Word: germane
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Even if the Wall is stripped of political significance, it still serves a purpose by applying a brake to refugee traffic. An East German official predicts that once free travel wipes out border barriers, about 1.5 million of the country's 16.6 million citizens might head West. Without the Wall, West Berlin will bear the brunt of that great rush. But West Berlin's workers already resent the city's shortages of jobs and housing and the heavy concentration of alien guest workers from Turkey and ethnic Germans from the East bloc. Ironically, unless the burden of a new influx...
Even if such obstacles are satisfactorily addressed, there may still be a peculiar nostalgia to keep portions of the Wall intact. Says Jurgen Schmude, a West German Social Democrat and former Justice Minister: "This thing should be left standing as a memorial so that people in 200 years can study the unbelievable that once was a reality. Except for the Chinese Wall, this is the most famous wall in the world...
...minute the ban was lifted, they were on the move again. At midnight last Tuesday East Germans regained the right to travel to Czechoslovakia that had been taken from them a month ago. Within days more than 8,000 had crossed the border, and by the weekend Czechoslovakia flung open its Western border to let the growing flood pass unhindered into West Germany. Those who stayed behind stepped up the mass demonstrations for reform that have dogged President Egon Krenz from the moment he took office three weeks ago. Hundreds of thousands marched through East Berlin on Saturday calling...
...reaching program" to change the constitution, the economy and the education system. Yet he defined perestroika merely as something to "make socialism more attractive." For him, Soviet-style reform seemed not so much a welcome formula for change as a last-ditch effort to prop up the East German system before the rift between the party and society grows too wide to bridge. He flatly rejected any suggestion that East Germany might be merging into the West. "The question is not on the table," he said. "Socialism and capitalism have never existed together on German soil...
...Germany will also be a restless one, eager to reclaim former territory, one of many touchy issues that will be raised as the old order in Europe breaks down. Formal reunification may still be some way off. But each demonstration, each improvised banner calling for freedom and each East German who turns up seeking asylum at the West German embassy in Prague is already bringing a divided nation closer together...