oudeis on 9/11/2009 at 10:03

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(OK, so the title is a little weak, but I couldn't resist. :ebil: )


On November 9th 1989, East Germany suddenly opened the border with West Germany and allowed its citizens to cross over freely. After decades of virtual incarceration and the deaths of dozens of people shot trying to 'escape', the Berlin Wall was effectively no more.

It's embarrassing for me to admit it about such an historic and inspiring event, but I can't remember where I was when I first heard about this. I'm trying to recall but I'm forced to backtrack chronologically from several years after the event. I have vivid memories of Tom Brokaw broadcasting live from Berlin, the wall aswarm with people as he spoke, but where I was living and what I was doing that day are uncertain. What I do remember is the incredible sense of hope that I felt watching those images and all the others that came in the days that followed.

I was born after the peak of the Cold War panics and the Cuban Missile Crisis, so I didn't grow up fearing the Atomic Bomb, but the oppressions of the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc allies had always filled me with disgust and outrage. Ironically enough, though, it was the president of my own country, Ronald Reagan, who made me fearful. Almost from the beginning of his administration it seemed apparent that he was itching for a fight with the Soviets. Does anyone remember the doctrine of Limited Nuclear War? Reagan had passed his mantle on to Bush the Elder in January of '89, but I don't remember feeling that anything had changed in the months that followed (The Wikipedia article about the fall of the wall is open another tab as I write this, and reading is it reviving memories about the events of that year). Even though barricades had fallen all along the Iron Curtain, the Wall was such a powerful symbol of Communist tyranny that it wasn't until it was it was effectively rendered ineffectual that I finally felt that the world actually had a chance to become a better place. Between reading about the event and writing this I can almost feel the sense of euphoria and relief that I must have felt back then, and even for an echo of something twenty years removed it puts a giddy smile on my face.


What do you remember about the day the Wall Fell, or the events that came after? Do you remember what you felt when it happened?

Enchantermon on 9/11/2009 at 12:30

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I was a few months away from being 2. It's weird to think that such an earth-shattering even happened in my lifetime and I don't remember a single thing about it. Glad it did, though.

Kolya on 9/11/2009 at 13:05

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Yeah...I do remember it.
Half a year earlier I had left eastern Germany headed west together with my mum and sister. I was twelve and thought I would never see my brother again who was living with our father in East-Berlin. We had requested and gotten approval for emigration, a bureaucratic process of Kafkaesque proportions that included one year waiting time and lots of chicanery. I remember my teacher had suddenly asked me after class why we wanted to leave the country, although none of us had told anybody. Just another everyday StaSi spy. (Hallo Frau Meister aus Gotha!)

Anyway, a few days after seeing the wall falling on TV we drove back into the country we had just left to East-Berlin. With my brother I crossed the Berlin wall and saw the western part for the first time, although I was born in that city and had lived there for seven years.
I don't think I completely understood the meaning of it all back then, but I remember feeling very satisfied because we had been right after all and all the fearful narrow minded streamlined everyday assholes had lost the fight. They were still there though, mostly cheering now and pretending to have been on our side all along... We enjoyed the show in Berlin for a week or so, then drove back to the west, to the new life we had started there already.

I'm actually pondering to move back to Berlin sometime. But it's been a long time and the place I was born (Prenzlauer Berg) has changed extremely fast and radically. My brother still lives there and I'll go and visit him on new year's eve.

N'Al on 9/11/2009 at 15:23

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This is incorrect. It was, in fact, a Frenchman who did it, as this photo clearly proves. ;)
[ATTACH]212[/ATTACH]

Seriously, though, I don't remember too much of the event, which is a bit of a shame - I was 9 at the time and living in the south of Germany, so somewhat removed from events in Berlin. All I could sense was that something big was goin' down.

In retrospect, yay!

hopper on 9/11/2009 at 15:37

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I was supposed to visit a seminar in (West) Berlin on the week-end following the fall of the wall (which was on a Thursday, I believe), but I cancelled it a couple of days earlier. Of course, nobody knew beforehand it was going down. Still, I've regretted my decision ever since. Talk about turning down a chance to experience history live!

BTW, Stronts, it was Bush's watch, not Reagan's, when the Wall fell. Of course, Reagan got the credit anyway.