Upon seeing this, I started thinking about the reasons that the wall was taken down: the ending of Communism and the Soviet Union, a huge uprising in East Germany, and a huge amount of people on either side of Germany clamoring to see those on the other side.
The New York Times article did an excellent job describing the phenomenon associated with the destruction of the Berlin wall. We all can see the wall as a great metaphor for what was going on: a huge concrete construction tearing an entire country apart. As this wall was broken, freedom poured through and people were ecstatic.
Obviously I wasn't around for the tearing down of the Berlin wall, but I can still get a feeling for what that day must have been like. After a huge buildup of political and social tension, the opening of borders must have been a gratifying result for everybody (except some of those crazy politicians).
It took a little longer to develop parallels with King Lear than it did to capture the feeling of the wall's destruction, but I really wanted to write about it after reading the NYT article. So, I went ahead and tried to make a few analogies.
The first is pretty obvious, being the division of Lear's state. He is in essence creating a Goneril England and a Regan England (doesn't sound as nice as West/ East Germany), and is paving the way for a whole lot of conflict. The basic conclusion from our reading so far is that this was a bad decision. Regan and Goneril are regular abusers of power, and overall quite horrible people.
I'm not trying to insinuate that every politician in Germany was a horrible person, and it wasn't even a Communist decision to divide Germany (the Allies took the West after WWII, a division was necessary). In this way, Goneril and Regan didn't necessarily want the division. Lear passed it on to them and they "dealt" with it accordingly.
So, the cause of our issues are pretty analogous. In both, a division of state was made and two different leaders took over. Now, the effects are a little more murky. One thing that Shakespeare did not do well is capturing the story of normal people. He seems to have tried to portray their ideas through major characters, but it's hard to get the whole story from his diluted tales of royalty.
What we do know about Germany is that everyone was affected. The New York Times article tells us that there were some people who were unable to see family or friends because of the way Berlin was divided. We have no such details (as of yet) in King Lear, so it's hard to tell. We can make the assumption, though, that the corrupted rules of Goneril and Regan are in some way affecting their subjects.
What's more important than their similarities, though, is what we can learn from them. We learned a lot from the Berlin situation: divisions in countries lead to violence, cultural and political issues, and myriad other problems. In King Lear, the division will be a cause for tragic effects (it is a tragedy). I'm gonna pretend I haven't finished the book and just take a guess: these divided countries don't work out so well, right?
You're connections are really interesting and I never would've thought of it this way until reading your post. I definitely agree that you although everyone is affected in both cases, you can't see what exactly happens. The division between Goneril and Regan led to many deaths and a greater tragic affect in Lear. The Berlin Wall affected the lives of those who couldn't see their family on the other side. I like the connections you point out. However, there's one I thought I might add. Your first connection points out Regan and Goneril are horrible and are abusers of power. I think Cordelia can be thrown in there because in King Lear she is the loving one, the good daughter. In the real world, a unified Germany was better, because it united people and brought more peace and conflict resolution.
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