164. Kohl Visits 1991 UC Berkeley after Fall of Nightmare, Communist Europe

Occupied Berlin during Cold War, photo from Wikipedia site; Old Soviet prison cell, photo date and location unknown, from Travelblog website; Soviet Vice Consul Germandy German in office at former Soviet Consulate in San Francisco, Green Street, 1984, photo was for interview we did for student newspaper, I wrote story, photo by journalism student Howard Ford; Berlin Wall shortly after completion in 1962, photo found in Truman Library Collection website; Press pass for September 12 and 13, 1991 to attend post-Cold War speech by German Chancellor Helmut Kohl at UC Berkeley's Greek Theater.


164.

Published news story for The Berkeley Voice by Lurene K. Helzer, September 19, 1991. Headlined Chancellor Kohl speaks on campus. Runs with photo of German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who was speaking at UC Berkeley’s Greek Theater before some 7,000 people, mostly students. [The Berkeley Voice is different than The Berkeley Planet. I did work for both.]

The Soviet Union and its communist empire “collapsed” on November 9, 1989. The Berlin Wall was now a relic. Kohl had arrived to the Berkeley campus to comment on central Europe’s emerging prospects and tone for future. I think this is one of the more important stories I was given chance to cover for Berkeley papers.

The communist world had been collapsing in fits and starts, ideologically and militarily, before this 1989 date. In this 1991 Berkeley speech, Kohl was discussing the job of putting Europe together -- economically and legally – following the death of European communism. Between 1945 and 1990, the world could not know a whole German nation.

Notably, then, he did not speak much about World War II, or the incalculable crimes of Germany through the Nazi party and Adolf Hitler. Not on this Berkeley day. He made only some reference to that era for this speech.

Why so little talk of National Socialism, at least for the wrath and war it brought to millions?? The answer was this: Europe’s immense problems in 1991.

In 1991, Europe, Russia, and the United States were completely overwhelmed with recovering their civilizations from the long, Cold War. Confusion was everywhere, mixed with an alien excitement in most of the world.

Nobody objected to his chosen topics because people in Berkeley wanted almost exclusively to hear his remarks about the fall of Moscow and the complete failure, and end, of dictatorial communism.

Most of us at Berkeley that day had spent our entire lives thinking we’d never hear such a speech, certainly not from an economically cautious German leader.

Kohl had more in common with Ronald Reagan than many today realize. The German left was frequently opposed to Kohl’s policies.

It’s difficult to overemphasize the preoccupation of the young crowd that day in Berkeley with the fall of communism in Europe. Here you had students who’d grown up not with a real knowledge of fascism, but with a legitimate fear of nuclear annihilation.

By 1991, we did not quite know what National Socialism meant in real life. Leftist rhetoric aside, we never really had to work with its crude smell over an entire continent. It’s almost completely impossible to understand it if you’re an average American of 2008. I almost never trust the modern American’s use of the word fascism, or the motives of the speaker.

The Czech Republic had yet to be declared or recognized, but it was already letting the tip of its nose show. In fact, Kohl makes reference to communist Prague of 1968 in a provocative way during this speech.

Surprisingly, you find little record of Kohl’s speech on the internet today. You can find a little about his visit to Berkeley in 1991 through the U.S. State Department, through UC Berkeley or through other such sources, but you will get little detail. So, the exact words of his speech are not easily found today. I almost sigh in relief that I found this story I wrote for the Voice to place here today.

Summing up: Germany’s leader said Germany alone could not repair the damage of the Cold War. He also discussed the emerging new shape of Europe. Kohl did not predict the rise of extremist Islam yet, of course. Few outside the Mideast quite were in 1991, which is quite clear in 1991 story below:




Germany alone cannot revive the newly emerging democracies of the world, that country’s chancellor Helmut Kohl told an audience at UC Berkeley’s Greek Theater.

“We are providing 56 percent of all Western aid to the Soviet Union and 32 percent of Western assistance to the countries of Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe. Allow me to be very frank with you here: We have already reached the limits of our potential. Nonetheless, we shall participate in further multilateral efforts,” Kohl said.

“Europe continues to need America, but let me also add this: America needs Europe,” he added.

Calling Germany “Europe’s economic locomotive,” the 61-year-old leader of the reunified nation said “optimism and pioneering spirit would be crucial for the reconstruction of Europe.”

He also spoke on the Yugoslavian civil conflict, the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the future of the European Community.

He compared the rebuilding efforts now underway to the Marshall Plan, which was implemented in Europe by the United States following World War II.

Addressing his remarks specifically to students, who comprised most of the audience of 7,000 in the outdoor amphitheater, he said he hoped this century would end on a “happier note” by redressing the “problems of the past.” He especially urged students to learn from the bloody agonies of the 20th Century.

In his lifetime, Kohl has worked to rebuild Germany not once, but twice – after the ravages of war and now after the fall of the Communist government of the “eastern lander.”

The Berlin Wall, a symbol of the cold war for over 40 years, fell in November 1989. Kohl came up with a 10-point plan for reunification by the end of the month.

Germany reunified by a vote of the residents of East Germany on Oct. 3, 1990. The German Economic and Monetary Union was enacted by July 1 of the same year. With unification, Germany became a nation of 64.1 million people, with factories in East Germany on average one third as productive as the factories in the West.

The real problem for Germany, Kohl said, is not only to achieve economic unity, but “social and cultural unity.”

“A European political union must lay clear-cut foundations for a common foreign and security policy,” said Kohl. “My government does not want to weaken the tried and tested Atlantic alliance in any way,” he said, making a clear reference to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

The continued need for NATO was illustrated by the breakup of the Soviet Union and the civil strife in Yugoslavia, as well as the recent Persian Gulf war, he said.

Kohl called for all use of force in Yugoslavia to be “stopped immediately without qualification.”

“When dialogue and harmonious coexistence are no longer possible we must, in line with our understanding of the right to self-determination, consider the question of recognizing under international law those republics which no longer wish to belong to Yugoslavia,” he said.

Kohl also spoke at length on the Soviet Union. “We the Western nations must now jointly provide swift and extensive aid to the Soviet Union so that it can progress further toward democracy and a market economy,” he said.

Kohl compared the recent coup attempt to the uprising in Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1968. The Soviet coup attempt was exactly 23 years after the hopes of protestors had been crushed by tanks in Prague, Kohl said.

August 21 will “go down in history as a belated triumph for the people who had then tried to stop those tanks,” he said to enthusiastic applause.

But “despite all our delight and satisfaction at the historic victory of freedom and democracy, the motto now cannot be “business as usual.’ Not least we owe this to the men and women who risked and lost their lives during the days of that Russian ‘August Revolution’.”

He said negotiations for Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia’s association agreements should be completed as soon as possible as “accession to the community must also be open to those three countries, once appropriate conditions exist there. Europe includes not just Paris, London and Berlin, but also Warsaw, Prague and Budapest – and naturally Vienna and Stockholm as well.”

After the Tanner lecture, Kohl was given the Berkeley Medal, the university’s highest honor, by UC-Berkeley chancellor Dr. Chang-Lin Tien. The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, according to UC-Berkeley’s office of Public Information, is to “advance and reflect upon the scholarly and scientific learning related to human values and valuation.”

Kohl, while in Berkeley, also participated in the ceremonial debut of the Center for German and European studies on Sept. 12. The German government will contribute $870,000 each year for 10 years to the center, one of three in the United States.

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