This ought to make the Reaganites crazy: "Did the Boss help bring down the Berlin Wall?"

[dflprincess]

Maybe we'll never have to see that clip of Ronnie demanding the wall be torn down again. :bounce:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25696021/>1=43001

BERLIN - When Bruce Springsteen spoke out against the Berlin Wall at the biggest concert in East German history in 1988, no one in the crowd of 160,000 had the faintest idea that the symbol of the Cold War would soon be history.

But now -- 20 years after the American rock star went behind the Iron Curtain -- organizers, historians and people who witnessed it say his message came at a critical juncture in German history in the run-up to the Wall’s collapse...

...Springsteen, an influential songwriter and singer whose lyrics are often about people struggling, got permission at long last to perform in East Berlin in 1988.

Even though his songs are full of emotion and politics, East Germany had welcomed him as a “hero of the working class.” The Communists may have unwittingly created an evening that did more to change East Germany than Woodstock did to the United States...

...But both presidents John F. Kennedy in 1963 (”Ich bin ein Berliner”) and Ronald Reagan in 1987 (”Tear down this Wall”) gave their addresses in West Berlin. Springsteen delivered his words in the heart of East Berlin, where Communist East Germany had long portrayed the United States as a decadent and belligerent “class enemy.”

“Springsteen’s concert and speech certainly contributed in a larger sense to the events leading up to the fall of the Wall,” said Gerd Dietrich, a historian at Berlin’s Humboldt University.

[NanceGreggs]

1. I'm hearing a VERY strange noise right now ...

... it sounds kinda like heads exploding.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

2. Yes, well...

Brooce(!!!) should have brought some NJ Pizza with him, enough for 160,000. That would have sealed the deal that night. ;-)

Music CAN change things. Sadly, in our country right now, we have so little faith that anything can change things that the musicians aren't making that music, for the most part.

And yes, the record companies have much to answer for in all this, as well.

[DebbieCDC]

3. Bruce is the man

Always has been....always will be :loveya:

[DailyGrind51]

4. That's not far from the truth!

From what I hear from my friend in the Czech Republic and my cousins in Poland, American music and blue jeans had as much to do with the break-up of the Warsaw Pact as did Reagan and Gorbachev.

[JDPriestly]

5. I would say that the agreement between Austria an Hungary

which permitted Hungarians and Austrians to trade and travel relatively freely was the key factor. East Europeans went to Hungary and then -- crossed over. As I recall, the East Europeans traveled in droves to Austrian and the West. The entire structure of imprisoning people within the various East European companies just disintegrated. Having live near the borders of German and Austria in the 1970s and early 1980s, the end was a long time in the making. East Europeans were impressed by Carter -- extremely impressed by Carter. They were fascinated by the free speech, consumer goods and entrepreneurship in the West.

But Bruno Kreisky of Austria and his policy of active neutrality probably had more to do with the changes in Eastern Europe than anything else. Consumer goods were cheap in Eastern Europe, but there was not a lot of choice in styles and quality. It was already getting better in the late '70s and early '80s, and when Kreisky opened Austria to the Hungarians, the Hungarians got the right to form small private businesses and there was no stopping Eastern Europeans.

I will never forget the time I bought a package of clothespins which had been made in the USSR. When I opened them and tried to use them, I discovered that the spring on the pins was made of some putty-like substance. They looked like real clothespins but I could not use them, not even once. Until that time, I had felt worried about living so close to the East, especially since I was in Munich when the USSR invaded then Czechoslovakia, but the clothespin made me laugh at the whole, big, bad USSR idea. Evil empire indeed, they could not even make a clothespin that worked -- not even a clothespin. Chernobyl should not have been a surprise.

Here is an article on the relationship between Austria and Hungary. It kind of looks like a school assignment of some sort. I saw these events with my own eyes, so I will vouch for the truth of the author's statement about the events in the 1970s and 1980s.

///

Between Hungary and Austria the most regulated interstate connection system in the region
was built out in all important fields, expanding continuously to practically every element of societal and human relations.

The relations between the two countries could in practice be successfully protected from the
effects of unfavourable changes in international climate, the meantime sharpening of
controversies, the frostiest period of cold war, even from the effects of periods of economic decline of the two countries or periods of economic and financial difficulties in Hungary.

These periods, if not declared as such, in fact even strengthened the relations of the two
countries. This is perceptibly displayed by the strengthening from the mid-70s of co-operation beteen the two countries, its expansion to new fields, the marked Austrian stance (Chancellor Kreisky in person) against sharpening cold war, economic pressure towards Eastern Europe, sanctions, freezing-in of credit relations, by increasing and widening Hungarian activity in expanding relations with the West, as well as by the realization of a series of high-level visits and negotiations between Hungarian leaders and those of major western countries, in some years practically unique in the period of the complete freeze-in of high-level contacts between East and West.

Lobbying, in the first place in Western Europe, meaning occasionally a significiant support for solving Hungarian, primarily financial problems, a continuously functioning top-level consultative role undertaken by Austria – moreover unknown even today for the general public – was characteristic for the Kreisky-era, which, leaning on the positive evolution of Hungarian-Austrian relations and favourable experience gained, has promoted the
development of the relationship, the system of connections between Hungary and the West.
These special relations exist up to the end of the 1980s, they are pushed to the rear by the
changes in world politics and in the world economy, making an end to their special character.

http://www.helsinki.fi/iehc2006/papers3/Marjai.pdf

[cobalt1999]

6. The reasons are far more complex than Reagan or Springsteen

Although, most people like a simple answer.

[glitch]

9. I certainly like Springsteen.

Reagan, not so much.

[dflprincess]

11. Of course they are but if the masses are going to go for a simple answer

wouldn't you rather feed them Springsteen than Reagan?

[Itchinjim]

7. Rock 'n Roll, a Polish Pope, and the dying off of the Stalinist era leaders,

brought down the Wall. Wanna really piss off a Reaganite? Tell them there would have been no thaw without a Gorbachev.

[unblock]

8. it baffles me how republicans jettisoned decades of ideological argument for the cult of reagan

republicans (and most democrats) had been saying for eons that capitalism was the better system, and that communism was fundamentally flawed and doomed to fail. eventually, the soviet union crumbled under its own weight of stodginess, corruption, inefficiencies, and insensitivities to the needs of their people. the others were just bit players.

yet, instead of claiming that capitalism was vindicated and communism proven wrong, they chose instead to claim that it was all due to one speech reagan made. as if communism would have gone on for another 70 years had reagan not "challenged" gorbachev to do what was pretty obviously inevitable.

i'm not saying that the fall of the ussr actually proved anything, i'm just amazed that the republicans failed to make the OBVIOUS pro-capitalism argument.

[glitch]

10. They probably don't want Joe Sixpack thinking about Capitalism at all. Ever.

Even superficially. Just let Daddy do your thinking for you, and Love Him!

[bleever]

12. Makes sense.

Never underestimate the power of an authentic person to move the hearts of more people than can be counted.