Dear Mr. President,
end of last year, I received a letter from a mother whose 11-year-old daughter in the school should draw the GDR. The drawing of the child was in the letter: The foreground, inscribed with "DDR", shows a person lying with a circular mouth wide open, blood flowing from their body, flanked by two soldiers. The background is separated by a thick fence, behind which a house roof can be seen with smoking chimney and that the word "freedom" with.
The mother, Uta F. tells about himself with saying that she grew up in East Germany, had left the country in the 80 years, however. And she writes: "They were one of the key stakeholders at the turn. Therefore, I turn to you. If in fact such a picture of the past are drawn? It still amazes me to see in what light really young people today to East Germany, which have had nothing to do with it. View the same way? "
to similar reactions between discomfort and indignation, I will often face.
After careful consideration, I take this letter and the attached image with the consent of Mrs. F. as an opportunity to convey my response to you as the highest representatives of the Federal Republic of Germany. And I choose the shape of the open letter, as I multiply the disappointment of personalities East Germany was presented that had turned to you to inform you of your honor grounds exist for a committed life in the GDR and in the interest of a united Germany for a view of the failed land argued that is not limited to delegitimize. The responses from their employees district went past the core of the concern.
The importance of your high office is not modified in the style-making exercise your representative capacity as President of the whole people. How to deal with the question that my wife Uta F. in her letter that you have chosen a style that would be disappointing not only for the questioner. After publication of a Study of the Free University of Berlin with review of the knowledge of students about the GDR you considered it prudent to warn in an interview with selected students about to "glorify" the GDR and to praise the social security. The "apparent full employment" be with enormous foreign debts, hidden unemployment, exploitation of nature and a lowering of living standards have been bought.
I'm on 1 February 1990 for a stages used unification of the two German states and was for years in the media of the Federal Republic of Germany (not in the GDR) as a political hope. However, I do not wish to give my own critical view of the history of the GDR and the two postwar German states. Derided the "Transfiguration" of social security in the GDR has nothing to do with certainty today's experience of social insecurity and degradation, which in turn also causes the connection to the proceedings of the GDR to the Federal Republic of Germany. They wore as State Secretary, Federal Ministry of Finance for the activities of the Trust Agency shares responsibility for the pace of the privatization, which was the sustainability of economic development in East Germany do not play a role. I was a member of the German Bundestag, as you trust in the committee testified regarding the conduct of public property by the Trust Agency: "In settlement had to be done, what could be done. It was also about collecting measures. We have the trust placed in that institution so pure ABM measures, etc.. This was necessary. I have not now in detail the efficiency monitoring in the head, where we have followed the settlement costs, so to speak in detail somewhere, but we have control, supervision of individual cases tried to ensure that everything is legal and that also in the frame the financial ability is. "The result of the public property of the GDR to 85% in the West German company is owned to 10% in the hands of foreign Become entrepreneurs, and only 5% of East German property.
should be given such facts may more attention in schools and the students in addition to the internal and the external relationships are learned in the union with the 2-plus-4 agreement. This agreement refers exclusively to the post-war history and the place of the two German states in it.
met in June 1961, Khrushchev and Kennedy in Vienna and both knew that the world is beginning to become a powder keg. Every step that affects the rights of the victors over Nazism in the existing post-war order, can become the trigger of a new world war. have such a case both Eisenhower and Kennedy announced to an armed conflict, if necessary, a "total war" with the use of nuclear weapons. There were, but not with the Berlin Wall, the Allied access rights to West Berlin involved, attacked the Western powers not occur. As on 13 August in Berlin happened was not simply the construction of the Wall in Berlin, but the closing of the frontier from the Baltic to the Greek and Turkish border, about the GDR, Czechoslovakia and Hungary to Bulgaria. Both military and not to forget, economic blocks Warsaw Pact / CMEA and NATO were in mutual acceptance of the victors by a militarized border separated with the bitter consequences for humans, including loss of life and health. Between two German states was running against this limit, continued "bleeding", ie, economic damage, directed, again with destabilizing consequences for the bloc. The dividing line between the blocks was a fact on which the Soviet Union, not least its president Gorbachev, until 9 has always held November 1989, a circumstance on which the other three victorious powers of the 2nd World War II clung always, despite rhetorical denunciations of the "wall". When the two postwar German states in September 1973 on the same hour members the United Nations and beyond, was the subject of this border in the framework of the international community is not affected, it did but always with the interests of the victors. In my view, the failure on and after the Helsinki Conference in 1975.
Today, even young people, more than ever faced with the relationships between local and global, between short-and long-term developments. Since it would be quite obvious and timely, look at the history of the two German Nachkriegstaaten rather in such contexts as in the common selective clichés of good and evil.
I come back to the reason for my open letter. Mr. President, perhaps they test before the election in May 2009 whether it can be the object of the German school to cause a moral conflict between parents and children and whether the school is to impart knowledge that is also 20 years after the unification of the two German States in the Cold War-oriented images that do not contribute to respect and reconciliation.
my claim to the new president or a president of the Federal Republic of Germany, as Mrs F. writes, a "key participant in the turn," I bring here very clearly expressed. It was Federal President Richard von Weizsacker, who in May 1985 in an internationally acclaimed speech I with great respect, took note of the liberation of the German people from fascism and said it drew a historical space at that time present and evaluated. The existence of two German states was part of that history. Until the year 2010 we will celebrate anniversaries that mark sections in it. In 2009 we will have elections and election campaigns. The parties and their representatives will act in an electoral campaign and the various anniversaries. As I understand it is the responsibility of the President with the style of the performance of his high office deal with a political use of these occasions, which violates the dignity of people in the eastern part of the country and they respect denied.
Finally, a personal word. President Rau saw himself committed to the principle "divide rather than reconcile. This has also led to his desire for an annual exchange with me about real and mental development in the east of the country. When the president of Poland, Mr. Kwasniewski, the opening of the German-Polish Year 2005/2006 your guest in Berlin, I took up his invitation to the concert and reception at the Konzerthaus. After a friendly conversation between your host and me, I stood before you and asked you politely with regard to my regular discussions with Mr Rau for an interview. They saw no reason to to come back.
With respectful greeting
Hans Modrow
former MP
