Stakeholder Capitalism

4Divided Societies

On the morning of August 12, 1961, Berliners woke up to a harsh new reality. A wall had appeared in their city, dividing it right through the middle. It was a culmination of a long process of diverging geopolitical interests—yet a brutal shock to many. The Berlin Wall would last for nearly 30 years and scar several generations of Germans.

Fifteen years earlier, at the end of World War II, Germany had been overrun by the Allies. The Soviet Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, and France brought down the Nazi leadership and ended the most devastating war in history. But the end of one war also marked the beginning of another. Germany was split in two, and so was Berlin. East Berlin eventually became part of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR), a country under Soviet influence in the Eastern part of Germany. And West Berlin, which had been occupied by the Allies, became part of the Western-oriented Bundesrepublik Deutschland (BRD), which encompassed the western and southern parts of Germany.

Berlin was in an awkward position. As capital of the entire country until then, it was home to both Wessies (inhabitants of West Germany) and Ossies (citizens of East Germany), who lived respectively in the American, French, and British quarters and in the Russian quarter of the city. That situation wasn't to last. As the tensions between the two newly formed nations grew, and defection from the communist East to free West increasingly became a problem, the ...