The fall of the Berlin Wall didn’t start in Berlin in November 1989. It started months earlier … in places like Turkey, Poland, and Hungary. In 1989, The Wall Street Journal/Europe’s editorial page, where I worked, was uniquely positioned to cover the events that unfolded in that period. Our editor, Seth Lipsky, had been based in Europe for years, on both the editorial and news sides of The Journal. His wife, Amity Shlaes, a features writer and editor for the page, was in the midst of writing a book on West Germany, and our colleague Peter Keresztes had walked his family out of Budapest in 1956, over the mountains into Austria to escape that communist regime. I was the junior staffer of the office, about...
Dr. Cornelius Adebahr, Political Analyst and Nonresident Fellow at Carnegie Europe, shared his talking points for his opening remarks during his recent tour of Warburg Chapters across the United States. These days in Brussels, there is a minor disruption going on amid the wider, global unrest. Following the European election in May and the constitution of the new European Parliament in July, the President-elect of the European Commission has presented her team. While this does of course become an exercise in navel-gazing with questions of who-gets-what flurrying around the EU’s quarter, it is also a statement of where the Union stands. “The Woman, the Union, and Peace” is a triad that – turning classical realist assumptions about international relations on their head – can help...
In the early 1960s, Dr. Helga Haftendorn, leading female expert on security policy, sat at the table with an exclusive study group, only to be asked by its chairman: “What is the Fräulein doing there?”[1] Once it had been established that Dr. Haftendorn was indeed an expert she was accepted to remain at the table – but only after initial confusion about a female presence among exclusively male ranks. Female representation in international relations continues to be a hot topic, including female representation in transatlantic think tanks[2] in Germany and the United States. Women are often sought after, in the sense of hard to find, and the historical and structural undercurrents of the field have made it difficult for women to rise to the very...
Imagine a place where people, buses, trams and cars coexist in crowded squares, with cheap public transportation available for everyone to get to work. Where educational institutions work hand-in-hand with government and business to create outstanding outcomes for all, helping recent immigrants and longtime residents alike find their career paths and excel within them. Where brownfields are rapidly and efficiently turned into thriving neighborhoods. Where front-line union workers are actively engaged to chart the course of workforce training and investments. This magical place exists, and it's called Germany. In July, the four of us participated in the American Council on Germany's "Transatlantic Cities of Tomorrow," an exchange program sponsored by the German government in which economic development professionals from various cities — Youngstown, Pittsburgh and Cleveland on this...
Author’s note: As we all look ahead to the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Wall, I was asked to look at whether there is still a wall in the minds (“Mauer im Kopf”) of former West and East Germans. I was born in West Germany and grew up there after 1989, and I moved to East Germany after high school. Although I have lived on both sides of the former border, it is not my place to explain any differences and divisions that remain. In fact, I think this is one of the main reasons causing problems and frustration – people from West Germany trying to explain former East Germans. Therefore I will draw on recent facts and figures to shed light on...
