Lessons in Democracy

1990, former East Berlin, Humboldt University.

Here I was, full of energy and hope, the student representative with advisory powers only, in a new assembly called evaluation commission.  The others had the power. I had nothing.

Oh lovely Germans, having always the right bureaucratic word to obfuscate and hide the truth.  The job of this evaluation commission was simple to decide, who of the East German employees would be allowed to keep a job at the University and who would be fired, supposedly for being too tainted by the old system, maybe even having informed for the Stasi.  

Officially nobody considered it a conflict of interest to give this power of decision to people who wanted nothing more than to secure university jobs for themselves.  

I was not only the token student, the token woman, I was as well the token East German. 

I felt like somebody still learning the language, and a new language it was this West German: new words for all government and public institutions, different meanings attached to attributes, new sub-contexts everywhere.  I hardly could comprehend the flood of,

"why things have to be done this way, don't be naive, our system and democratic structures are proven and unchangeable and better than anything you can ever dream of-  what do you know anyway being mentally and emotionally and probably physical challenged, exposed to the harsh wind of suppression from far east throughout your young live”? 

While I still helplessly tried to string letters together, to form words not even a stammer came from my lips and I observed bemused my cowardliness and incapability to speak up.  All my thoughts and prepared sentences were not erased but merciless projected back at me.  I was taught very subtle the futility and hopelessness of participating through patronizing smiles and arrogant raised eyebrows.  Propelled so into silence, I observed another lesson in "democracy" and was shown how nothing we had tried mattered at all, how these old greedy, power-hungry man now destroyed all our attempts to reform what we considered our University.  We had played our part it seemed and that was that.  We had tried to bring light into the confusing jungle of old connections, of yesterday’s powerful men, who seemed sometimes so well prepared for this new life. We wanted to understand the structures that in the end suffocated so many and made them run away.

But no, these men, this new elite did not care for us either, not one bit more than the last ones, nor for our University, basis democracy, freedom or justice. For them the fight over well paid positions, influence and last but not least, against popular participation had just started. 

This is when I walked away.