Stories from the Wall
BERLIN — It’s Saturday and this city of 3.5 million people is poised for a big party Monday night. No, it’s not Hank Williams Jr.’s football party; it’s a bit bigger than that. It’s a party to celebrate freedom. It’s a party to celebrate unity.
It’s a party to celebrate the right to have parties.
Actually they had a pretty good one here Thursday night when U2 wowed 10,000 beneath the Brandenburg Gate. Want to see some of that? Try http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZfUAMehb24
Officially the Monday party is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall or, as the locals put it, 20 Jahre Mauerfall. The city is abuzz, and the party is being heralded everywhere. The city’s largest newspaper, Berliner Zeitung, carries a full-page front-page picture today of jubilant Berliners straddling the top of the Wall back on Nov. 9 & 10, 1989. The picture reminds you of the remake you’ve probably seen of the line of iron workers from the 1940s straddling the high-rise carcass of a skyscraper while dipping into their lunchpails for a sandwich.
Young people from all over the world crowd Pariser Platz near the Brandenburg Gate Friday as Monday’s big party approaches. A stage is under construction for world leaders and entertainers. U2 performed here Thursday night.
The Zeitung also carries a special 16-page section today called simply, “1989 – 2009,” featuring a large picture of East Berliners rushing to freedom on Bornhomerstrasse the night of Nov. 9, 1989. The headline reads, “Das Volk sind wir, und wir sind Millionen,” or “We are the people, and we are millions.”
It’s hard not to feel emotion over images like this.
I was talking with American George Glass, who is a senior U.S. Embassy official, Friday and he said the same exact thing. Reflecting on all the photos and videos of the that night, Glass said, “For me, the images live on. Last night when I looked out the embassy window and saw U2 performing to 10,000 Germans, and remembering what conditions were like here before the Wall came down, I could hardly believe it.”
Just down Unter den Linden, the main street running into Pariser Platz, I caught up with a veteran ZDF Television reporter who covered the fall of the Wall that night 20 years ago. He is Christhard Lapple, and he worked all night the night of the fall, having the privilege of interviewing the ecstatic East Berliners who were making their dash to freedom, streaming into West Berlin through the now-open gate.
“It was a special atmosphere,” Lapple said with a glowing smile that suggested the years had not dulled the memory nor the emotion. “These people … just to be able to decide for yourself that you can move and go where ever you want to go. That you can bring your sons to their grandparents for the first time!”
The German newspaper, Der Tagesspiegel, has been featuring Lapple’s remembrances of what some of those elated East Berliners had to say that night. Here is a sampling:
Christhard Lapple, a ZDF-TV reporter who covered the fall of the Wall, shows off a chunk of the "monster" he still keeps on his desk.
“We want to do our work, we want to travel, we want to live like everyone else!” a young woman beamed as she and her husband came past the Wall that had kept them from doing all three all their lives.
“Tear down the Wall! Let us tear it down at last! It has stood long enough,” another woman shouts happily. Most of those streaming through the main gate at Bornholmerstrasse are young; maybe 20 to 30.
Lapple wrote of his own feelings, “Now, streams of people pass through the Brandenburg Gate in both directions. The border troops with shouldered Kalashnikovs stand on the edge. Wait. Will they intervene? There is an unreal, happy and peaceful mood.”
A man with a huge mustache says: “It must remain in any case that you can go back and forth. This is the most important thing that we will not shut up again like all these years. “
Amid the elation there were also many questions both East and West Berliners had. How will the country subsidize all these people who have virtually nothing and whose basic needs have been taken care of by the communist state all these years? How will the economy absorb them? Some East Berliners, who knew nothing since World War II than communism, wondered if they really wanted to be capitalists or if they just wanted the freedom to move back and forth as they chose; to reunite with family members once again.
But the questions and concerns failed to dampen the spirit of that night. And the echoes of the hundreds of East Berliners who had died trying to make valiant escape attempts during the Wall’s 28 years of existence seemed to be loud and clear in what these fleeing East Berliners had to say on this 1989 November night.
A double row of cobblestones follows the path the Wall took through Berlin, separating East from West. Now Berliners stroll freely across that line, usually without even noticing it.
Ironically, since Germans put the day before the month when they communicate dates, they refer to this anniversary night of freedom as 9/11. It’s quite a different connotation than Americans have of that number sequence.
A few days ago I was visiting with two close friends in the eastern city of Magdeburg. Drs. Holger and Kristin Kersten both teach at the University of Magdeburg and, although they are from the western cities of Lubeck and Cologne, they moved to eastern Germany for Holger to take his position at the university where he now heads the Department of English Studies.
In moving east, however, the Kerstens are unusual among Germans because it is much more common for Germans raised in the East to move west. The reason? Inequities still remain in job opportunities and pay scales. Things are somewhat better in western Germany, although that gap is closing as George Glass noted in our Friday interview and as a story in Der Tagesspiegel on the “brain drain” in eastern Germany pointed out.
George Glass feels that psychological division between Germans has greatly diminished, however. “Now you hear virtually no references to ‘Ossis’ and ‘Wessis’ (Easterners and Westerners),” he says. “You don’t feel that distinction much any more.”
Holger Kersten grew up in Lubeck and sees the fall of the Wall through a prism of pain because he had family who lived in the East, and members of his family were prevented from seeing each other for many years.
“When I think of the Wall, I think of violence and anger and forced separation of family members, he said. To me, reunification is more a coming-together of family members and friends. Bringing back together those who should have always been together. So he can’t see how any in the East, who lived under that restrictive regime, would say the Wall should still be standing.”
Kristin and Holger Kersten both moved from western German cities to the eastern city of Magdeburg. Most Germans seem to go the other way, but that may be changing.
My own impressions? To say I am a bit surprised by all the attention this anniversary is getting over here, is an understatement. I thought it would be more of a politically-staged celebration which everyday German citizens, caught up in the same kinds of nagging economic issues facing Americans, would push to the back of their minds. But I was wrong, and I think I was wrong because I come from a country that has come to take basic freedoms for granted.
By Chris Lapple’s count, some 4.5 million East Germans got out of East Germany when they could in the years following 1949. Clearly, that became impossible for most when the Wall went up in 1961, but it shows that when a people are confronted with being stripped of their freedoms, many will say no thanks. I’m headed West.
I can’t wait for the party Monday night that celebrates freedom and inspires the rest of the world to cherish it.
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One Berlin, One Germany, One Europe, One World
My recollection of the late summer of 1988 was one of endless wonders for at a young age I made my very first trip to a great foreign country. I visited a country in Europe that left a lasting legacy in me and for which I came to know quite fondly as my second home. It all began with a very memorable letter of acceptance informing me of my participation in the 2nd International Training Program in Biotechnology (ITP). The letter came from GBF, Germany’s National Research Center for Biotechnology. GBF and the state of Lower Saxony funded generously my trip and stay in Germany. It brought me to the charming cities of Braunschweig, where GBF is located, as well as to Hannover, and Berlin. I consider this unforgettable six-week sojourn in Germany as the best thing that ever happened to me. Reminiscing on my arrival in Braunschweig, brings back fond memories of a cool beautiful sunny Sunday morning and a venerable city crisscrossed by clean streets of cobbled stone though almost devoid of people and vehicles. Since I come from a densely populated city like Manila, the difference for me becomes starkly conspicuous. Attendance in the trade fair known as Biotechnica 88 in Hannover and the cultural trip to Berlin was part of the ITP training course. The training course enriched me not only scientifically but culturally as well. It gave me a deep and profound standpoint as to Germany’s identity, culture, and role in the modern world. History tells us that it was just in the last century that Germany went through periods of revolutions, redemption, and resurrection. The mighty German Empire ruled by Prussia disintegrated after the First World War. A fleeting bright moment followed the collapse of the empire with the birth of the “Weimar Republic”. This beautiful republic, bearing the promise of freedom, peace, and prosperity for all Germans and Europeans, unfortunately died in its infancy. What followed was the darkest and most chilling period in world history: the rise to power of Hiltler’s National Socialist Party. Because of the NAZI, Germany suffered widespread destruction and utter defeat in the Second World War that left the whole of Europe in shamble. Though it seemed that everything was lost, Germany made acts of contrition and contrite reparation for his mortal misgivings. Soon the “Heart of Europe” underwent an immensely remarkable transformation marked by sincere reconciliation and rapid socio-economic development. Germany literally became the engine of peace and prosperity for Western Europe. In just a few years, the Fatherland rebuilds himself from the smoldering cauldron of the last world war to rise meteorically into today’s proud global economic power as a free, united, and flourishing German nation. Germany’s city of the world Berlin, once separated into two rival ways of life, has assumed a truly cosmopolitan personality breathing a sophisticated culture and a cheerful urbanity uniquely its own. When Pres. John F. Kennedy bravely visited Berlin and spoke the famous words “Ich bin ein Berliner”, a city instantly captured the hearts and minds of people all over the world. Suddenly everyone was a Berliner who knew fully well to which side of the divided city he belongs. It highlighted the great divide of “Us against Them”; of a world partitioned by the “iron curtain” living precariously on détente. When I visited Berlin for the first time in 1988 as part of my ITP course, I cannot help but ponder and marvel at the character of an occupied city; a city torn between west and east, democracy and communism, freedom and tyranny, heaven and hell. A city sanctified by the Nordic gods with beauty, power, and nobility. I experienced what it was like to cross into East Germany and to enter into West Berlin. As I toured the city striding along the wide sidewalks of the famous KuDam and visiting the partly destroyed Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, I saw American, British, French and Russian soldiers and an imposing wall dividing the city. This wall of shame stood arrogantly between the famed “Gate of Brandenburg” and me. All I can do was to stare at the Brandenburg Gate protruding behind the wall from my place of security within West Berlin. In 1990, I made my second trip to Germany to attend Biotechnica 90. Funding for this trip came through the kindness of the Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft (CDG). After attending Biotechnica 90, I went to straight to Berlin on my own initiative for it was something that I would not miss for the world. Something wonderful has happened in Berlin and I simply had to be a part of it. It was an afternoon of warm sunny blue skies when I arrived in Berlin and made a bee-line to the Brandenburg Gate. This time something remarkably wonderful was readily apparent unlike my previous visit in 1988. From afar, lo and behold, I saw the gate standing majestically free! The wall of shame that put us asunder in 1988, was nowhere to be found. I was able to enter without hindrance through the monumental colonnades bearing aloft the victorious chariot of Aurora, the goddess of dawn. Indeed, a new age of peace and prosperity has dawned on Germany and the world in 1989. As I gazed around me, I went through the gate slowly with much trepidation but with overwhelming sentiments of joy and thanksgiving. So thankful, that the mighty “Westerly Winds of Freedom” knocked down decisively like tumbling dominoes the Wall of Berlin followed by the Iron Curtain of Eastern Europe and finally the fortress of the powerful Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR). What was once thought to be impossible, the unification of two German nations divided by conflicting global powers, happened overnight so miraculously without the loss of life? Not since the fall of the walls of Jericho has another wall in history received the ire of the free world to be torn down as the Berlin Wall. “Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall” were the words of Pres. Ronald Reagan that reverberated like the loud trumpet sounds of Joshua’s army that soon brought down the Berlin Wall. In its wake, not only was a nation unified but a continent as well. Demarcation of East and West in Europe became a thing of the past and for the rest of the world as well. I strode happily behind the Brandenburg Gate all the way through the famous and spacious boulevard called “Unter den Linden Strasse” extending into the very heart of East Berlin. My triumphant march, full of fervor, took me all the way to the imposing monumental bronze statue of Emperor Frederick the Great. I was in East Berlin till evening as I enjoyed and treasured every moment of that historical day in September of 1990 as a year had not even passed since the dreaded wall still stood and divided the city. Indeed, it was fortunate for me to have the rare chance of being in divided Berlin in 1988 and in unified Berlin in 1990, the years between the historical events of 1989. If Tony Bennet left his heart in San Francisco, in Berlin I left not only my heart but my soul as well. I will never forget my Berlin experiences of 1988 and 1990 for it was indeed so great to be young then in Germany and to be caught up in a turning point in world history. Let us also not forget the major role played by our beloved Pope John Paul II in ending communism that actually started in his home country of Poland. In closing, on the occasion of the 20 years of anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall, I am one with the free world in celebrating an event marking the birth of a new world of peace and prosperity.