Departments commemorate Berlin Wall

The entrance to the library has recently undergone a temporary change: A wall has been erected several feet from the front doors of the building. 

Construction of this wall and a graffiti contest, which took place Friday, marked the start of the event series “Freedom Without Walls,” hosted by the Department of German and Russian to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. 

“The fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago, on November 9, 1989, marked the beginning of a new era in history,” said Dr. Burkhard Henke, Professor of German and Chair of the German Department. “It was the end of the Cold War, the beginning of a fully united Europe and proof that peaceful change is possible, even in the moments when it seems most unlikely.

“The building of the wall represented a desperate attempt by the East German government to put a stop to the tremendous brain drain that plagued the new country,” Henke continued. 

“Almost ten percent of the population had fled the regime, many of them highly qualified individuals. On August 13, 1961, the government blocked all access to the western part of the city, itself an island in East German territory. In the next 28 years, several hundred people were killed by border guards as they tried to escape.” 

Other events in the series include an ongoing exhibit and slideshow in the Library until Nov. 16, a screening of the film “The Lives of Others” in Semans Lecture Hall in the VAC on Nov. 5, and a celebration on Nov. 9, entitled “Tear down this wall!” 

At this event, the wall outside the library will be struck down. “We’ll have sledgehammers and a chainsaw to bring it down,” Henke said. “There’ll be bratwurst and sauerkraut and hot cider.”

A week later, on Nov. 16, Dr. Lutz Goergens, Consul General of the Federal Republic of Germany, will speak at the Carolina Inn. “He will talk about the Wall and the divisions it signified,” Henke said. 

Goergens has been the German Consul General in Atlanta since 2007. “Before that, he served in the German Federal government as head of the EU Internal Market Affairs section, and held diplomatic posts in Ankara, Mexico City, Tunis and Algiers,” Henke said. 

“He was German Foreign Service desk officer for the Maghreb and Arabian Peninsula states and was political counselor to the Organization of American States for the German embassy in Washington. He was trained in German literary history as a medievalist (PhD Tübingen) before entering the Foreign Service.”

Several seniors helped organize the event series, including German Major Moriah Wood ’10, who is responsible for the exhibit in the library. “The Graffiti contest featured mostly German 101 students, some seniors and international students,” Henke said, also encouraging all Davidson students, regardless of major, to attend the events. “The screening of ‘The Lives of Others’ is for students, and we won’t be able to tear down the thing without their help. Students are also the primary audience for Goergens’ visit.”