Berlin – There is the thesis that 9/11 brought East and West Germans closer together. “With the attacks on the World Trade Center, German-German self-preoccupation shrank. Easterners and Westerners had to understand that, beyond their own sensitivities, they are in the same boat in terms of world politics, ”says Christoph Dieckmann, the long-time East German author, for example. You could also say that 9/11 brought the whole world closer together, at least for a fleeting moment.
If you ask people today where they were then, amazingly often you get the same answer. Those who weren’t living in New York at the time mostly spent the day twenty years ago in front of the television. Today we are used to watching crises live on TV or on social media, be it the evacuation drama at Kabul airport or the flood in Ahrweiler. You have the feeling that you are there, you can participate yourself, through gestures of concern and expressions of empathy. Back then, twenty years ago, there was no Twitter, no Facebook, no YouTube. 9/11 was the first crisis that could be followed live. And the images of the disaster captivated people all over the world, they created great emotions and global collective consciousness. 9/11 was seen as an attack on the West. We are all Americans, that’s how Chancellor Gerhard Schröder put it. If there is a “we” there must be a “you”.
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