ベルリンの壁の取り壊しに反対した人

1989年11月9日にベルリンの壁が崩壊して、その次の日にピーター・ジェニングがベルリンに行ってレポートしています。仕事とはいえフットワークの軽さに頭が下がります。何を今更ですみませんが、西ベルリンって英米仏の占領地のままで西ドイツではなかったんですね。西ドイツではないので、兵役を逃れることができたので兵役逃れの若者が多かったというのはウィキペディアでもありました。

西ベルリンはアメリカ・イギリス・フランスが共同で統治する地域であるとベルリン協定で決められていたため、西ドイツで施行されていた徴兵制が適用されず、西ベルリンも人口が減っていたため補助金を出したことにより、徴兵を嫌った西ドイツの若者の中には西ベルリンへ移住する者がいた。

離れ小島なので産業は育ちようがありませんが、自由でリベラルな環境がベルリンの音楽シーンの土壌にもなったんでしょうか。この記事ではWind Of Changeって曲もベルリンの壁が崩壊する前に作られていたっていうのが興味深かったです。時代の雰囲気というのがあるのでしょうね。

Tear Down This Wall: How Berlin Overcame Division And Changed Music

Transcending barriers and boasting the legendary Hansa Tonstudio, Germany’s capital city has birthed some of the most groundbreaking music in history.

Published on November 9, 2019 By Tim Peacoc

Inevitably, music chronicled the subsequent changes in Berlin which led to German reunification by the summer of 1990. Though written a few years earlier, Marius Müller-Westernhagen’s song ‘Freiheit’ (‘Freedom’) became the unofficial anthem of reunification, while Scorpions’ signature power ballad ‘Wind Of Change’ (also written prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall) topped the charts in Germany and across Europe, and peaked at No.4 in the US. On 21 July 1990, meanwhile, ex-Pink Floyd mainstay Roger Waters staged a universally-acclaimed concert during which he performed the band’s 1979 album, The Wall, on vacant terrain between Potsdamer Platz and the Brandenburg Gate – a location that had formerly been part of the “no man’s land” area of the Berlin Wall.

30年が経ち民主主義vs社会主義（全体主義）という単純な構図でこの歴史的瞬間を捉えることはなくなったのでしょうが、20年前の記事でサッチャーは当時ドイツ統合に反対していたというものがありました。フランスのミッテランも同じ意見だったとか。まあパワーバランスから考えるとそうでしょうね。

From The Times

September 11, 2009

Thatcher told Gorbachev Britain did not want German reunification

Michael Binyon

Two months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Margaret Thatcher told President Gorbachev that neither Britain nor Western Europe wanted the reunification of Germany and made clear that she wanted the Soviet leader to do what he could to stop it.

(中略)

Even 20 years later, her remarks are likely to cause uproar. They are all the more explosive as she admitted that what she said was quite different from the West’s public pronouncements and official Nato communiqués. She told Mr Gorbachev that he should pay no attention to these.

“We do not want a united Germany,” she said. “This would lead to a change to postwar borders, and we cannot allow that because such a development would undermine the stability of the whole international situation and could endanger our security.”

こういうイギリスの態度を見るとまあ今回のBrexit騒動も想定内の行動になるんでしょうか。

'The Germans Are Back!'

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher bitterly opposed Germany's reunification. 'We beat the Germans twice, and now they're back,' she allegedly remarked after the fall of the Berlin Wall. But a new raft of documents reveals just how isolated in her opinion the Iron Lady really was.

By Carsten Volkery

Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl has never forgotten the hostility he faced at a European meeting on December 8, 1989. Ten days earlier he had unveiled a 10-point-plan for German reunification and been met with the blatant skepticism of Europe's leaders. In his memoirs, the former chancellor has described how British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher famously told the heads of state when they were gathered for dinner: "We beat the Germans twice, and now they're back."

It's no secret that Thatcher was a bitter opponent of German reunification. But new documents released Thursday by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office show how she insisted that her government resist the historic development. She repeatedly reined back then-Foreign Minister Douglas Hurd and Christopher Mallaby, Britain's ambassador in Bonn, who wanted to signal his support for reunification on the day the wall came down.

Mallaby wrote to Hurd on that day -- November 9, 1989 -- saying it was "in our interests" to respond positively to developments in Germany. But when Hurd visited Berlin a few days later, he dutifully towed Thatcher's line, saying that reunification was "not currently on the agenda."

The 500-page tome of letters and memos released this week date back to between April 1989 and November 1990. They reveal, for example, how then-French President Francois Mitterrand, speaking in a private conversation with his British counterpart, fuelled her mistrust of the Germans. Over lunch in the Elysee Palace on January 20, 1990, Mitterrand warned Thatcher that reunification would result in Germany gaining more European influence than Hitler ever had. His gloomy forecasts included a return of the "bad" Germans, according to previously secret notes made by Thatcher's foreign policy adviser, Charles Powell.