Editor’s note: This commentary is by Mike Metcalf, who retired in 2014 after 40 years as a history and government teacher at Hazen Union School in Hardwick, and 25 years teaching evenings at Johnson State College. He represented the Essex-Orleans District in the state Senate from 1989 to 1994.
[O]n Nov. 9, Americans will wake up to the results of our most divisive presidential race since the Civil War.
Two weeks ago, in a German language class, I guest-taught a lesson on the sweep of history that led to the building of the Berlin Wall and its ultimate fall on that date in 1989. The German teacher at Hazen Union, who came of age in Leipzig, identified Nov. 9 as the Day of Fate — Schicksalstag. Dating back to the mid-1800s, several important events have occurred on that date that have had an impact on German and world history.
On Nov. 9,1848, Robert Blum, a German politician, was executed in Vienna for his participation in the fight for democratic government. He unsuccessfully claimed diplomatic immunity as a member of Parliament, and, in death, was hailed as a martyr by many who appreciated his support for German Catholics and his opposition to a growing anti-semitism in the German states.
On Nov. 9, 2016, Americans will wake up to the results of our current election campaign. Let us hope that our “Day of Fate” dawns on a united country able to put the acrimony of the campaign behind.
Seventy years later, in 1918, following German defeat in World War I, Philipp Scheidemann of the Social Democratic Party proclaimed the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II and the founding of the Weimar Republic in a rousing speech in the Reichstag. This thwarted efforts of the Communists to declare Germany a Soviet republic.
On Nov. 9, 1923, a former corporal in the Bavarian army declared in a Munich Beer Hall that a revolution had begun. Adolph Hitler led 2,000 followers in an attempt to take over the state government; four policemen and 16 Nazis were killed, and the future Führer was sent to prison where he wrote “Mein Kampf.”
Two years later the SS (Schutzstaffel or Protective Squadron) was founded as a personal guard for Hitler. In the next 20 years it would grow from a small paramilitary group to become one of the most powerful organizations in Nazi Germany, responsible for enforcing the racial policies of the Third Reich.
On Nov. 9, 1938, the Night of Broken Glass — Kristallnacht — was visited upon the Jewish population of Germany. One thousand synagogues were burned, 7,500 Jewish businesses ransacked, and 30,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps in an early sign of what was yet to come.
Twenty-seven years ago, on Nov. 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall was opened. After World War II, Germany was divided into four occupation zones and then two separate countries — East Germany an ally of the USSR, and West Germany as a member of the Western alliance. Germans tore down the wall that since 1961 had kept Germany’s citizens separated. Eleven months later, Germany was once again a single nation — though it will take at least a generation for the former citizens of the two Germanies to become one people.
On Nov. 9, 2016, Americans will wake up to the results of our current election campaign. Let us hope that our “Day of Fate” dawns on a united country able to put the acrimony of the campaign behind. Will we be tearing down walls that divide us — or will be building them? I hope it will not take us a generation to recover.
