Seventeen years ago today I watched, stunned and hardly believing my eyes, the news reports on TV pour in about The Fall of the Berlin Wall.
Second generation cold war kid that I was, I never thought I'd see the day. Just the year before East German officials stated that the wall would stand for a hundred years.
Then the first free labor union formed in Poland, Hungary opened the Iron Curtain to Austria, and at 06:53 pm on November 9, East Germany lifted travel restrictions for East German citizens.
The rest is history.
I cheered the Berliners who took hammers, drills, and cranes to the wall and dismantled the most hated symbol of the Iron Curtain and the Cold War.
Andreas Ramos's blog has this to tell of being there when the wall fell.
Everything was out of control. Police on horses watched. There was nothing they could do. The crowd had swollen. People were blowing long alpine horns which made a huge noise. There were fireworks, kites, flags and flags and flags, dogs, children. The wall was finally breaking. The cranes lifted slabs aside. East and West German police had traded caps.
...
From some houses, someone had set up loudspeakers and played Beethoven's ninth symphony: Alle Menschen werden Bruder. All people become brothers. On top of every building were thousands of people. Berlin was out of control. There was no more government, neither in East nor in West. The police and the army were helpless. The soldiers themselves were overwhelmed by the event. They were part of the crowd. Their uniforms meant nothing. The Wall was down.
It came down nine months too late for Chris Gueffroy, the last person to be shot dead while trying to cross the border on February 6, 1989.
Though the euphoria quickly faded when faced with the grim realities of reunification, I will never forget the incandescent joy of Berliners and the world When The Wall Fell. It was a priviledge to witness.
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