Album Reviews
Movies
Concert Reviews
Movie Resources
Concert Reviews
Book Reviews

Top 10
Resources
Contact Us

It's been almost 15 years since the Berlin Wall came down, a time frame that seems both too short and too long at the same time. For people of a certain age, the Cold War was a fact of life for decades--the looming threat of a nuclear war along with the constant call to be vigilant against communism. For people in East Germany (the G.D.R.), the Cold War was even more overwhelming, with all aspects of life overseen by the government and everything justified by the need to defend the country against Western imperialism.

The Burning Wall, a documentary about life in the G.D.R., is a wonderful history lesson. It starts during WWII, focusing on key Communist figures who helped in the anti-Nazi resistance. Those men went on to become the leaders of the new East Germany. The WWII footage will be familiar to any viewer of the History channel, but the post-1948 material is both new and fascinating.

By contrasting the Nazi regime with the tyranny of the Communist Party, the film raises the important issue of political dogmatism. What happens when the leaders of a group or nation believe so completely in their cause that they're willing to subsume everything, even human life, to the party's rule? Furthermore, what happens when the people being ruled are so indoctrinated that they wholeheartedly endorse this means-justify-ends policy?

For students of history, the most interesting aspect of The Burning Wall will be the period from 1946-1961, when many East Germans thought they were building a perfect and just society. The interviews with various artists and intellectuals (including Gunter Grass) are fascinating, as they describe their childhood education. Even older adults were swept up in the anti-Fascist rhetoric, the best example being Robert Havemann who was jailed in a Gestapo prison and then became a central figure in the founding of the G.D.R.. And the East German government was able to trade on its Nazi resistance background for decades.

According to the film, the internal dissent began in earnest after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. But the East German security apparatus, the STASI, was so overwhelming and well-organized that it effectively quashed the dissent for over 15 years. There's a frightening picture near the end of the film of Robert Havemann's wife. The Havemanns had abandoned their support of the government and became key figures in the protest movement. The picture shows Mrs. Havemann sitting on top of her STASI file, a group of folders that takes up an entire room.

To the film's credit, The Burning Wall spends a fair amount of time considering the church's role in the protest movement. The official church had largely been co-opted by the state, but there were key pockets of resistance. These churches and pastors formed a foundation for dissent by providing a place of meeting. Since even small-scale gatherings were quickly dispersed by the STASI, prayer services and masses provided the one legitimate, if barely tolerated, form of meeting. These services, particularly at a large church in Leipzig, gave encouragement to the dissenters by revealing the protesters' growing strength and providing invaluable opportunities for planning.

That planning reached its apex in the aftermath of the 40th anniversary of the founding of the G.D.R.. Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev came to Berlin for the celebrations and let it be known that the Soviet Union would neither invade its German neighbor nor prop up the Communist party's rule. At the same time, the resistance movement staged a series of impressive, peaceful marches. When it became clear that the government could not stand against the protesters, it was only a matter of time before the Wall fell.

As absorbing as the movie is--and it has a riveting finale--there seems something anti-climactic about the film itself. Though The Burning Wall opens with the trial of various STASI and Politburo leaders, the movie doesn't broach that issue again. There's no sense of how an entire society can come to grips with such large-scale tyranny and betrayal. Furthermore, even a casual reader of contemporary German politics knows that the unification of West and East Germany has not been the boon for the East that was promised. Unfortunately, the movie isn't much interested in exploring what happened after 1989. This is a serious misstep. With such a fantastic panel of interviewees, the answers on what's happened in the former G.D.R. (and why) would've been fascinating. Instead, we're left with the rousing tale of successful protest politics, but not the more thorny issue of what happens next. Still, the archival footage, particularly of the protest marches, is fascinating, and the talking-head interviews are absorbing.    

J. Robert Parks  2/16/2004