history essay on germany [2]
论文作者:英语论文论文属性:学术文章 Scholarship Essay登出时间:2015-06-12编辑:g790726705点击率:4769
论文字数:1462论文编号:org201506120857575968语种:英语 English地区:德国价格:免费论文
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摘要:以柏林危机为背景,阐述了历史对于人类发展的启迪作用
ndred years from now is neo-Spartan? What will they do with the facts we leave them? Somewhere in eastern Europe today some historians still loyal to the fallen Communist governments are writing their version of the events (modern technology now making it possible for even the defeated to tell their story). They are describing the poverty that is prevalent in capitalist societies, the moral and physical laxity and the greed the capitalist system produces, and are comparing all this to the achievements of East Germany and Communism—achievements derived from the collective sacrifice and hard work of the people. How will historians in the neo-Spartan world interpret what happened in Berlin? Will they give more credence to the East German explanations? What will they do to the facts we in the West have passed down? Will they be ethical enough to preserve these facts, even if they disagree with their implications?
I use Berlin as an example to illustrate the problems historians face in trying to piece together the past and relate it to the present. Although we would like to think of history as composed of never-changing facts, history contains many rumors, opinions, and deliberate falsehoods that were passed on as truths. The historian’s job, often daunting, is to sift through all the available data, selecting what can be corroborated as legitimate, and then make determinations about causes and effects. The story that emerges is usually described in terms of economic pressures and political maneuverings. The names mentioned are the major players—presidents, prime ministers, generals. Technology is often added to the list of factors affecting the outcome: the side with the most advanced weapons usually wins a war; those with the best propaganda machines win the people's souls. Exceptions to the rule always make for exciting stories; defiance has caused the path of history to change many times.
The stories of kings and queens, generals and popes are important, especially to provide the framework of thought and events of the times. But their stories are only the skeleton, the bare bones of events (Carr 4). What is often left out, often not even recorded for us, is the flesh and blood of history, the stories of individuals who were just as caught up in the times as were the major players. What the compilers in the past too frequently failed to realize is that the major events are an aggregate of individual experiences.
The Berlin wall means nothing without the thousands of nameless families it separated and the acts of desperation it caused. One of my father’s employees brought his girlfriend through Checkpoint Charlie on a bogus passport. She was half his age, and he would never marry her, yet he risked his life, her life, and an international incident to help her escape. Before the temporary wall of barbed wire was replaced with concrete, another man, a journalist for an East Berlin newspaper, made his escape by using his own ingenuity and the vanity of a border guard. Eager to show his fellow East Berlin citizens that despite the rifle slung on his back he really was a friendly sort, the Volkspolitzei agreed to pose for a picture that showed him accepting a bouquet of flowers from a child. Using the German custom of shaking hands to his advantage, the journalist had the guard shake hands with the child while accepting the flowers. With both of the guard’s hands thus occupied, the
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