November 9, an unforgettable date for Germany

This Friday the senior staff of German politics recalled the three anniversaries of November 9 (9N), a date that converges from the proclamation of the Republic, in 1918, to the Nazi pogroms of 1938 and the fall of the Berlin Wall, in 1989.

“We must confront these dates in all their contradictions,” said the country’s president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in a solemn act and in the presence of the country’s highest institutional representatives.

Along with the outgoing Chancellor, Angela Merkel, the president of the Bundestag (lower house of Parliament), the Social Democrat Bärbel Bas, as well as that of the Bundesrat (upper house), the leftist Bodo Ramelow, and that of the Constitutional Court participated in the ceremony, Stephan Harbarth.

“It is an ambivalent date for Germans, a bright date and a dark date,” Steinmeier noted. A day in which “tears come to our eyes” and in which “hope converges, given the best that has happened to this country”, but also “its darkest depths”.

This is why November 9 is “a very German day,” reflected Steinmeier, from the Bellevue Palace, the presidential seat.

The first of the anniversaries, that of 1918, corresponds to the establishment of the German Republic, precipitated by the defeat of the First World War and the abdication of Emperor Wilhelm II.

The second, that of 1938, is that of the so-called “Kristallnacht” or “Night of the Broken Glass”, the first massacre organized by the Nazis against the Jews. Synagogues and shops throughout the country were then burned down and some 30,000 Jews were arrested and later deported.

It was the night “of devastation”, according to the Holocaust survivor Margot Friedländer, who these days celebrated her hundred years and who today was responsible for evoking that date at the official ceremony.

The third anniversary, that of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, represents the joy of the reunion between citizens and families separated for decades by the so-called “Strip of Death”, built by the regime of communist Germany.

That day represents the end of the traumatic citizen and national division, which was followed by the process of political, social and economic reunification promoted by the then chancellor, Helmut Kohl, and negotiated with the allied powers.

It was sealed on October 3, 1990 with the entry into force of the Treaty of Unity and the integration of the territory of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) into the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG).

The date adopted as the national holiday of Unity is October 3, despite the fact that November 9 has, for the German collective memory, a much greater emotional charge.

This decision was made given the impossibility of establishing the anniversary of the fall of the wall as a day of popular celebrations, since it coincided with the horror of the first Nazi pogroms. (I)