This piece originally appeared in Issue 6/2016 of New Eastern Europe. Subscribe now.

An interview with Barbara Lippert, Director of Research in the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP). Interviewer: Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska.

The post-war history of West Berlin (and later unified Berlin) is above all the history of migration. Today, Berlin is the dreamed-of destination for refugees from the Middle East, but only thirty years ago it was Poles who submitted the majority of asylum claims in West Germany. Unfortunately, despite having had similar experiences to Middle Easterners, Berlin-based Poles do not show much empathy towards the newcomers.

Interview with Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili. Interview by Paul Toetzke.

PAUL TOETZKE: Mr. President, you are basically closing out “Georgian weeks” in Germany after the visits of the Georgian speaker of parliament as well the prime minister a few weeks ago. Among others, you met with the German President Joachim Gauck and Chancellor Angela Merkel. One important issue on the agenda was visa liberalisation for Georgians. Were there any promises made concerning the next steps?

Polish-German stereotypes have varied across time and have been heavily dependent on the period in history, people’s personal experiences and the political climate. As such, they  have often been used to manipulate Polish and German societies. Formed and transformed by the changing realities, they have influenced the ways in which Polish and Germans view one another.

When we think back to June 1991, we see great value in the treaty between Poland and Germany. It was a new beginning in relations between the two states. Yet, the treaty was more than bilateral, it was also a building bloc in the construction of a new Europe, without which there would be no united Germany, NATO or the European Union. Every time I cross the Polish-German border, which nowadays is merely a formal line, seeing as there are no controls or checkpoints, I feel like a free European. I feel the positive aspect of history and the great decisions that led us here. I write this because as a teenager, I experienced a completely different reality, a continent divided by the iron curtain. Even in the 1990s, a time when Poland was already free and Germany had united, cross-border travel was not as pleasant an experience as it is today, because the Oder and Nysa rivers marked the periphery of the European Union. At that time, we still had to wait at the border and go through border control.