"A Politico-Cultural Counterpart to the Marshall Plan"

"Despite the genuine threat to attendees' physical safety (the Soviets had kidnapped and 'disappeared' several critics from Berlin's Western sector), the event attracted such luminaries as A. J. Ayer, James Burnham, Herbert Read, H. R. Trevor-Roper, Sidney Hook, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and Carlo Schmid, as well as five honorary presidents–the eminent philosophers Bertrand Russell, Karl Jaspers, John Dewey, Benedetto Croce, and Jacques Maritain. Delegates also included 'the cream of the anti-Stalinist left,' such as Arthur Koestler and Ignazio Silone, some of whom had been imprisoned in Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Fascist Italy, or Falangist Spain. Indeed, one of the forum's organizers, Margarete Buber-Neumann, had been incarcerated by both Hitler and Stalin."

At The American Interest, Michael Allen and David E. Lowe look back to the 1950 creation of the Congress for Cultural Freedom.

Holidays from History in the Sun

"We all love a narrative with a beginning, a middle, and an ending—preferably a happy ending but, above all, some clearly demarcated final page with a lesson. The lesson of 1989 is that there is no grand march, no dialectic of thesis versus antithesis resolving in some synthesis, no moral arc bending toward justice—or toward any particular thing. History is an unending whirlwind, and we're caught in it."

Fred Kaplan at Slate reflects on the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

And Larry Elliott at The Guardian describes what was lost with the end of the Cold War.

Dancing on the Wall

"The 1980s had been a decade of social division, nuclear paranoia and endless strife. Now, if you were in the right place at roughly the right time, what seemed to be superseding all that was a profound sense that a new era was opening, and many of the miseries of the previous decade would be over. By the end of 1990, Nelson Mandela was out and Thatcher was out; seven years later, the fact that New Labour was able to seize on a mood of pop-cultural optimism was proof that some of 1989's spirit had lingered on.
"But as the Blair years would prove, the legacy of 1989 would also curdle into hubris. In the summer of 89, the American economist Francis Fukuyama famously declared the final triumph of liberalism and the alleged end of history, a belief enacted in the real world by the application of brutal free-market economics to the newly liberated countries of eastern Europe, which spread a resentment that still runs deep. The fate of the Balkans proved that the euphoria of 1989 was often completely misplaced. And the same arrogance that defined the western powers' economic policies would lead on to the Iraq war–a fatal application of the cursed concept of 'liberal interventionism', which was 1989-era triumphalism all over."

John Harris at The Guardian looks to what was positive about 1989 as an antidote to what is negative about 2019.

"A Concert That Some Germans, Rightly or Wrongly, Still View as Having Helped Change History"

"In 1977, the year Bowie recorded Heroes, the second of his three Berlin albums, East German border guards shot and killed 18-year-old Dietmar Schwietzer as he tried to flee west across the wall; a few months later, 22-year-old Henri Weise drowned trying to cross the Spree River. Heroes was haunted by the Cold War themes of fear and isolation that hung over the city. Its still-famous title track tells a story of two lovers who meet at the wall and try, hopelessly, to find a way to be together.
"A decade later, when, in 1987, Bowie returned for the Concert for Berlin, a three-day open-air show in front of the Reichstag, he chose 'Heroes' for his performance."

In a 2016 Vox article, Max Fisher discusses the impact of David Bowie's 1987 Berlin performance.

To Our House

"Although it topples a good many cherished myths, and does so with patent glee, it cannot properly be called revisionist for there has never been a lucid and comprehensive presentation of the Bauhaus to revise. Every previous exhibition, including with MOMA’s own path-breaking 1938 show, has been able to present only a selected aspect, the inevitable consequence of the dispersal of the Bauhaus collections following Hitler’s rise to power, world war, and the subsequent division between East and West Germany."

Michael J. Lewis in The New Criterion reviews "Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity" at the Museum of Modern Art.

Tear Down This Myth

"To many American conservatives, the answer to those questions is simple: Reagan stared down the Soviet Union. And the Berlin Wall speech stands as the dramatic symbol of Reagan's challenge and triumph.
"But those who say this ignore the actual history and context of the speech."

James Mann in the Los Angeles Times revisits the subject of Ronald Reagan and the end of the Cold War.

"This City Knows the Dream of Freedom"

"I know my country has not perfected itself. At times, we've struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We've made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions.
"But I also know how much I love America. I know that for more than two centuries, we have strived--at great cost and great sacrifice--to form a more perfect union; to seek, with other nations, a more hopeful world. Our allegiance has never been to any particular tribe or kingdom--indeed, every language is spoken in our country; every culture has left its imprint on ours; every point of view is expressed in our public squares. What has always united us--what has always driven our people; what drew my father to America's shores--is a set of ideals that speak to aspirations shared by all people: that we can live free from fear and free from want; that we can speak our minds and assemble with whomever we choose and worship as we please."

Salon prints Barack Obama's Berlin speech.