- A warm greeting to all of you
who gathered here for
this important event.
Mrs. Machaille Al-Naimi,
president of Qatar Foundation
Community Development,
Mr. Abdulrahman Al Ishaq,
Head of Public Art at Qatar Museums,
colleagues from Qatar Foundation
who along with our facilities team
really did a great job
at finding a location
where this wall can stand.
Colleagues, students, welcome.
Thank you for coming today to remember
and stand with us to mark this
important piece of history.
We are honored to be
selected as one of two sites
to display a piece of the
Berlin Wall here in Doha.
As a university, we are dedicated
to training future leaders
who will engage in building
international relations.
And we are dedicated
to conduction research
that tears down walls
on a number of fronts.
And artifacts like this remind
us of the critical importance
of our task as educators and leaders
in the area of diplomacy.
Qatar's partnership with
Germany is a prime example
of international diplomacy at work.
And here we see the fruits
of exchange that will provide
ongoing mutual enrichment
for years to come.
There are so many debates
about the building of walls.
Barriers that keep people out
separating us from the other
or the haves from the have nots.
The Berlin wall was built
in 1961 to keep people in.
Those who wanted
to escape communist East
Berlin to West Berlin
which was under democratic rule.
Between 1961 and 1989,
the East German government changed
the design of the barrier four times
along many sections of the border strip.
Border Wall 75 and this
sample is the last sample,
the most recent design, was
erected from 1975 to '76 on.
A decision was taken
to erect a construction
that would form a completely
insurmountable barrier.
Refugees found it almost impossible
to climb over this wall.
The numbers of people who could escape
from East Germany to West
Germany drastically decreased.
But just when it looked as
if the wall loomed large
and was impossible to cross,
the thirst for freedom,
the desire to reach
across artificial borders
drove people on both sides
of the wall to tear it down.
And as of this year the
wall has now been down
for longer than it stood.
To be exact, 10316 days.
The wall did keep people in
but the true tragedy was
that it separated people
from their families and their loved ones.
It is the human aspect behind
the big events that matter.
At Georgetown University of Qatar
we study politics and history
and economics and culture
because we care about the human condition.
We want to help develop
leaders who understand
both the power of the people and the power
of individual agents to affect change.
Armed with fluency in multiple languages,
negotiations and communications skills
and understanding of economics
and historical knowledge,
our graduates are prepared to do today
what Edmund A. Walsh hoped that they would
at the inauguration of the
School of Foreign Service
100 years ago.
To use his words to cope with
and effectively solve
the problems of tomorrow.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in
1989 is still a recent memory
for most adults living today.
Our generation at least.
We have with us today,
two people profoundly
and personally affected by these events.
Dr. Kai-Henrik Barth and his
wife Katrin Scholz-Barth.
They grew up on different
sides of the wall.
Katrin on the eastern side
and Kai on the western side.
They never would have met
had the wall not come down
that fateful Thursday November 9th, 1989.
The walls impact was tremendous.
It divided German
families, raptured society
and affected the entire
world far beyond the wall.
By reflecting on and
honoring those memories
we remember the cost
of physical separation,
the cost of ideological
division, the cost of barriers,
whether they are made of
concreted, barbed wire
or canals or drawn in ink.
The history books say the wall opened
on one strange night in
November of that year.
But that's not quite right.
This is what Marc Fisher,
The Washington Post Berlin
bureau chief wrote in 1989.
He continued to write,
it was really a process
that took several months,
a process that consisted
of the physical destruction of the wall,
countless changes in
people's daily routines
and the mental shift that was perhaps
the biggest hurdle of all.
What we can take away from those memories
is the determination to help prevent
another separation wall in
another place from coming up.
To succeed, we have to
understand why it was ever built
and what it took to bring it down.
We study politics, economics and culture.
We conduct research on critical events
knowing that the history we do not know
is a history we are bound to repeat.
Here at Georgetown,
we have remarkable
scholars doing this work,
asking the questions
that haven't been asked
and hopefully contributing
to a global body of knowledge
that will inspire the next
generation of students
who may find themselves standing
before same section of the Berlin wall.
We exist in a unique ecosystem
here in Qatar Foundation
composed of many other powerful thinkers
from some of the top
universities in the world.
The work we do together is a
constant reminder to all of us
that the walls that are erected
to separate us will not stand.
We are encouraged to come together
to collectively work
towards making a difference
through the determined work of people like
Mrs. Mrs. Machaille Al-Naimi
who worked with Qatar Museums
to make this event possible.
Today we will hear from Mrs. Al-Naimi,
from Mr. Al Ishaq,
we will then follow with a brief synopsis
of the historical significance of the wall
from our own Professor Gerd Nonneman
who is a professor
of International Relations
and Gulf Studies,
and then we will close I
think very appropriately
and adequately with personal reflections
from Kai and Katrin.
But first I would like
to invite Mrs. Al-Naimi and Mr. Al Ishaq
to unveil the wall.
(audience applauding)
- Distinguished guests,
ladies and gentlemen,
good afternoon.
I'm delighted to be here with you today
to mark the latest
successful art collaboration
between Qatar Foundation
and Qatar Museums.
The hosting of the segment
of the Berlin Wall at Education City.
When you stand next to this artwork,
you truly feel the hand of
history on your shoulder.
It is more than a piece of stone.
It is the piece of a story.
A story that is a pivotal
time in our worlds journey.
And as you said, most adults remember it,
a lot of us do remember it
even though we were much
younger at that stage.
It's one that continues to resonate
almost three decades on.
It is an artwork that invites
people to do more than look.
It invites them to gather, to think,
explore and expand their knowledge.
It connects them with history
and cultural identity.
And in this way, it perfectly
complements the 150 artworks
that represent Qatar Foundation's
unique art collection,
and those kindly on loan
to us from Qatar Museums,
all of which are in public view here
at Education City within
our various assets.
These pieces of art
encourage critical thinking,
creativity and discovery.
They promote social
engagement and interaction.
And they foster across
cultural understanding and perspective.
All of these values are a core to us
within Qatar Foundation in our mission
and that is why art has
such a central role to play
particularly within community development.
We're immensely proud to host this artwork
within our community and particularly
within Georgetown university.
I can't stress enough that as
we were debating the location
of this art piece, we couldn't
think of a better place.
When I found that it was
going to be at Georgetown
we were tremendously
happy given the nature
of the work that you do
and the leaders that you are
creating future generations.
I would like this opportunity
to thank Qatar Museums sincerely
for enabling us to do so
and for our ongoing and
valued contribution.
Thank you very much.
- I'd like to start off by
thanking the Qatar Foundation
for facilitating this collaboration.
I would say it's been a
good collaboration so far.
We had, before the Berlin wall,
we had the Damien Hirst babies
as the last unveiling or
official inauguration.
And we are happy to work
with the Qatar Foundation
as a leader that creates change in Doha.
I would like also to thank Georgetown
for becoming the new
home for the Berlin wall.
In Qatar Museums, we take great
care in selecting the piece
and where we place the piece.
So we hope that having a piece of history
in Georgetown, Qatar
would inspire the students
who will become the leaders of tomorrow.
And hopefully
break walls instead of building walls
and create bridges with other cultures.
Thank you so much.
- So, I'm not gonna talk very long because
I think by far the most
important for everybody
future memories will
be the personal witness
that Kai and Katrin will
be able to give you.
As it happens, only yesterday in class,
in the first year class,
I had occasion to mention the Berlin Wall.
And a few weeks ago an
upper level class similarly,
the Berlin Wall became a
subject of brief discussion.
And it struck me that while
even at the upper class levels
people who heard about it
and read something about
it and even more so,
but even more so this was
true for the first years,
it was very vague and it was no personal,
very little personal
connection and realization.
For people of that generation,
it's virtually inconceivable
that such a separation
existed in the heart of Europe
running all across Europe.
And the Berlin part of that
division was a peculiar one
because Berlin of course
as a city, city region,
was located inside the soviet zone.
And so within Berlin
there was the western part
and the soviet-occupied part.
The idea that that was such
a real tangible division
running through Europe,
people might have read
about it in history books
but it didn't seem to come across
as very real or even conceivable.
Just so, for people of our generation,
we're perhaps not the majority
of the worlds population
these days any more
but I would say 60% of
the worlds population
with the picture I just described obtains.
For the rest of us, this
was an incredible moment
when that wall came toppling down.
And everything that happened around it,
the toppling of the wall
was not a single event
as Dean Dalal explained.
There was a lot going on across
the world but across Europe
it was regimes that were crumbling.
It was ideologies that were
losing some of that confidence
that they could contain the
people within such walls.
This, at that time caused real euphoria.
I myself at the time was in my second year
of my academic career as a young lecturer,
professor, they would
say in American context,
at teaching international relations.
And I genuinely was enthused
about the possibility
of people power.
The apparent changes
that were taking place
in the international system
and in the understanding,
international understanding
as well as local understanding
of politics but the old fierce
but brittle regimes
proved just that, brittle.
And it was impossible to contain
the kind of energy of populations.
That also led to a complete restructuring
of the international system.
You know, apart from people's feelings,
the wall was a symbol, a mere symbol made,
it was division made
visible but it was also
the structure of the
international system made visible.
The structure that had obtained
since the end of the second world war.
At the end of the second world war,
you got these two main ideological powers
and military powers meeting
each other in Germany
and across the rest of Europe leading to
the division of Europe and in a sense
the division of the rest of
the world and world politics
into what people used to
calling the two blocks,
the western block and the soviet block.
And then there was a
third group of nations
that people ended up
calling the third world.
That division that
structured almost anything
in international affairs
was of course was created
at the end of the second world war
but for the people of our
generation and our parents,
that division became a given,
something that was just unquestioned,
inconceivable that it would ever change.
And in a very short space of time, it did.
So hence the euphoria,
the sense of possibility
for the future, the sense of
finally the United Nations
was going to be unleashed
properly for the good of mankind.
How naive did that prove?
We're now back in a
time of building walls.
In one particular part of the world
building walls is already
a very very extensive ghost
not too far from here in Palestine,
and populism and the kind of
nastier sides of nationalism
are popping up all around the place.
So it's not longer,
for the first few years
the euphoria was translated into
some very serious academic analysis too
as a popular academic analysis.
We all probably heard of the title,
The End of History, Francis
Fukuyama, a brilliant mind,
wrote this book about the end of history.
Right, that's it, we've arrived.
This liberal democracy
from here on clearly,
the other counter systems
or ideologies can't compete.
It wasn't quite that
simple as Fukuyama himself
fairly soon, fairly swiftly
admitted and realized.
So while the end of that division
symolized by the falling of the wall
restructured the
international system again,
first towards what seemed
to be a unipolar world
and then to a multipolar
world that was still with.
It also kind of opened up
all sorts of possibilities
and they weren't just positive ones,
they were also negative ones.
And some of the negative possibilities,
we're now seeing being realized.
But at the same time I
think we mustn't lose sight
of the fact that those regimes that made
the building of a wall like
this possible did crumble.
Similarly, even though
events like the Arab Spring
were in some ways of a similar nature,
brittle but fierce regimes
ultimately no longer being able to sustain
either the politics or the
economics of their systems
fell for a while.
The fact that we're now in a
counter revolutionary period,
certainly in the Arab
world, shouldn't make us
give up hope altogether.
I still believe that the
evidence is plentiful
to show that populations
can't be kept without end.
So there will be another falling of walls,
we'll go back to a situation, inshallah,
where the building of
walls is no longer gonna be
as popular as it is under
certain presidents these days.
- Dean Dalal, distinguished
guests, ladies and gentlemen.
My wife Katrin Scholz-Barth
and I are very happy to
have this opportunity to
share our story with you.
We are a real East German
reunified German couple.
(audience applauding)
You have no idea how
nervous I am standing next
to a piece of the wall
that means so much to us.
We wrote our speech out
so that we wouldn't fail
in an attack of emotions
next to this piece.
So let me continue through.
Berlin Wall collapsed on November 9, 1989
rather accidentally signaling the end
of separation of Germany
into east and west.
It was a defining moment and
I guess that many in the room
in the audience remember
exactly where they were
on this particular
Thursday evening in 1989.
This historic event is
deeply ingrained into
the lives of the two of us,
actually very much to this day.
We watched recently original footage
of jubilant east Germans
crossing into West Berlin
and happy west Berliners
celebrating their arrival.
It has a powerful emotional impact on us
even after nearly thirty years.
Without the fall of the wall,
we would have never met.
My wife grew up in East Germany,
I grew up in West Germany.
There was no way we would
have been able to meet
if the wall wouldn't have come down.
- So our story is quite unique in that
it is a result of growing
up on an inner German border
that was neither one of our fault.
But during the Cold War, you
remember in the early '80s
it was quite a scary time
because the US started to deploy
Pershing II missiles in West Germany
and the Russians deployed
stationed SS-20 rockets
on the East German border of it
basically preparing for
nuclear war on German soil.
And we would have faced each
other, fighting each other
in the event of that.
So these scary times when we were
in our early or later teens
shaped us to this day.
And it's not only
politically that it shaped us
it also basically informed
our later career choices.
For Kai to focus his life
on Nuclear Non-Proliferation
and for me to make sustainable development
my life's mission.
And so while east
Germans were keenly aware
of the omnipresent Stasi,
the East German secret police
and their informants all among us,
I still remember a very happy childhood
with family vacations, summer
camps, sports and music
within very close-knit and
strong supportive communities.
And when the wall fell in November, 1989,
these strong communities actually
extended beyond the walls
as millions of people streamed
to the opposite Germany
that they had never known or seen before.
Either side was warmly
welcomed by the other
and that was just really beautiful.
And ironically I had actually
missed all of the excitement.
As an East German competitive swimmer
I was head under water during the time
and I only learned about
the world changing events
unfolding in front of us
the next day at university
when I was wondering where everybody was.
So that evening, a day late,
I actually jumped on a
ferry to go to Denmark.
I lived in Rostock on the Baltic Sea,
and because the very few streets
that did exist going west
were chocked on overwhelmed
crossing border crossings,
I was myself with a lot of truckers going
on a ferry going to Denmark
making my way around to Hamburg
where Kai and I ultimately met
in art gallery, of all places.
So it's coming full circle
that we appreciate that
we have here the opportunity
to actually welcome this piece
of art and that Qatar Museums
and Qatar Foundation has
donated it to Georgetown
for that very reason.
Now, at this point I
might want to point out
that this wall did not
start as a piece of art.
It was a scar between east and west.
And the only reason why
it became public art
was because the people on
the west side of Berlin
could actually go all the way to it
and painted it and expressed themselves.
Now, you might notice when you come around
that there is no such
thing on the east side,
on the side that's facing east because
for us it was a death strip.
It was over 100 of meters
of self-shooting devices
that would have cost our lives
if we just dared to paint the wall.
- I think it's also important to realize
that we spoke the same language, German,
but we didn't understand each
other's cultural references.
- Wait, wait, wait, now
I need to say something.
(audience laughing)
- The east-west German thing never ends.
(audience laughing)
- Before Kai makes those
cultural references
I might want to say,
I will gladly admit
that I did not know any
of the cultural references
or the cultural icons but Kai didn't know
or wouldn't consider that
the east had produced any
icons of Easy Germany by itself.
But boy, was he wrong.
(audience applauding and cheering)
- So I wanna give you a little anecdote.
She didn't know Marilyn Monroe,
she didn't know Blues Brothers.
So I explained what
the Blues Brothers are.
The Blues Brothers are
two guys in black suits.
Enough said.
Then we walked past the toy store
totally decorated in Batmans and she said,
"Is this one of the Blues Brothers?"
So I wasn't quite sure whether
this was serious or not.
I have to say that this is not unusual
for a unified east-west German couple
that you get these different references.
My wife pointed out that
I didn't know much about East Germany.
This was absolutely true.
For me, East Germany was
a black hole in a map.
I grew up 10 miles away from the border
and I didn't care about East Germany
because there was no way
of ever traveling there,
there was no way of meeting
people from East Germany
in any normal way.
And so we basically discounted,
my generation discounted East Germany.
And suddenly you have this
influx of excited young people
from East Germany into West Germany.
It was a very hearty time.
- So three years after the
fall of the Berlin Wall,
Kai and I had both finished
our masters degrees
in our respective universities
and then we moved to the United States.
And we married in the United States.
And ever since thank Mikhail Gorbachev
for allowing this wall to be dismantled
without one single shot fired.
I was among the lucky ones
because at age 22 at the time,
with a curious open mind,
I grasped the opportunity
to see the world.
But generations younger or older
were caught right in the middle.
So the generation of my
parents for instance,
they fought to hold on
to their own identities.
Children who were younger were suddenly
faced with difficulties and uncertainties
that nobody in East Germany
had ever known before.
And so, but overall, East
Germany was quite lucky
because 1989 went down in history
as the year of revolution.
On April 9th, 1989, exactly to the day,
six month prior to the
fall of the Berlin Wall
was the Tbilisi massacre where
several hundred people died
in an anti-soviet upraising.
And probably not very
many people remember that.
More memorable in our conscience probably
are the events on Tiananmen
Square on June 1989
where also several
hundred people were killed
trying to build a more
democratic China which failed.
And so pieces of this
Berlin wall remind us
of the emotional events in 1989,
and we remember with deep
gratitude that we are actually
part of one of the happiest
moments of postwar Germany.
And as former German Chancellor,
Willy Brandt once said,
"Now what belongs together
will grow together."
- One little picture
of the happiest moment.
The happiest moment came to the fore
at New Year's Eve party in 1989
in Berlin around the Brandenburg Gate.
More than a million and a
half people were celebrating
the prospect of unification,
the opening of the wall.
But the physical structure
of the wall was still there.
The border guards were still on duty.
But the border guards would be celebrating
with everybody else too.
So for many West Germans,
it was the first time that they could
walk through the Brandenburg
Gate into East Germany.
I did this with all these
other masses as well.
I was far into East Germany when suddenly
many police cars arrived
with blue emergency lights and sirens
and unbeknownst to us, there
was a scaffolding collapsed
and people got injured
but we didn't know this.
And so we were in East
Berlin, deep into East Berlin,
police cars arrive and
somebody was screaming,
"They're closing the wall."
This was the fastest mile I ever ran.
(audience laughing)
But love trumps fear.
The next morning I crossed
the border again to visit her.
- So this is just our very personal story.
And again, we're deeply
grateful to Qatar Foundation
and Qatar Museums, Georgetown
University and for you
to share this moment with us.
But everyone in here has their
very own personal stories.
Personal stories of
challenges of unimaginable,
unexpected and quite beautiful
moments in your lives
that make your own story.
And so we hope and our wish is that
with this piece of the Berlin Wall
right here at Georgetown University
that educates the next
generations of world leaders
will be a constant reminder
of finding common ground,
not only interculturally
but interpersonally
and every single day to make
this world a better place.
And be again, something to remind us
to tear down any other wall around us.
Thank you very much.
