Instead of Violence: Lessons from Leipzig, Germany, October 9, 1989 - Roger J. Newell

Instead of Violence:
Lessons from Leipzig, Germany, October 9, 1989

A few years ago I wrote a book about the privilege of taking some students to Leipzig, Germany, where we spoke with one of the leaders of the peace prayers movement which helped bring down the Communist Government in the former East Germany.  The leader, a Lutheran Pastor with the unlikely name of Christian Führer, described to us in unforgettable words key moments leading up to the night of Monday, October 9, 1989, when decades of accumulated civil grievances combined improbably with years of weekly gatherings known as “prayers for peace” (Friedensgebet) in which readings from the Sermon on the Mount played a central role.

On the night of Monday, October 9, 1989, 70,000 citizens of Leipzig peacefully walked the ring road encircling the city, many holding candles, knowing full well that along the streets were hundreds of police and soldiers armed with live ammunition. The police had been sent to end the weekly protests once and for all, because from the government’s perspective, they were destabilizing the nation.  As people walked, many chanting  “We are the People” and “No violence,” something truly remarkable happened: no angry protester threw a stone; no nervous soldier fired a shot.  Instead, groups of demonstrators engaged the police and military in respectful conversations as they walked the ring road till nearly midnight when the crowd peacefully went home. There were no winners or losers. Neither side lost face. Not a window was broken. There was just a tremendous feeling of relief. That night East Germany was transformed by a peaceful revolution. A month later the Berlin Wall came down--peacefully.

All these events were in stark contrast to the tragedy only five months earlier in China’s Tiananmen Square when soldiers opened fire on a large demonstration and many were killed. Instead, on October 9 in Leipzig police and protesters collectively wove a collaborative web of non-violence, as demonstrators took the message of waging peace out of the church sanctuary and onto the streets.  After that night, even though demonstrations swept the nation, there was no violence.  In a matter of weeks, the government stood down while a caretaker government arranged for the country’s first and finally free and fair election.  On March 18, 1990, the party advocating early reunification with West Germany won a clear victory at the polls.  One of its youthful members was a young Chemistry researcher named Angela Merkel, whose father was also an East German pastor.

That night had the encounter between protesters and police exploded into violence it’s hard to see how the “Chinese solution” could have been avoided.  After all, it’s a familiar story.  In the aftermath of World War I, street violence between rival left and right-wing groups paved the way for the Weimar Republic’s demise and the Nazi party’s coming to power.  It has been a heartbreakingly repetitive theme among various countries in Latin America. So much so the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Recife, Brazil, Dom Helder Camara, gave it a name:  the spiral of violence.  The spiral may start with the hidden violence of injustice in the boardrooms of power or perhaps from a particularly brutal act of police/military domination which then provokes from frustrated young people an angry response on the streets, including serious property damage.  But the angry crowds on the streets are phase two, a reaction to the “anarchy from above” in which those with public responsibility act in ways that betray public trust and human dignity. The spiral’s third phase soon follows as the militarized police now made anxious by crowd size, act with intimidating force to restore “law and order.” For a while, the streets are quiet once more.  But simmering below the surface are the accumulated grievances and anger. All it takes for a new conflagration is a new abuse of power to spark an outbreak on the streets, followed in due course by a new and harsher suppression. Thus the competing energies of the governing class and protestors consume one another in endless variations of the same wasteful dynamic while collaborative contributions to the common good are barely imaginable and left unattempted. 

Camara called attention to the dynamics of the spiral in order to invite people of good will from all sides of the political spectrum, to see the futility of the spiral and choose instead the one path of action that could interrupt the spiral. As is well known, this is the choice that inspired both the Indian Hindu Gandhi’s struggle against British colonial rule and the American pastor Dr. King’s struggle against racial segregation.   Convinced the spiral of violence was mutually self-destructive, both Gandhi and King took the leap of faith that only the narrow path of non-violent action could move people from hate and fear towards a just and peaceful future. 

Writing this from a small college town thirty miles southwest of Portland, Oregon, I am aware that street violence between left and right-wing groups is not just a phenomenon of Germany in the 1920s or more generally, Latin America in the last century. More than ever before in my lifetime, there are in America powerful vested interests acting as provocateurs, agents planning to keep the spiral of violence spinning. They include frustrated young idealists, inspired it seems by both right- and left-wing utopias, eager to remove the splinter from the eye of their opposite numbers. Even more disturbing, they include local and national politicians, including even our President, who calculates that he can successfully ride one phase of the spiral, the law and order reaction, to four more years of power.

Just to make things worse, the spiral is now joining itself to doubts about the honesty of the voting process itself, and threatens the prospects of a free and fair election in November.  Yet free and fair elections are the closest thing a secular society has to a sacred ritual, the peaceful transition of power that grants respect and credibility to a representative democracy. To toy with this is a kind of political blasphemy. But every stone thrown, every insult shouted, every weapon publically brandished, every media message sent to discredit the election adds fuel to the fire, each side, in turn, reacting with a greater sense of grievance further justifying an ever more strident retaliatory behavior. 

Thirteen years have passed since my visit with Pastor Führer but it still gives me hope because against very bad odds, the spiral of violence was interrupted by the people of Leipzig, who in turn inspired their fellow citizens to refuse the violence both by the bullies in the boardrooms of power and those in the streets.  Somehow both a militarized police and deeply frustrated demonstrators found a way to see the humanity of each other and moved beyond the false binary of “justice” versus “law and order.” 

Make no mistake.  Today in America our mettle is being tested, arguably even more than in 1968.  In a nation separated by vast inequalities it is no longer a self-evident truth that respect for the humanity of our fellow citizens will be the shared consensus on the street or the halls of power.  To choose the peaceful act of casting an honest vote will oblige both sides to resist the desire for payback hidden within the competing demands for justice. It will mean again and again to seek ways to turn our adversary into a fellow struggler for liberty and justice.  But if we follow this path through to November 3 and beyond, we can demonstrate to a watching world as well as to ourselves that imperfect people from the entire body politic--left, right and somewhere in between--can choose, despite all their flaws, to interrupt the spiral of violence, and demonstrate that not all chain-reactions are negative.  For one positive achievement often leads to another.  Perhaps a new consensus towards forming a more perfect union can yet be America’s shared future. Much hinges in the coming weeks on the actions of ordinary citizens in public, behind the scenes, and in the sacred space of voting booths.

Roger J. Newell

Professor of Religious Studies Emeritus,

George Fox University, Newberg, Oregon,

author of Keine Gewalt! No Violence! How the Church gave Birth to Germany’s only Peaceful Revolution. (Wipf and Stock, 2017). 

[email protected]

Comments

[Shari Bowman]

Thank you, Roger! I have so missed our discussions at St. Michael/San Miguel. Your perspective is always appreciated. What is your "take" on how our obsession with anti-abortion figures into the prospects for peaceful action from the evangelical right?