German Chancellor Angela Merkel yesterday led celebrations marking the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, calling it an example of the human yearning for freedom and honoring those who helped bring down the barrier that for 28 years symbolized the Cold War.
On the night of Nov. 9, 1989, thousands of East Berliners streamed through the once-closed border crossings after communist authorities caved in to mounting pressure and relaxed travel restrictions that had prevented their citizens from going to the west for decades.
“The fall of the Wall has shown us that dreams can come true,” Merkel said at the main memorial site for the Wall on Bernauer Strasse. “Nothing has to stay the way it is, however big the hurdles are.”
Photo: EPA
The fall of the Wall was the climax of weeks of popular protests, spurred by changes that had already taken place elsewhere in Eastern Europe.
Merkel cited the important examples set by the democracy movements in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and praised those East Germans who were inspired by them to stand up to the dictatorship.
She also honored the many who suffered under the communist regime, including the 138 people who died along the Wall.
Photo: Reuters
“The Berlin Wall, this symbol of state abuse cast in concrete, took millions of people to the limits of what is tolerable, and all too many beyond it,” Merkel said. “It broke them.”
“Little wonder that after the border opened, people took apart the hated structure with hammers and chisels. Within a year it had all but vanished from the cityscape,” she said.
The events of Nov. 9, 1989, bear a message for Ukraine, as well as Syria and Iraq, she said.
“The collapse showed us that dreams can come true, that nothing has to remain as it is,” Merkel said in a speech at the Berlin Wall Memorial. “It is a message of encouragement to tear down other walls, walls of dictatorship, violence, ideologies and enmity.”
Merkel said that Nov. 9 is a significant date in Germany’s history because it is also the day when, in 1938, Nazi paramilitaries launched a pogrom against the country’s Jewish population in what became known as Reichskristallnacht — the “Night of Broken Glass.”
“That was the opening note for the murder of millions,” said Merkel, adding that on Nov. 9 each year: “I feel not just joy, but the responsibility that German history burdens us with.”
Berlin marked the anniversary over the weekend with a 15km line of thousands of illuminated white balloons that trace the path of the wall through the once-divided capital. Festivities were scheduled to culminate last night with an open-air concert at the Brandenburg Gate and the release of the helium-filled balloons at 7pm.
More than a million people were expected in the city to see rock stars and anti-communist dissidents take to the stage amid fireworks displays to recall the peaceful breach of the despised barrier.
Unlike the 20th anniversary celebrations, when many heads of state and government flocked to Berlin, this time around the festivities are mainly a people’s celebration in a city that has blossomed into a cultural hub and major European tourist destination.
The only foreign dignitaries are veterans of the era, mainly former Soviet Union president Mikhail Gorbachev, 83, former Polish president and labor activist Lech Walesa, 71, former Hungarian prime minister Miklos Nemeth, 66, and German President Joachim Gauck, 74, a former pastor and rights activist in the East.
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