill their duty to "hold the border." But eventually, looking at the tide of the crowd, he opened the door in hesitation and panic.
The crowds rushed by, the Berlin Wall fell, and the GDR was sentenced to death. The film "Tearing Down the Berlin Wall" uses black humor to show this historical moment. When his son, a soldier at the checkpoint, took up arms, his mother, who was a cook at the checkpoint, said to him: "Sons, they are also other people's sons and daughters."
The massacre did not take place. As the crowd surged through the checkpoint, the son snuggled up to his mother's arms. Another soldier told the lieutenant colonel that his son had told him, "We have a worldview, but we can't see the world." He added: Of course, I taught him this truth.
These two scenes show the absurdity of this high wall: it destroys human nature.
People are born free, but the walls enclose people like pigs and deprive them of their freedom. And anything that destroys human nature can be very powerful and towering, but it will collapse sooner or later, because people are not pigs after all, and their yearning for a free world can be suppressed, but it will not be destroyed.
Why did the East German authorities, who were as tight as machines, have such a major oolong incident and then so rarely remain silent after their appearance? The only explanation is that no one wants to maintain this dehumanizing prison anymore, and everyone wants or does not reject its collapse. They already knew in their hearts that it was a relief for all to let a wall built on the absurdity fall absurdly.
Looking back at history, the Berlin Wall is indeed absurd, and a few small people have become the protagonists. But the real protagonist is the people's heartfelt desire for freedom – a desire that will determine the fate of the Berlin Wall's fall on the day it falls. The absurd is only the appearance. Ending the essence of absurdity with the appearance of the absurd is the best ending. How many walls are there in this world, waiting for the absurd to make a judgment on the absurd?