Issue Essay
Issue paper: What are the issues of your topic? Pick a side and argue. Enter into a scholarly discussion about the causes of a specific event, the responses to that event. In the process of your research, you should begin looking for a place to publish your work.
Sorry, this is really rough. I've just got a couple of basic ideas and am trying very hard to flesh them out.
In the dark night of August the 12th of 1961, there was a quiet stillness that foretold the division that was soon to be felt in the German people. It was on this night, that the construction of the “concrete curtain” began at roughly four o’clock in the afternoon. It began with the signing of documents closing the German borders. From this somewhat passive beginning began a tumultuous new Germany, one where a wall separated families, where the economy suffered due to lack of people, and tension was ever-present between the authorities and the common people.
The people of Berlin, especially West Berlin, ended up resigning themselves to viewing the Wall as a part of their city landscape and their mental outlook (or at least that’s how I’m viewing it.) Its main effect was to deepen the divide as each part of the city went its own different way and it did that very well.
(economy) Cut off from its natural hinterland, West Berlin lost over 340,000 inhabitants in the period from 1961 to 1983 and only survived with federal aid. To make up for the population shortfall, the city called in immigrant labor, including roughly 131, 000 people from Turkey, 35,000 Yugoslavians, and 22,000 Poles (which explains a lot of the countries modern population statistics.) The Wall transformed the localities bordering it.
Access from the west to buildings, parks, churches and cemeteries in the East were bricked up. Houses were abandoned, left derelict and, as in Kreuzberg, squatted. These Wall neighborhoods encouraged the emergence in the West of an alternative society in favor of self-management, community living, and an anti-bourgeois culture.
During the first ten years of the Wall, Berlin went through periods of tension followed by periods of slightly less tension.
(tension)The first anniversary was marked in the West by violent demonstrations that lasted several days, with angry crowds attacking Soviet vehicles.
(separated families) In December 1963, the Senate finally came to an agreement over passes with the East German authorities, enabling hundreds of thousands of West Berliners to visit friends or relatives over Christmas and the New Year. This agreement was renewed until 1966. After that, special permits were issued for family occasions (a birth, marriage, illness or death). In the East, as from November 1964, retired persons were allowed to visit relatives in West Germany. They accounted for most of the 383,181 East Germans who were allowed out of East Germany between 1961 and 1988.
In December 1964, East Germany introduced a compulsory currency exchange for visitors from West Germany and West Berlin. And in June 1968, travelers between West Germany and West Berlin were required to carry a passport and a visa they had to pay for, and this led to long queues at the checkpoints at Dreilinden and Helmstedt.
When he became chancellor, Willy Brandt introduced a new Eastern policy with the aim of reducing tension between the two Germanys. There followed a series of agreements that stabilized the situation in and around Berlin.
First, meeting in the former Control Council, the ambassadors of the four occupying powers (USSR, United States, France, and Great Britain) signed an agreement on 3rd September 1971 whereby the USSR guaranteed access to West Berlin; in return the West accepted that West Berlin was not an integral part of West Germany. Two further agreements made directly with the Germans dealt with the details. The first, approved on the 17th of December 1971, simplified crossing over between West Germany and West Berlin. The second was signed three days later by the Berlin Senate and East Germany and made things easier for West Berliners traveling east, where they could now stay for 30 (and later 45) days each year. After this, the number of journeys to and from Berlin rose sharply. A year later, on 21st December 1972, the two German states signed a "Basic Treaty " to normalize their relations and open the way at last to joining the UNO.
Of course, when I have finished researching my books and reading through them, I will have more “scholarly discussion” than cold facts to support my “scholarly discussion” So, this is just the beginning of my work ^_^.
Sorry, this is really rough. I've just got a couple of basic ideas and am trying very hard to flesh them out.
In the dark night of August the 12th of 1961, there was a quiet stillness that foretold the division that was soon to be felt in the German people. It was on this night, that the construction of the “concrete curtain” began at roughly four o’clock in the afternoon. It began with the signing of documents closing the German borders. From this somewhat passive beginning began a tumultuous new Germany, one where a wall separated families, where the economy suffered due to lack of people, and tension was ever-present between the authorities and the common people.
The people of Berlin, especially West Berlin, ended up resigning themselves to viewing the Wall as a part of their city landscape and their mental outlook (or at least that’s how I’m viewing it.) Its main effect was to deepen the divide as each part of the city went its own different way and it did that very well.
(economy) Cut off from its natural hinterland, West Berlin lost over 340,000 inhabitants in the period from 1961 to 1983 and only survived with federal aid. To make up for the population shortfall, the city called in immigrant labor, including roughly 131, 000 people from Turkey, 35,000 Yugoslavians, and 22,000 Poles (which explains a lot of the countries modern population statistics.) The Wall transformed the localities bordering it.
Access from the west to buildings, parks, churches and cemeteries in the East were bricked up. Houses were abandoned, left derelict and, as in Kreuzberg, squatted. These Wall neighborhoods encouraged the emergence in the West of an alternative society in favor of self-management, community living, and an anti-bourgeois culture.
During the first ten years of the Wall, Berlin went through periods of tension followed by periods of slightly less tension.
(tension)The first anniversary was marked in the West by violent demonstrations that lasted several days, with angry crowds attacking Soviet vehicles.
(separated families) In December 1963, the Senate finally came to an agreement over passes with the East German authorities, enabling hundreds of thousands of West Berliners to visit friends or relatives over Christmas and the New Year. This agreement was renewed until 1966. After that, special permits were issued for family occasions (a birth, marriage, illness or death). In the East, as from November 1964, retired persons were allowed to visit relatives in West Germany. They accounted for most of the 383,181 East Germans who were allowed out of East Germany between 1961 and 1988.
In December 1964, East Germany introduced a compulsory currency exchange for visitors from West Germany and West Berlin. And in June 1968, travelers between West Germany and West Berlin were required to carry a passport and a visa they had to pay for, and this led to long queues at the checkpoints at Dreilinden and Helmstedt.
When he became chancellor, Willy Brandt introduced a new Eastern policy with the aim of reducing tension between the two Germanys. There followed a series of agreements that stabilized the situation in and around Berlin.
First, meeting in the former Control Council, the ambassadors of the four occupying powers (USSR, United States, France, and Great Britain) signed an agreement on 3rd September 1971 whereby the USSR guaranteed access to West Berlin; in return the West accepted that West Berlin was not an integral part of West Germany. Two further agreements made directly with the Germans dealt with the details. The first, approved on the 17th of December 1971, simplified crossing over between West Germany and West Berlin. The second was signed three days later by the Berlin Senate and East Germany and made things easier for West Berliners traveling east, where they could now stay for 30 (and later 45) days each year. After this, the number of journeys to and from Berlin rose sharply. A year later, on 21st December 1972, the two German states signed a "Basic Treaty " to normalize their relations and open the way at last to joining the UNO.
Of course, when I have finished researching my books and reading through them, I will have more “scholarly discussion” than cold facts to support my “scholarly discussion” So, this is just the beginning of my work ^_^.