History never is one-sided, but complex. Many occurrences are mutually
dependend, cohere with each other or have unexpected effects at the second glance. In the year of the 20th jubilee of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the focus in the media lies on our own remembrance; the German history. It's the same with me. I remember my childhood on the west-side of the Wall, the fall of the Wall, the euphoria of the people and roofs and bonnets of the Trabis on which my father clocked on at the checkpoint at Schönefeld airport.
But also these happy days have a prehistory, which is in this case
chracterized by much sorrow. It goes back to the year when, on 1st
September, the National Socialist Germany assaulted Poland. To recall this day and the Hitler-Stalin-Pact, the Berlin Commissioner for the Records of the State Security of the Former GDR published a declaration which appears today in the newspaper ZEIT. Many important people from science, culture and media signed the declaration, and so did our director Robert Rückel.
I am sure that the article would also have been taken seriously without the signatures, because if you read it, you cannot elude to it's logic. For all who want to try it: „Celebrating the Events of 1989 also Means Remembering 1939"
It is written in 6 different languages!