Thoughts at the Berlin Wall

I visited the one remaining segment of the Berlin Wall in Germany. At the base of it is an exhibit, a series of images and text chronicling life in Berlin and Germany from the late 1920’s through 1989. Perhaps the most stunning thing for me about this exhibit was how truly unbiased the history was. I thought that because I had had a college-level history course, I understood the Cold War fairly well—not so. While viewing this exhibit, I realized a huge bias in my schooling that I had been completely unaware of before.

The bias comes from the following premise: the Western World and capitalism are inherently good, while the Eastern World and totalitarianism/communism are inherently evil. The history books always paint East Berlin as dark and devoid of life, and West Berlin as the noble hero striving to unify the city again. West Berlin was another protagonist alongside Washington, London, and Paris. Not much is said about East Berlin other than the stories of people attempting to cross the wall from the East side to the West side and getting shot. If these are the only stories shared, then of course students like me will get the impression that East Berlin was a place where residents were trapped and were desperately trying to escape because it was so horrible. The pictures of families being reunited after the wall came down further amplify this perception.

But the exhibit at the Wall does not speak ill of East Berlin. It presents it in a totally neutral light. The exhibit gives an equal voice to the lives of West Berliners as well as East Berliners—and no, East Berliners were neither starving nor fearing for their lives. It even shows the dark side of West Berlin, namely the corruption of the elected judges in West Berlin. This is conveniently glossed over in American history classes (I honestly had no idea that that happened). The exhibit’s attitude toward the wall is more or less, “Yes, this happened. Your point is?”

The point here is that any history comes with a bias. Different players in history will have differing stories to tell. And it is wrong to think that American history books will give us an accurate history, especially when it comes to foreign players.