Do you remember Günter Schabowski? I didn’t.
This snapshot of his role in the unwinding of the Berlin Wall story is the sort of thing we need to preserve, as historians, I think. It shows how large organizations tend to foul things up. And it shows how one person can influence history, even with error. It demonstrates how history does not consist of foregone conclusions, but is instead a long string of serendipitous events.
It’s just the sort of story I like, over at Earthling Concerned.
This entry was posted on Sunday, September 24th, 2006 at 8:12 am and is filed under Cold War, History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
(The Life of Reason, vol. 1: Reason in Common Sense)
Ed Darrell on Texas's Colorado River
Come on in, the water's fine. Come often: Cleanliness is next to godliness.
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump:
Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control. My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it. BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub
I second that! Günther Schabowski is one of the very few (if not the only) high-ranking GDR government official who is now apologetic for the regime. (See his entry on Wikipedia for some quotes.)
LikeLike