The multiple-award-winning documentary “Justice for My Sister” will be shown at 7 p.m. Monday, April 15, in Room 126 of the John R. Roach Center for the Liberal Arts on the university’s St. Paul campus.

The film will be followed by a question-and-answer session with Kimberly Bautista, its producer and director. “My hope is that audiences from all walks of life will be moved to recognize the violence in our own communities and take a stand against it,” she said.

Adela at age 27.

The program is free and open to the public. The film is in Spanish with English subtitles. The discussion with Bautista will be translated from Spanish to English and from English to Spanish.

The feature-length documentary begins with the story of a 27-year-old Guatemalan, Adela, who left for work one day and never returned. Her ex-boyfriend beat her until she was unrecognizable and left her at the side of road.

Despite dismal odds, Adela’s sister Rebeca takes on Guatemala’s corrupt legal system in a three-year fight to bring the ex-boyfriend to justice. Of the 6,000 cases of women murdered in Guatemala over the past decade, only 2 percent of their killers were sentenced.

A trailer for the film can be seen here.

The April 15 program includes the sale of Guatemalan crafts; free-will offerings will be accepted. Checks may be made out to La Paz International Inc. All proceeds go to provide financial support for Rebeca, the subject of the film, and Olga, another Guatemalan woman who lives with her children in poverty.

The program is co-sponsored by St. Thomas’ College of Arts and Sciences, Office of Student Diversity and Inclusion Services,  Luann Dummer Center for Women, and the departments of History, Political Science, Women’s Studies, Family Studies, Justice and Peace Studies, Modern and Classical Languages, and Sociology.

He was approached by a group of young men who struck up a conversation about the pants he was wearing. The group was very complimentary to him and began to take an apparent closer interest, pulling at the cuffs and examining the material. It was clear their motives were not to praise his fashion sensibility. As Rheinberger strategized his next move, it was too late. His pass­port had been taken and would be held hostage until he paid a ransom to get it back.

A situation like this might rattle the typical American traveling abroad, but Rheinberger remained cool. Promising payment, he coaxed the thieves back to a location near his hotel – and its security – where he could safely make an exchange. In the end, he lost a few dollars but ultimately got his passport back.

While the experience was far from enjoyable, it was one he was able to take in stride as a seasoned globe-trotter. Rheinberger has set foot in every country in the world – all 196 of them. And the nearly 40-year journey has taught him many lessons, not the least of which is how to get out of a sticky situation.

Rheinberger’s first curiosity with travel began when he was a child. He recalls long road trips with his parents while growing up during the ’50s and ’60s, a time when it was fashionable to travel by car and see the country. By the age of 18, he had visited 46 states.

“I really liked the momentum of the car. Everywhere I looked, there was something new to see,” he said. “I liked the idea of the unknown – the illusion of excitement visiting places I’d never seen before.”

But as he grew, Rheinberger understood there was so much more to see. “It’s like a dog chasing the car – if I ran and didn’t catch it, there was always something else.”

A planner from the start

As a student at St. Thomas in the late 1960s, Rheinberger spent a lot of time thinking about his future. He allowed himself to be exposed to the differing ideas of his classmates and professors; his own ideas began to develop as a result. Among them was the idea to complete his education – which he did in short order. He earned his undergraduate degree from St. Thomas in 33 months with a double major in history and political science.

As his ideas continued to grow, he created a list of life goals that if accomplished could lead him to a fulfilled life. It included everything from com­munity involvement to furthering his education. (Today, he holds six degrees, including an M.B.A. from St. Thomas.) It also included the goal of seeing the world through frequent travel, which he describes as one of his “cardinal desires in life.”

At first, Rheinberger simply aspired to see new places and experience new things. He didn’t set out to visit every country, but a friend helped open his mind to the possibility. On a whim, the pair rented a car and drove non­stop from St. Paul to Alaska and back in a week. “He was a good travel companion at the time because he had availability, a desire to see the world – and a credit card,” Rheinberger said. They continued to travel together and made their first trip across an ocean to Australia in 1978.

Even though he had been to Canada and Mexico, Rheinberger credits the Australia trip as his first true international experience. It also was the first trip in a yearlong schedule that brought him to three additional continents.

Six months after returning from Australia, Rheinberger em­barked on a whirlwind tour of western Europe. In December of that year, he took swings through South America and Africa. It was his first experience traveling alone, which soon became his modus ope­randi. In those early days, he made sure he took the time to soak in what he was experiencing. “When I was younger, there was a sense of wonderment with each new country,” he said of his first trip through Africa, where he took in sights such as Victoria Falls, Lake Tanganyika, the Great Pyramids and the Suez Canal.

In 1979, after taking a trip through the Soviet Union, it was time for a break. Rhienberger entered law school and, con­sequently, entered a time in his life when he would focus on building his career and starting a business. (He is a tax and estate planning attorney in Stillwater, Minn.) He didn’t leave the country again until a 1990 tour for the U.S. Army Reserves brought him back to Europe – the only trip he took for professional reasons, during which he was able to acquire his 107th country, Lichtenstein.

Every country has a story

Ask Rheinberger about his travel experiences on a philosophi­cal level and he tends to talk in metaphors about reaching for lofty goals and always coming up with new ideas. But ask him about a specific country he has visited and you will learn that each one has a story.

There is no shortage of anec­dotes, including how he got the best sleep of his life while traveling on the Trans-Siberian Railway or how he was approached by a wealthy-looking gen­tleman in an Ecuadoran restaurant with an offer to spend an evening with a pros­titute, an offer he respectfully declined.

Rheinberger also shares a harrowing story about a trip to Zaire, a country that he ranks as his worst to visit. “Zaire has the worst airport safeguards in the world – and that’s the least of its problems,” according to Rheinberger, who discovered when he arrived that there was a national strike in progress. “The airport is located 15 miles from town, but there is no transportation provided to get back and forth,” he said. To get around meant bribing corrupt military and government officials. After spending one night and nearly missing his opportunity to leave while getting harassed at an airport check-in, Rheinberger was happy to cross Zaire off his list.

Another lesser-traveled destination was reached on an ex­cursion to Antarctica. “If you have a group of people who claim they’ve been to Antarctica, you’ll know which one is telling the truth.” According to Rheinberger, when asked about the most memorable attribute of the icy continent, some might expect to hear about the water or the cold. “They’re lying. Because if you’ve ever been there, the most vivid memory you have is the smell.” Apparently, there are no pooper scoopers on Antarctica, and in a place where penguins have the run of the land, things tend to pile up over time.

Logistics

When choosing destinations, Rheinberger likes to focus on capital cities. “The capital is the cultural center of a country. You can see a lot in a short amount of time,” he said. “I also find that you get a real experience by staying in the city.”

By immersing himself in the capital cities, he allows him­self to experience what locals might feel, unlike what he refers to as the “National Geographic” perception, which tends to be a single person’s account of an individual moment that most people would never experience.

Rheinberger also finds that capital cities offer the best ac­commodations. When it comes to where he rests his head, he spares no expense. He stays at four- and five-star hotels whenever possible for several reasons. “You get what you pay for in a lot of ways,” he said. “I like to stay at well-known places because taxi drivers know where they are, they have the best security, they are usually centrally located and they almost always have good restaurants.”

When it comes to food, you might expect that he’s sampled some of the strangest delicacies the world has to offer. On the contrary, “I like burgers and fries, and you can get that in almost every country.” And when there are no other viable options, “There’s always a McDonald’s.”

But even American food can have its shortcomings in certain parts of the world. While visiting Bhutan, a country in the Himalaya Mountains, Rheinberger ordered a burger at a sup­posed high-end restaurant. Over time, he had learned to ask about the origins of food he was about to eat to avoid any diges­tive interruptions. Upon asking his server, he learned that all of the country’s beef came from India, where cows are allowed to die of natural causes before being exported. A red flag arose when he learned how long it took for the beef to be transported. “I wasn’t taking any chances on beef that had spent a week or more on a push cart coming up the mountains to Bhutan.”

Although there are a few downsides, Rheinberger mostly prefers to travel alone as it’s much easier to handle logistics of only one person, particularly toward the end of his “list” when he says visiting countries became much more mechanical.

“In the beginning, I had a lot more of a sense of wonder about the new places I was seeing,” he said. “It became more about cross­ing countries off my list toward the end. The differences between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ places became irrelevant.”

Travel tips from the expert

As someone who has spent so much time in airports and ho­tels, Rheinberger often is asked for travel tips. For anyone hoping to match his accomplishment, he lists several suggestions:

Try to be the first person in line to check in at the airport and the first person on the plane. “In some countries, government offi­cials can override your seating,” he said. “The first person to sit in a seat gets to keep it, even if there are two people assigned to the seat. Your carry-on luggage has to fit, too.”

When arriving in a foreign country, try to be the first person through customs. According to Rheinberger, “This guarantees a better shot at getting a taxi and helps you avoid any extortion by the remaining taxi drivers – if one exists at all.”

Do not rely on wake-up calls. “About one-third of them fail, regardless of hotel quality. You should always get one, but only count on it as a back-up.” Rheinberger doesn’t travel with an alarm clock, but has his own system: “Drink water before you go to bed, you’ll wake up eventually.”

While getting around in an unfamiliar place, don’t be afraid to ask questions of the locals, but use the rule of three. “Ask three people the same question, if at least two people have the same an­swer, that’s probably the right one,” he said.

 Never forget your ideas

According to Rheinberger, “St. Thomas is a dangerous place.”

And that’s coming from someone who has traveled to such per­ceived dangerous places as Afganistan, Yemen and Somalia, where, incidentally, he says he felt quite safe. “Because people are so con­cerned with where they’ll find their next meal that they don’t have the luxury to commit a crime.”

With regard to his St. Thomas experience, the “danger factor” is in the learning and sharing of ideas and where those ideas can lead you. In Rheinberger’s case, they led him around the world over the course of nearly 40 years. “St. Thomas is a cradle of ideas,” he said. “None of this would have happened if I hadn’t been involved when I was a student. I wouldn’t have had the tools.”

In November 2011, Rheinberger stepped into Somalia and, at that moment, his 196th country. What’s next for the man who spent much of his life traveling the world? Some pursuits are yet to be determined, but he is sure of one thing, “You always have to plan for tomorrow, you have to initiate it. Never forget your ideas.”

Read more from St. Thomas magazine

Dr. Jeffrrey Pilcher

The talk, “Planet Taco: A Global History of Mexican Food,” is free and open to the public.

The burritos and taco shells that many think of as Mexican actually were created in the United States, while Americanized foods have been carried around the world in tin cans and served in tourist restaurants.

Using the “chili queens” of San Antonio and the inventors of the taco shell as examples, Pilcher will show how Mexican Americans helped to make Mexican food global. He also will discuss the struggle between globalization and national sovereignty that is represented by the clash of fast food and Mexican regional cuisines.

Pilcher teaches and writes on the history of foods throughout the world, but especially on Mexican food.

His lecture is co-sponsored by the St. Thomas departments of History, Modern and Classical Languages, Geography, International Studies, American Culture and Difference, Women’s Studies and Justice and Peace Studies.

Yates, 22 and a Rosemount High School graduate, was one of five UST history majors to present papers and speak this past Memorial Day weekend at the Starkville, Miss., university. The symposium was centered on the U.S. Constitution and Civil War-era topics. Yates’ paper, “The Nullification Crisis of 1832,” was one he had written for a Constitutional History class in spring 2011 and then rewrote several times in order to present it at the symposium.

The Civil War is not the topic of everyday conversation in the north; still, most people are familiar with it – even if it’s only Gettysburg, or perhaps the battle of the ironclads – the Monitor and the Merrimack.  But Yates wants to know more.

“I like knowing the underlying cause,” he remarked in a recent interview. “I want to know – why is it like this? Why do we have this? … I like knowing the cause.”

One cause of the Civil War he points to is the Nullification Crisis of 1832, “a sectional crisis during the presidency of Andrew Jackson created by South Carolina’s 1832 Ordinance of Nullification. This ordinance declared by the power of the State that the federal Tariffs of 1828 and 1832 were unconstitutional and therefore null and void within the sovereign boundaries of South Carolina,” according to Wikipedia.

“It was the first overt and publicized attempt by a state to actually act upon its desire to nullify a federal law,” Yates said. “The crisis escalated and escalated and then they just set it aside, basically. There was no resolution.”

“Because they kept putting it off, putting it off, it kept snowballing and eventually led to the Civil War,” he added.

In 1860, 28 years after the Nullification Crisis of 1832, the Union garrison at Fort Sumter, located in the Charleston, S.C., harbor, was attacked and forced to surrender. The Civil War had begun.

The Symposium for Historical Undergraduate Research, held annually at MSU, was a “big leap forward” in Yates’ study of history. It required further research, more background material, and rewriting his paper in a manner that would facilitate its reading at the symposium. He said that “it served as the culmination of my work over the years. It was the realization of the whole process.”

Writing the paper was a challenge. “It doesn’t matter how good a writer you are if you don’t write it in a way that you can read it out loud, and then if you don’t know how to read it out loud very well, you’re going to crash and burn,” Yates said.

To avoid flaming out at the symposium, the five history majors (Landon Rick, Renate Hohman, Matt Keliher, Maggie Whitacre and Yates, the History Department’s lead history tutor) devoted a lot of time reading their papers to each other. By the symposium they had nearly memorized all of the papers because they had heard them so often.

Accompanied by their mentor, Dr. Tom Mega, the Tommies were among 20-some presenters at the symposium. Papers were limited to approximately 10 pages; they read them for 20 minutes, and a 10- to 15-minute question-and-answer session followed.

If Yates had envisioned a tough audience in the south, where it seems nearly every town has a Civil War monument or cemetery, and often a battlefield memorial, it never developed. (There’s a Civil War memorial near the Mississippi State University campus, just outside of town.) “History is everything here,” two MSU professors told Yates. “You remember everything.” History is so big, in fact, that the MSU History Department has its own building.

“What was nice was the symposium was designed as a chance for undergrads to get experience for what they will have to do in graduate school,” said Yates, who has been accepted for admission into St. Thomas’ School of Law. “So there was less pressure, and they were more interested in giving feedback on how we did, and what we can do in the future to help prepare. The faculty down there was very welcoming and gave great feedback. It was fun to do.”

Editor’s note: David Yates’ travel to Mississippi was funded in part by a Student Travel grant from the Grants and Research Office.

Last summer an interdisciplinary team composed of St. Thomas students and faculty members collaborated with Croatian, German and Spanish archaeologists in conducting the fourth season of archaeological research at the Roman villa site in the Soline Bay on the south side of the island.

Andrew Herkert, an experienced student of ancient art, archaeology and history, confidently prepared to carry on his internship project in archaeological fieldwork. Cynthia Burton, a freshman with a keen interest in classical art and history, has found her major and minor. She signed up for an independent study of the impact of Greek and Roman colonization on the material culture of the island settlement. A biology major, Joseph Talarico, discovered his passion for history and archaeology and has declared a history minor. Sarah Leonard, a history major and a second-year participant in the project, was a trusted source of practical advice. Two geography majors, Renee Huset and Matthew Weishan, skilled in GPS data collection and GIS studies, already had satellite images from Google Earth and a plan for mapping the island. When they return to the GIS lab they will conduct spatial research of settlement, resources and communications from ancient to modern times.

From the terrace of the village house where the team stayed, we could see a distant view of the St. Clement site. An overview of previous research tells the story: In the geophysical (magnetometry) survey of the site in 2007 we uncovered a complex of walls still buried underground. The next season we cleared dense brush and uncovered ruins of a late Roman building with extensive medieval additions. The test trenches excavated in 2009 confirmed at least two phases of construction, while the pottery finds pushed the date of settlement back to the period of Greek colonization in the third century B.C.

In the last two seasons, several St. Thomas students, all history majors, collaborated with me in making these discoveries. In 2008, Ericka Ashley and Madi Bruber, together with Abby Hitzeman from Gustavus Adolphus College, were our first student-investigators. Bruber was a Young Scholar whose project was to study the impact of the Byzantine-Gothic wars in the Adriatic in the sixth century, known from historical sources, on the life and economy of the site. Considering the pottery finds from the first season and some standing structural remains, that period was especially prosperous on the island. Bruber successfully presented her research at the 2009 Missouri Valley History Conference in Omaha.

She participated again in 2009 with Jonathan Estes and Sarah Leonard. Estes’ independent research project focused on the submerged salt works in Soline Bay, as an important part of St. Clement’s sea economy in the context of Roman provincial specialization of imperial economy. His underwater investigations documented the layout and dimensions of the walls that divided salt pans, which were barely visible in the sea on the aerial photos of the bay taken in 2008. The sea level in the eastern Adriatic region has risen 2 meters since antiquity, and many coastal structures are totally or partially submerged. My sister, Vlasta Begovic, the project architect, and I have been studying for years Roman maritime villas and the impact of sea level on their architecture.

I enjoy sharing the excitement of discovery with students in the classroom, but more so in the field. We could hardly wait to get to the site. Anticipation of new findings on a tiny island, once a speck of land in the internal sea of the Roman Empire, was contagious.

This 2010 season was more ambitious. Our team of art history, geography and history students collaborated with international professionals and volunteers in investigating the site in the context of the island’s archaeology. The archaeology of islands and coastal landscapes is an established methodological perspective that calls for an interdisciplinary approach. The ancient settlement in Soline Bay was our focus of research, but knowledge of the landscape and seascape of St. Clement was essential to our understanding of the way of human life and of historical contacts and changes. Our 15 days of research in the field provided important data on the role of the site in the Greco-Roman network and on the topography and environment of the island.

The centrality of the Adriatic Sea for travel and exchange between the Mediterranean and European societies conditioned the life and economy of the islanders.

Our research questions were focused on classical antiquity. How did the Greeks and Romans socialize the central Dalmatian seascape? What resources did they use and how did they design their settlements?

Funding for the project came again from the Archaeo/ Community Foundation, while the much appreciated St. Thomas support came from the Grants and Research Office, the departments of Art History, Geography and History, and from the College of Arts and Sciences.

My excitement of the fieldwork brought back memories of my participation as a student of archaeology in the excavations of Emperor Diocletian’s palace in Split, Croatia. The impact of that experience shaped my interest in Roman archaeology and history. It also changed my life, as I met Tom Schrunk, the project photographer then and now, and moved to Minnesota. It was not a coincidence that our first group meeting in Croatia was within the walls of Diocletian’s palace. From Split, our team took a boat to the island of Hvar, and a taxi boat to St. Clement. Our project codirector Marinko Petric from the Heritage Museum of Hvar, the collaborating institution, met us there.

Our typical day on St. Clement started with a group breakfast on the terrace overlooking the bay of Soline with a clear view of our site. Ready for the morning work and loaded with excavation tools, we took a short walk downhill on the path between pine trees, and then meandered through tall grass at the head of the bay. A shortcut through a vineyard worked better when we left the site in the noon heat to have lunch at the restaurant appropriately named Dionis (Dionysus). The local family owners are great supporters of our project and important sources of oral history of the island. Refreshed by swimming during a mid-day break, we tracked to work until the setting sun called us back to Dionis.

We spent the first two days clearing the site of grass and thick brush with a power trimmer and many helping hands protected by leather gloves. One local helper used his chain saw on small trees. A team of two archaeologists, Felix Teichner from the University of Frankfurt and Jesus Chaparro from Spain, surveyed the freshly cleared areas with a magnetometer and then mapped the entire site and set up a grid. Two 2-by-2-meter trenches, or test pits, were set up within the grid in the areas where the results of the survey showed intersecting walls from supposedly two different phases of construction, because the walls had different orientations. Picks and shovels were good to remove the topsoil, but trowels and small handpicks were used for excavating underlying deposit layers and any cultural features, like walls and mortar subfloors, or artifacts.

We carried the excavated soil in buckets to a sifting site, where two people worked at the sieve and recovered every trace of human activity. Our excavation yielded many small shards of fine and coarse pottery, mostly tableware and tall jars (amphorae), but also numerous white stone tesserae for mosaic floors and fragments of roof tiles and bricks and occasional pieces of glass vessels. We found two fragments of Roman bronze pins (fibulae) and a corroded late Roman bronze coin. Ceramic and stone artifacts were washed in water, but metal and glass required special cleaning.

All the finds needed to be properly labeled and recorded in regard to the spot where they were found and the context. Keeping a detailed journal and taking photographs and calculating levels with a surveyor’s tool (theodolite) of every stratigraphic unit and feature were daily routines under the supervision of our Croatian field director, Marina Ugarkovic. Recovering, processing and documenting archaeological data, especially pottery washing, were slow and tedious but essential processes in every field project. Students and volunteers rotated tasks, but digging was most popular. Finding buried remains of ancient societies was irresistible.

Geography students Huset and Weishan collected data while on daily walking trips. They surveyed topographical features and located positions of many cultural and natural resources, ancient and modern. They walked almost the entire rocky coastline of the island and followed all pathways, even those abandoned and overgrown, often returning scratched and exhausted. Still, they took part in the archaeological work during a few available hours.

In Huset’s words: “Working in the field with only a GPS device, a computer back at the excavation house and very little electricity were great learning experiences that could not have been replicated in any classroom. The whole experience – from traversing the rocky coast to getting a crash course in Roman pottery – was intense but also very exciting and a lot of fun. Meeting the locals, working with international researchers and enjoying the beautiful island made for an excellent three weeks of fieldwork.”

Archaeology is one of the most fascinating and stimulating field-based disciplines. It depends on the application of skills from a range of disciplines and the fieldwork is therefore rewarding for interdisciplinary student-faculty research collaboration. Our research community included multicultural professionals and volunteers of different ages, professions and skills. Volunteers were: Gordana Berc, Croatia; Ivo Crnkovic-Rubsamen, New York; Gaby Garbasz, New York; Tom Lumsden, Calif.; Jane Nosan and Barbara Shank, dean of the School of Social Work at the University of St. Thomas.

The social atmosphere and interactions in the field engaged students as active participants in the culture of archaeological research. They had opportunities for authentic learning as they acquired knowledge in archaeological thinking and practices.

Weishan reflected on his experience: “The team was beyond diverse – among the dozen of us, five nationalities were represented – as well as countries outside the U.S. This facilitated a globally fueled exchange of ideas, theorem and practices in terms of archaeological activity. The leadership on the island created a tightly knit student workforce and also did wonders for providing further opportunities for learning beyond our own excavations.”

Our hopes of finding some solid evidence for the importance of this island, unnamed in Greek and Roman sources, materialized in both test trenches. The findings of decorated Greek pottery indicated that our site was of some significance already in the Greek colonial network, probably due to the fertile valley and its location on the navigation routes. Two islands in the immediate vicinity of St. Clement, Vis and Hva (Greek Issa and Pharos), had colonies of Greek settlers. Wine and olive oil were their cash crops, which continued unchanged into the Roman period. The Greeks were seafarers, traders and colonizers. They incorporated the Adriatic into their mythological landscape of the Mediterranean, giving spiritual power to some islands and coastal markers crucial for navigation. Shrines of the Trojan hero Diomedes have been located archaeologically at two such sites in central Dalmatia. Votive offerings of inscribed pottery told the story. Our Croatian project director, Branko Kirigin, who uncovered those shrines, told us this story in the field one morning.

The Romans colonized the inhabitants of the occupied territories, developed agricultural and natural resources on a large scale, and tied them to the imperial economy. A fragment of a mosaic made of imported, green marble confirmed our expectations that the site could have been the center of one such large estate with residential and farm buildings next to vineyards and olive orchards. The shallow bay, ideal for salt production, was used for salting sardines and making fish sauce, and was valued as an exchange commodity.

Much more work is ahead. Intellectual and social rewards of another successful season will keep us going. Herkert said it well: “Ultimately, what I walked away with is a strengthened understanding of classical archaeology in practice, a far greater professional network and a wholly redefined enthusiasm for my aspirations as an art historian.”

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Before 1961: Millions flee from East Germany

The armed border was designated by East German officials as a defensive barrier against aggression from the West. In reality, it was a prison wall holding in the eastern population. From the end of World War II through the construction of the wall in 1961, 3.5 million East Germans had fled their homes to the West. That amounted to 20 percent of the nation’s entire population. Those who left included in large numbers the educated, the talented, the religious, the imaginative and the productive members of the society. The effect was a “bleeding to death” of East German society and economy. President Kennedy in his speech in Berlin said, “Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in.”

1970: Crossing the border

My personal experience of the impact of the imprisonment came in 1970 during the height of the Cold War, when as a young (and probably rather foolhardy) St. Thomas instructor I decided I had to visit and experience East Germany. I went across the border without benefit of any group or organized program. The process of passing through the wall and securing the needed visa was cumbersome but not overly difficult. The full impact of the meaning of the wall for an individual came at the point of leaving again. After 10 days of traveling to East German cities, I returned to the crossing point, was directed to a large waiting room and was instructed to slip my passport into a mail slot for processing. As I sat and waited, gazing alternately at the wall outside the window and my watch, I was struck powerfully by the fact that I was without a passport and quite alone in a country which was a declared enemy of the United States. I was at the mercy of a government with no respect for individual liberty. People had been shot trying to leave this land.

After a tense hour, my passport was returned and I was permitted to leave. I returned to the West with a newfound appreciation of the freedoms we have and the respect for human life, human dignity and privacy we take for granted. I felt a new sense of compassion for those citizens in a captive nation, who had been impounded for 10 years already at that time and would need to wait more than 20 years before they could experience the independence which I was enjoying after re-entering West Berlin.

During my time in the East, I observed many things that were remarkable in contrast to our life in the West. One was the evident suspicion with which people reacted to each other at nearly every encounter. I was struck by hearing a profound silence in crowds and seeing a furtive look of apprehension in conversations. We in the West learned later that the East German secret police, the Stasi, were not only themselves omnipresent but also used a massive number of civilian informants recruited through threats, coercion, promises of favors, job pressure or, in some cases, dedication to the communist cause. It has been estimated that more than one in 10 East German civilians was reporting to the police on any suspicious statements or activities of their co-workers, friends, neighbors and family members. Even children were employed to report on their parents and teachers. University students were pressured into reporting on fellow students and faculty.

Fall 1989: With a hammer and chisel in my hand

My next direct encounter with the wall was, with hammer and chisel in hand, participating in the popular destruction of the divisive structure. During the fall semester of 1989, I held an appointment as visiting professor at the University of Paderborn in West Germany, while on leave from St. Thomas. On the evening news, we had been learning of the massive protests in East Germany and the thousands of people fleeing the country to Czechoslovakia and Hungary. We were quite unprepared, though, for the sudden opening of the border in Berlin. During the evening of Nov. 9, thousands of East Germans poured through the openings of the wall – their first opportunity since Aug. 13, 1961.

As soon as possible my wife, Nancy, and our 16-year-old daughter, Suzanne, and I boarded a train for Berlin to participate in the euphoria permeating the city. We joined the masses chipping away at the wall and anticipating the end of 40 years of isolation and imprisonment. The East German guards on the train ride through East German territory were no longer the gruff, antagonistic, scowling communist guardians of a few weeks earlier but rather were cordial, courteous … and smiling! At the wall we were amazed to see East and West German border guards engaged in friendly conversation over and through what had previously been an impenetrable barrier. Countless numbers of easterners were now passing through the wall and driving far into West Germany in their little “Trabbis” (the East German automobile, officially known as “Trabant”), seeing supermarkets for the first time, experiencing a limitless supply of consumer goods, exulting in the freedom to travel and seeing the attractions of the West they had known only by surreptitiously watching West German television.

The courageous flights to Czechoslovakia and Hungary by thousands of East German citizens along with the protest marches had had their effect. The government in East Germany had been sufficiently weakened so that the long-time leader of the country, Erich Honecker, had been forced to resign on Oct. 18, 1989, and was replaced by the hardliner Egon Krenz. Under pressure from the protesting population and due to a certain degree of confusion, travel to West Berlin was allowed starting on that historic night in an attempt to appease the populace. The opening of the wall resulted not in the calming of the eastern population but rather in the rapid further deterioration of government authority and the successive end of the German Democratic Republic, as the eastern German state had been named.

1990: Fear of another Tiananmen Square massacre

Several months later, shortly after the reunification of the two German states, when I was invited as a lecturer to the University of Leipzig, I experienced firsthand the personal impact of the anti-government demonstrations. The demonstrations in the East had started in Leipzig in September 1989 and then spread to other cities. In Leipzig the demonstrations continued every Monday evening, starting in the Church of St. Nikolai and then spilling into the square near the university where thousands joined in, marching and chanting slogans challenging the government.

In lecture halls and classrooms, as I interacted with very polite, eager and often shy students, I felt a strong sense of respect for them, the very same young people who had shown such remarkable intensity and courage only months before in the Monday demonstrations. They had been fully aware that the demonstrations in China earlier that year had resulted in the massacre at Tiananmen Square in which the military had brutally intervened, resulting in 2,500 deaths and thousands wounded. They had been fully aware that their own government was allied with and supported the actions in China.

There had been military preparations in Leipzig as the demonstrations grew in intensity and size in 1989. Many were convinced that it was only a matter of time before the East German military would follow the Chinese example in dealing with protesters. Many said a (potential) last goodbye to friends and family before going to the demonstrations. On Oct. 9, 1989, the stage was set for a catastrophe as 100,000 took to the streets once again. Due to a number of factors, however, the military did not open fire, and in Leipzig, as in East Germany as a whole, the revolution proceeded and ended without violence.

On Nov. 9, 1989, the wall in Berlin was opened. Free elections were held on March 18, 1990, and the ruling party, the Socialist Unity Party, lost its majority. On Oct. 3, 1990, East Germany joined and was assimilated into the unified Federal Republic of Germany. In 1991, the German parliament voted to establish the capital of the new republic in its historic location in Berlin. (During the Cold War, the West German capital was located in Bonn.)

2009: 20th-Anniversary Celebration

During the early ’90s, I returned several times to lecture at the University of Leipzig and the University of Freiberg in the east, as a participant in integrating easternuniversities into the united German university system, and I took great pleasure in working with students at those universities.

During the first week of November, I will be pleased to support and join with students at the University of St. Thomas in a project organized by our German Club in remembrance and celebration of the 20th anniversary of the opening and end of the Berlin Wall and in remembrance of the courage and determination of East Germans whose personal risks and actions succeeded in bringing about a new way of life. The event, “Freedom Without Walls,” is part of a national program in this anniversary year and is supported by the German Embassy in Washington, D.C.

Celebrating Freedom Without Walls by Meran Kreibich ’11, St. Thomas German Club president

“This wall will fall. Beliefs become reality.” This spray-painted quite caught President Ronald Regan’s attention when he first gazed upon the Berlin Wall in 1987. The 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall will be celebrated November 2-9 on the University of St. Thomas campus and all over the world.

The German Embassy in Washington, D.C., has created a national celebration, Freedom Without Walls, designed specifically for college campuses. St. Thomas is one of only 30 universities nationally and the only Minnesota institution to receive a grant from the embassy, thanks to Paul Schons, Modern and Classical Languages Department.

The Freedom Without Walls Celebration at St. Thomas will be sponsored by the German Club. Activities will include a re-creation of the Berlin Wall, a gala and a YouTube contest in which students can create videos impersonating speeches made by world leaders at the time of the fall of the wall.

The gala, with a traditional German meal and remarks by people who were affected by the fall of the wall, will be held at the Germanic-American Institute, 301 Summit Avenue, St. Paul. The gala is open to the public.

The German Club aims to connect this historical anniversary event to the present -day issues through education and celebration. As Reagan said, “We welcome change and openness, for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace.”

For more information about these events, visit the Facebook sire for “Freedom Without Walls” and search “events, ” or send an e-mail to mgkreibich@stthomas.edu.

Read more from CAS Spotlight

As a historian, it is easy to fault our country’s leaders for their woeful ignorance of the history and culture of Iraq, of its ethnic and religious differences, and of the likely effects that military intervention would bring. It also is hard to overlook the misleading and inaccurate information used to justify the decision to go to war.

Despite these factors, however, my fundamental opposition to the war in Iraq actually lies at a much deeper level. It comes as a result of viewing war itself through the lens of my Catholic faith.

When I joined the Catholic Church in 1965, I was in my early 20s. I was drawn to it in part by the writings of Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, Daniel and Philip Berrigan and others who spoke out against the war in Vietnam. I came to see their nonviolent witness as a deeply felt response to the Gospel teachings that we should love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, and that those who live by the sword will perish by the sword (Matt. 5:44; 26:52).

My opposition to the Vietnam War, viewed through the lens of my Catholic faith, eventually led to my decision to refuse induction into the military in 1966. I had originally sought classification as a conscientious objector but was turned down by a local draft board that was comprised largely of Catholic war veterans. They did not believe that it was appropriate for a Catholic to be granted CO status. It was at this point that I came to realize the deep divisions within the Catholic Church on this issue. I persevered in my belief, however, and although I never gained CO status, I was fortunate enough to be spared time in prison, a consequence of my stand that I had been prepared to accept. In the years that have followed, I have attempted to maintain a witness for nonviolence in my own life and to oppose military solutions to international problems. In 1998, I also was ordained a deacon in the Catholic Church, which offers me an additional way of witnessing for my Christian pacifist beliefs. Peace, I firmly believe, begins with each and every one of us. If we cannot interact peacefully in our relations with those around us, as Christians within our own church or with those of other Christian denominations, how can we achieve peace in the world?

Despite a strong nonviolent tradition among many Catholic thinkers and peace activists, pacifism is clearly not a central teaching of the church. The moral right to conscientious objection is recognized in the 1994 Catechism of the Catholic Church (sect. 2311), but it is in no sense mandatory. In point of fact, Catholics have had a long record of military service in all of the wars in which the United States has been involved. Catholic philosophers also have set forth a “just war” theory, which provides a set of moral principles by which to judge the legitimacy of particular wars. Still, as a form of Christian witness, pacifism – the opposition to all war – has, at least among some Catholic thinkers and activists, also had a long and distinguished tradition.

Were I of military age today I believe that I would feel much the same about the war in Iraq as I felt in the 1960s about the war in Vietnam. As I examine both wars from a historical perspective, I see the same basic failure to understand the cultural and historical backgrounds of the countries involved, and I see an attempt – sometimes well-intentioned but naive, sometimes arrogant – to impose American values on these countries as well as a frequent confusion of their best interest with our national self-interest.

At a much deeper level, however, quite apart from the highly questionable moral and strategic dimensions of this particular war, my opposition to the war in Iraq continues to stem from my belief in the Catholic pacifist tradition – a tradition that finds its roots in the Gospel teachings noted above. In this regard, the deepest dimension of the tragedy of the war in Iraq – as in all war – is summed up, for me, in the following words from Psalm 33, which deal with the need to put one’s trust in God rather than in force and violence.

  A king is not saved by his army,

            nor a warrior preserved by his strength.

            A vain hope for safety is the horse;

            despite its power it cannot save.

            The Lord looks on those who revere him

            on those who hope in his love,

            to rescue their souls from death,

            to keep them alive in their famine.

In the world I observe, the use of violence only leads to more violence, and hatred only leads to more hatred, and the cycle will continue endlessly – until, perhaps, we actually try the path set before us by Jesus.

Further Reading: The Power of Nonviolence (Beacon Press, 2002) by Howard Zinn, and Peace Is the Way (Orbis Books, 2000), a collection of writings on pacifism and nonviolence by and about Catholic peace activists and authors.