Fall of the Berlin Wall: The day East met West after 28 cold years

Published on Sunday 8 November 2009 21:41

IT WAS 20 years ago today when they danced on top of the Berlin Wall, feet thudding on the cold concrete, arms raised in victory, hands clasped in friendship and giddy hope.

The Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg gate shown on June 6, 1989 on the left and July 14, 2009 on the right.

On that cold night, years of separation and anxiety melted into the unbelievable reality of freedom and a future without border guards, secret police, informers and rigid communist control.

This weekend, Germans celebrated with concerts from musicians Beethoven and Bon Jovi; a memorial service for the 136 people killed trying to cross between 1961 to 1989; candle lightings and 1,000 plastic foam dominoes to be placed along the Wall's route and tipped over.

On 9 November, 1989, East Germans came in droves, driving sputtering Trabants, old motorcycles and rickety bicycles. Hundreds, then thousands, then hundreds of thousands crossed over in the following days.

Stores in West Berlin stayed open late and banks dispensed 100 Deutschemarks in "welcome money" to each East German.

The party lasted four days and by 12 November more than 3 million of East Germany's 16.6 million people had visited, nearly a third of them to West Berlin, the rest through gates opening up along the rest of the fenced, mined frontier that cut their country in two.

Sections of the nearly 100 miles of Wall were pulled down and knocked over. Tourists chiselled off chunks to keep as souvenirs. Tearful families reunited. Bars gave out free drinks. Strangers kissed and toasted each other with champagne.

Klaus-Hubert Fugger, a student at the Free University in West Berlin, was drinking in a pub when people began coming "who looked a bit different".

Customers bought the visitors round after round. By midnight, instead of going home, Mr Fugger and three others took a taxi to the Brandenburg Gate and scaled the 12ft Wall with hundreds of others. "There were a lot of scenes, like people crying," said Mr Fugger, now 43.

He spent the next night on the Wall, too. A newsmagazine photo shows him there, wrapped in a scarf. "Then the Wall was crowded all over, thousands of people, and you couldn't move… you had to push through the mass of the people," he said.

Angela Merkel, Germany's first chancellor from the former communist East, recalled the euphoria in an address last week to the US Congress.

"Where there was once only a dark wall, a door suddenly opened and we all walked through it: on to the streets, into the churches, across the borders," Ms Merkel said. "Everyone was given the chance to build something new, to make a difference, to venture a new beginning."

The Wall the communists built at the height of the Cold War, and which stood for 28 years, is now mostly gone. Some parts still stand, at an outdoor art gallery or as part of an open-air museum. Its route through the city is now streets, shopping centres, apartment houses. The only reminders of it are a series of inlaid bricks that trace its path.

Checkpoint Charlie, the prefab that was long the symbol of the Allied presence and of Cold War tension, has been moved to a museum in western Berlin.

Potsdamer Platz, the vibrant square that was destroyed during World War Two and became a no-man's land during the Cold War, is full of upmarket shops selling everything from iPods to grilled bratwursts.

At a ceremony in Berlin on 31 October, Helmut Kohl, the German chancellor who presided over the Wall's opening, stood side by side with the then superpower presidents George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev.

After the decades of shame that followed the Nazi era, Mr Kohl suggested, the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of their country 11 months later gave Germans pride.

"We don't have many reasons in our history to be proud," said Mr Kohl, now 79. "But as chancellor, I have nothing better, nothing to be more proud of, than German reunification."

TH E LAST STEPS TO FREEDOM

KEY dates in the collapse of communism across Eastern Europe in 1989:

4 June: Poland has first partially free elections in four decades.

August: East Germans swamp West German missions in East Berlin, Czechoslovakia and Hungary seeking asylum.

24 August: In Poland, Solidarity adviser Tadeusz Mazowiecki becomes Soviet bloc's first non-communist prime minister.

11 September: Hungary opens its border to East German refugees.

7 October: On a visit to East Berlin, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev indirectly urges reform; thousands defy East German regime in first of series of protests that grow to rally of one million people.

7-8 November: East Germany's ruling Politburo resigns.

9 November: Berlin Wall falls.

17 November: Czech students clash with police, starting the "Velvet Revolution".

17 December: Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and wife try to flee uprising five days later; executed on Christmas Day.

29 December: Vaclav Havel elected Czech president as Communist rule ends.

'We're in the West now'

IN August 1989 Hans-Peter Spitzner's wife, Ingrid, received permission to travel legally to Austria for the birthday of an aunt.

He and his daughter Peggy would be the last escapees to make it through the Berlin Wall. After his wife left he drove 120 miles from the city of Chemnitz to Berlin with his seven year-old daughter. Once there, he persuaded US servicemen in East Berlin to conceal them in their car and drive into the West.

One, Sergeant Eric Yaw, agreed and put them in his boot, driving them through.

"The car stopped, the boot opened, and Eric Yaw said: 'We're in the West. You can get out now,'" Mr Spitzner recalled.

'It was the right time'

HARALD Jaeger was a loyal East German border guard in command at a crossing point to the west on Berlin's Bornholmer Strasse.

So when his checkpoint, the first to be opened, was swarmed on the evening of 9 November, 1989, as East Germany announced the border was being opened after 28 years, Mr Jaeger felt ashamed.

"I realised the party and the government had let me down."

Two decades later Mr Jaeger, 66, now sees things differently. "It was right and necessary, and exactly the right time.

And there's one thing I can take credit for, that no blood was shed that evening – just tears of joy."

'Biggest news in my life'

"I was fortunate enough to witness the most famous news conference in modern German history on 9 November, called with no great fanfare by Politburo member and spokesman Guenter Schabowski," recalls reporter Volker Warkentin.

"I sprinted up three flights of stairs to the Reuters office with the biggest piece of news in my life. Years of heavy smoking didn't seem to matter. I was gasping for breath but managed to blurt out the news to colleagues sitting at computers.

"The headline alert read: "East Germans allowed to leave to West Germany effective immediately – Schabowski says".