The Guardian view on the fall of the Berlin Wall: history’s version of Woodstock
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Version 0 of 1. The presidency of Barack Obama has been buried under the results of the US midterm elections, which returned the Republicans to dominance. More or less confined to the White House during the campaign, even the president’s keenest supporters now lament the unfulfilled promise of the “Yes we can” president. The old politics has returned so that sometimes it seems the truth boils down to a bleaker declaration: “No we can’t.” But this weekend should not just be an early wake for the Obama years. On Sunday, it is the 25th anniversary of the final collapse of the Berlin Wall, the moment that transformed the world from Siberia to San Francisco. Everyone over the age of 35 almost certainly remembers the day the wall came down. Or rather, the days, for 9 November 1989 was only the climax of a revolution that had begun with August’s “friendship picnic”, when Hungary opened its border with Austria and kicked off a party that lasted until the new year. At least, it turned into a party. But the outcome seemed far more uncertain at the time. Each day that autumn began in fear that the forces of repression would return and gun down the hopeful demonstrators, and each evening ended in hope. The humble Trabant became a symbol of courage. The border with the west became the venue for a carnival of people power. It was history’s version of Woodstock. And perhaps the most remarkable thing about it was that it was happening at all. When Ronald Reagan stood in front of the Brandenburg gate in 1987 and challenged the Soviet leader – “Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall! – it seemed a typical piece of Moscow-baiting Republican hyperbole. In January 1989, when East Germany’s Erich Honecker declared the wall would stand for “50, maybe 100 years”, it did not seem an unrealistic boast. His citizens carried on trying to escape into West Berlin, and his border guards carried on shooting them. By March of that year the death toll stood at 136. The division of Europe that was symbolised by the physical division of Germany’s old capital city seemed a permanent part of the continent’s geography. Nor was it necessarily considered a bad thing. To many of the earlier generation whose lives had been overshadowed by two world wars, a divided Germany seemed to be the best way to safeguard peace in Europe. This bi-polar world cruelly separated millions of families. But the effects rippled out across the continent. It fragmented a shared cultural inheritance that dated back to the Roman empire. For hundreds of years the ebb and flow of people from central and eastern Europe into Britain’s cities enriched every aspect of life, its music and art, food and wine. After 1945, it dried up. It was no longer commonplace to encounter citizens of Poland or Hungary, nor was it easy to visit great cities like Prague or Krakow or the jewels of east Germany – Dresden or Magdeburg or Leipzig. But that unnatural division did end. The wall came down. And when it did, it liberated Europe and the human imagination. For it proved that nothing made by human hands is irreversible – that, even when every sign points the other way, change is always possible. |