Tuesday, September 16, 2025

I am reading The Berlin Wall by Frederick Taylor, published in 2006. I picked it up after someone described it as a history that “…reads like a novel, and I couldn’t put it down!” I can’t say I agree with the “novel read” part—at least not yet—but for me it has opened a window onto Germany’s tangled past, and some of it feels uncomfortably familiar today.

Before Hitler ever arrived on the scene, Germany had spent 400 years as a patchwork of kingdoms, dukes, and city-states loosely tied together under the Holy Roman Empire. From 1400 on, there was endless infighting, power struggles, and even catastrophes like the Thirty Years’ War. When the country finally unified in the late 1800s, it still swung wildly between strongmen and shaky experiments with democracy.

That long, messy history makes me think of how easily fractured nations—then and now—can be pulled toward extremes. The old German pattern of division, promises of “restored greatness,” and sudden hard turns in politics has its modern echoes.

Americans today are asking fresh questions about the Constitution: what’s in it, what’s not, and whether it’s strong enough to steer the nation toward a future most of its citizens can embrace. Contemporary glimpses of social and national histories–and of course, not only Germany’s–remind us that human struggle is almost constant. And yet, the 20th and 21st centuries opened doors to hopeful new possibilities—spurred by human inventiveness, expanding wealth, and a broader reach of education and enlightenment.

Now we are witnessing history in motion once again—but this time in a broader stage, and unfolding not over centuries but at breakneck speed. Our real-time view of evolving nations is filled with warning signs: dehumanization, threats, and, too often, bloody conflict.

Events may feel distant from our own daily lives. But are they?

—Diana