HOW I CELEBRATED THE DAY OF DEUTSCHEN EINHEIT (Germany Unity): October 3, 2009
By Kevin Anthony Stoda, Wiesbaden, Germany
A special German holiday, perhaps the most important new German holiday in more than half a millennia, is known as The Day of German Unity. It has been celebrated since 1990 on October 3 each year. However, it is a fairly quiet affair this year. No one mentioned it at work all this past week in the three towns I work in.
http://www.hdg.de/lemo/html/DieDeutscheEinheit/index.html
There was a lot of discussion on which date the national holiday should be in 1990, i.e. one year after the Berlin (and East German) Wall came wide open and soon broke down forever. Within less than 12 months the two long separated peoples of the West German and East German republics were united as one officially known state (or single entity) on the world's political maps (again) as of October 3, 2009.
This date of October 3 was not the first German Unification or Unity dates. As far back as the takeover (namely Alsace and Lorraine) from territory of France by the Prussian governments in a vicious war in 1870-1871, days of German unity were called forth and celebrated in Germany . There are many streets and public squares throughout East and Western Germany to this very day which are called DEUTSCHE EINHEIT or German Unity. However, most of these streets and city squares date from the 1870s wars of Prussia , the era immediately after German speaking peoples were ??united ? through a series wars of aggression. As well, great statues of the Prussian Kaiser were constructed throughout the German and Prussian states of the regime.
http://www.deuframat.de/parser/parser.php?file=/deuframat/deutsch/3/3_2/bendick/kap3_4.htm
Likewise, the divided Cold War world of both Western and Eastern Germans often found the divided volk considering different times of the year for national unity dates: From 1949 through1989, the Eastern German Democratic Republic officially recognized October 7 as The National Day for Germans. That date was also the founding of the DDR or Democratic Republic of Germany, i.e. with Eastern Berlin as the head of governance.
http://www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-4894.html
In the same Cold War era, many pro-unification Western Germans, with Bonn as their capital, considered the date of the 17th of June to be for Germany the best date for soberly calling for ??German Unity ? or unification of the divided peoples. This date was selected after 1953 because on this date in that year, Eastern German and Russian forces violently put down a march by thousands of workers for better wages and equalization with the West economically and socially. Over one-hundred Germans were killed and many others sent to jail or concentration camps for months and years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uprising_of_1953_in_East_Germany
Originally, many Germans in 1990 had considered having November 9 as the day of German unity as that was the very day in 1989 when Eastern Germans had forced the East German communist regime to open the Walled boarders in Berlin (and around the East German state) for the first time in nearly three decades.
These Eastern Germans had succeeded in a manner the Prussian and Hitler regimes had never contemplated. They had unified lands and peoples, peacefully ??without firing a shot. This seemed to be a laudable event in modern German history.
However, November 9 was already filled with both bad and very complex but disuniting memories in the 20th Century. For example, there were:
November 9, 1918 ??the day the German Sailors' and workers kicked out the Prussian leadership in a series of street battles starting in Hamburg , leading to the end of the First World War and a fairly messed up Weimer Republic.
November 9, 1923 ??the date of Adolf Hitler's first coup attempt, which took place in Munich and led to the imprisonment of Hitler, a jail where Hitler wrote his book Mein Kampf.
November 9, 1938 ??the date of the so-called Reichskrystallnacht, which was a Nazi-orchestrated pogrom to destroy most every German synagogue in a single night.
http://german.about.com/b/2007/11/09/the-9th-of-november-in-german-history.htm
So, without November 9 available, the Eastern and Western German leaders looked for a date that had little negative garbage to its name. In early summer of 1990, Eastern Germans had been united by a financial monetary union. Later that year, on October 3, 1990, the official political unification of Germans under the Basic Law of West Germany went into effect.
In short, October 3 was a fall-back date. This may be why there is little hoopla on October 3, this 2009. Also, perhaps because October 3, 2009 falls on a Saturday, many are just staying home in bed and resting from their workweeks.
HOW I CELEBRATED OR RECALLED THE CONCEPTS OF UNIFICATION OR UNITY
I spent this past week pondering what ??unity ? means.
