When we were teenagers in Poland, it was the end of the 1990s and by then we had already acquired the freedom to travel to Paris or London to go to language school and work. To afford this, we travelled by shabby, worn-out buses. It took dozens of hours, and the journey was always further prolonged by a stop of several hours at the Polish-German border.
The border was real and symbolic. It was the beginning of European space, but in our heads, we were making a journey through time – a trip into the future, to a time when as members of the European Union we would be realising the promise of a better life.
We felt like we were living in an alternative version of the Kafka story Before the Law, in which a man waits all his life in front of a door without ever being let in. The gates of Europe were closed for half a century to our parents and grandparents. For us, however, the miracle of the fall of the Berlin Wall meant we were able to pass through that door freely.
Ten years after our first travels, one cold December night in 2007, people gathered on the bridge over the River Oder, which connects Germany and Poland. The cold did not discourage anyone from partying to loud music to celebrate the Schengen agreement, which was beginning to take effect, dismantling internal borders across Europe and allowing passport-free movement. The national anthems of both countries and of the EU were sung. Commemorative photos were taken in places where this used to be strictly forbidden for security reasons. Barbed wire was cut and border barriers were removed.
Today, the political focus is shifting from time to space.
After Germany’s extraordinary decision to reimpose border checks at all nine of its land frontiers from 16 September – overnight and without consulting neighbouring governments or the EU – it feels to us as if that door is being shut once again.
As the EU gradually ceases to deliver the promise of a better future, this decision by Olaf Scholz’s government is a bitter reminder of our past, and our past illusions.
History explains why there is a difference in the reaction to these new controls depending on what side of the former iron curtain you are from. The process of removing border controls between France and Germany, which dates back to the 1980s, was not just part of the reconciliation of nations that had waged wars against each other, but also a broader integration of economies and culture. No surprise then that much of the reaction in France to Germany’s decision has focused on the risk of longer waiting times for people who commute to work on the German side of the border.
In central and eastern Europe, it is different. For generations of people born before 1989, the fact of whether Germany’s borders are open or not has a moral meaning.
After the cold war, we spoke in the 1990s of a “return to Europe”. The removal of border controls was understood as a restoration of rights lost after the second world war, the restoration of geopolitical normality. For countries such as Poland and the Czech Republic, this was one of the most important breakthroughs in leaving the Russian sphere of influence.
Even though we, as eastern Europeans, were happy, it was not because we really thought the fall of the Wall was the fabled “end of history”. Everyone had their concerns. The Germans feared an increase in crime. Their neighbours, such as Poland and the Czech Republic, feared the illegal dumping of industrial waste. Old fears became overshadowed by new ones over time, not least migration as populist politicians in Germany have played on people’s fears to build their rhetoric around it.
Will the German government’s decision to strengthen borders neutralise the far right? It certainly sends a signal to the whole of Europe that Germany has no confidence in other EU countries to control their own borders, nor in Frontex, the EU’s coastguard and border agency.
It has been clear since Brexit that neither closing borders, nor even leaving the EU, solves the problem of illegal immigration. Imposing unilateral random ID checks will accomplish even less. For now, however, Berlin is more concerned with the perception of the policy, rather than its successful implementation. It creates the impression of separation from unreliable neighbours. And Scholz wants to restore a sense of sovereignty, control and agency. What better way to respond to the electoral successes of anti-immigration parties Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), whose speeches are peppered with references to Germany’s “Kontrollverlust” (loss of control).
Yet this is a political action and populists will always demand more. In the vision of the radical German far right, the recovery of sovereignty is to be maximised. It is not an exaggeration to imagine that, decades after the Berlin Wall came down, a second wall could eventually surround the whole of Germany for the sake of border control efficiency.
It may be worth reminding Scholz that Georg Simmel, a founding father of German sociological thought, once wrote that while a bridge connects things that are separated, a door separates things that are already connected. Perhaps the reintroduction of Germany’s borders separates further what was in reality still separate: our countries require so much more work on European integration. Yet this move now leaves us anxious because of our past. Not just anxious for our fate in Poland, but for the European Union.
Karolina Wigura is a historian of ideas and a sociologist. She is a board member of the Kultura Liberalna Foundation and a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations
Jarosław Kuisz is a legal historian and writer. He is editor-in-chief of the weekly newspaper Kultura Liberalna and his recent book is The New Politics of Poland
