Before I lay me down to sleep…
I find the CNN overview of the night’s festivities to be very good: lots of videos and a slideshow.
Sehenswert, as the Germans would say. (“Worth a look”.)
Well the day has finally come, the 20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall.
We’ve put up a lot of Wall-related posts over the last several weeks in preparation for today, including our Fall of the Berlin Wall Resources page, as well as several individual entries in our Berlin Wall content category.
Now it’s just time to sit back and enjoy the celebrations on the telly. Those of you in Germany and Austria should tune in to Phoenix for the most coverage. Others around the world will no doubt be checking out major international networks such as CNN and the BBC.
Enjoy the coverage and see you back here soon!
Bill Dawson
Photo Credit: The lead photo accompanying this blog post is from the German Federal Archives, which has made it available under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license via Wikimedia Commons.
Amateur history nerd that I am, I’m quite pleased to have married into a family which has retained all sorts of books, newspapers and magazines dating from about 1920 onwards. The “In the Hausarchiv” series gives an occasional look at the things I’ve come across in our own “house archive”.
Last time I featured a letter from an East German penpal of my wife. I’m going to do the same again in this post, though this letter comes from a different young man in East Germany.
The first thing that caught my eye was the postage stamp. It commemorates the 50th anniversary of what has commonly been referred to as “Kristallnacht“, or “The November Pogrom”. On this East German stamp it is called the “Fascist Pogrom Night”. This is factually true, but I had to laugh a bit because it’s a very, very East German (communist) way of putting it. The regime in East Germany went to great lengths to define itself as anti-fascist. The Berlin Wall itself was officially named the “Anti-Fascist Protection Wall.”
But now let’s get to the good stuff, the words written by this young man. If you look at the bigger version of the note (click on it), the top of the right-side reads as follows:
A week ago we had a very nice yet sad farewell party. Two couples whom I know well have finally received their permit to emigrate to West Germany, after three years of waiting.
…
Such a farewell was definitely sad, but we’re all agreed that someday the walls will fall and we’ll all see each other again. I’m so looking forward to that.
I confess that those words stirred me emotionally. The letter is undated and the postmark is unclear, but from the content (he speaks of the “new year”) I assume it was written in January of 1989. Fortunately he only had another 10 months to wait before being able to go to the West and visit his friends.
I hunted through other letters from this particular young man and found one which stirred me even more. It contains this fantastic passage:
On 18 and 19 June [1988], Fisher-Z, Marillion, Heinz-Rudolf Kunze, Big Country and the absolutely awesome BRYAN ADAMS played in East Berlin. And so I went with my friends to Berlin for the very first time. I was absolutely overwhelmed and I’m still processing it all now. It started even before we reached Berlin. There I was driving comfortably in the car and all of a sudden there was a deafening roar above us: a Pan Am jet landed at the airport next to the Autobahn. I’ve seen it a thousand times on television, but when you actually experience it it’s really something.
Then we went with the S-Bahn [regional train] and suddenly there were giant white skyscrapers. Jan nudged me and said that that was West Berlin. I said loudly, “You’re crazy, that’s not West Berlin. They would never let us get so close!” A woman across from me smiled and said, “Just wait, young man. In a second you’ll see the Wall — it really is West Berlin.”
And then I saw it, the Wall and watchtowers, and shivers ran down my spine [mir lief es eiskalt den Rücken runter]. Dani, I’m sure you’ve heard much about the Wall just like I have, but when you’re standing right in front of it — you just can’t imagine what a feeling it is, you can hardly believe it’s real: freedom so close, yet so far. [so nah die Freiheit und doch so weit].
…
I’ve never seen such a concert live; it was a beautiful high point of my life.
Until next time,
Bill Dawson
P.S. Don’t forget to check out my Berlin Wall resources page!
P.P.S. The concert is mentioned in an interesting English-language article at the website of the German magazine Der Spiegel.
Here are links for 03 November 2009 concerning that very important moment in German History (and world history), the fall of the Berlin Wall. The 20th anniversary of that momentous event is coming up in just six days, on 09 November 2009.
If you missed them, consider reviewing other recent entries containing links regarding the anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall. And don’t forget our special page dedicated wholly to Fall of the Berlin Wall Resources.
And now to today’s links:
Unfortunately, today’s video is not “embed-able” in my page, so you’ll have to head on over to the BBC to watch it. It’s part of native German Franz Strasser’s trip through the areas of his former country, East Germany. In this episode, Strasser talks with German students who belong to the first generation that grew up during reunification. Interesting!
I hope you enjoyed today’s links. Keep coming back for more!
Until next time,
Bill Dawson
P.S. Chancellor Merkel is right at the top of the list of the world’s most powerful women. She’s very modest in public and comes across as a bit of an intellectual (which she is); words like “dynamic”, which we often like to ascribe to leaders, don’t necessarily apply to her. But this makes her no less of an extraordinary woman, one who has a very interesting biography, as that Independent article suggests.
There are English-language biographies of this “Power-Frau“, such as the one I’ve highlighted here. Check it out!
The lead photo accompanying this blog post shows German Chancellor Angela Merkel and comes from Wikimedia Commons, where it was graciously made available by Jacques Grießmayer under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 license.
So you vaguely recall hearing something about an upcoming anniversary in Germany, but you’re embarrassed to admit that you don’t really know what all the hoopla is about. Sure, you know Berlin is the capital of Germany, and you’ve come across the notion of some kind of “Wall” being there, but that’s about the extent of your knowledge.
That’s what I’m here for, to help you learn a bit o’ history. Here are three links to help you understand what this upcoming anniversary is all about:
And now for a little bonus. Do you want to “feel” the Berlin Wall, in an emotional sorta way? I find the video below to be absolutely goose-bumpy! It features video clips concerning the Wall, accompanied by the song “Wind of Change” from the German band The Scorpions. The song is relevant: it was written with the revolutions of 1989 in mind. Put on your headphones, turn up the volume, kick back and immerse yourself in the Berlin Wall experience:
No excuses! Now you know about that infamous Wall and you’re prepared to talk about it in the coming week!
Bill Dawson
P.S. You can always read a book, too, if you find yourself more interested! Here is one wholly dedicated to the topic of the Berlin Wall. The book came out this year specifically because of the 20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall, which is celebrated on 09 November.
It’s Jeffrey Engel’s The Fall of the Berlin Wall: The Revolutionary Legacy of 1989. That link is for Amazon.com, but the book is also available via Amazon UK, Canada and Germany.
The photo of the Berlin Wall that accompanies this blog post is from Flickr user “vivaopictures”, who has graciously made it available to all of us via the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license. The suggested attribution is as follows:
We skipped a day yesterday, but here we are with links for 29 October 2009 concerning that very important moment in German History (and world history), the fall of the Berlin Wall. The 20th anniversary of that momentous event is coming up on 09 November 2009.
If you missed them, consider reviewing other recent entries containing links regarding the anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall. And don’t forget our special page dedicated wholly to Fall of the Berlin Wall Resources.
But thousands of people, mainly from former East Germany, are still applying every month. In the first half of 2009, applications were up nearly 11 percent on 2008.“We have had more applications this year because of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall,” said Martin Boettger, who heads a regional branch of the Stasi archives in Chemnitz, formerly Karl-Marx-Stadt.
“Many films and books are being made, events are being held, so it is in the public consciousness,” said Boettger, whose own file contains 3,000 pages, detailing even the most trivial facts of his life and branding him a “religious fanatic.” (my emphasis)
It really makes you wonder: what on earth could this particular citizen – Mr. Boettger – have done that could have been interesting enough to fill up 3,000 pages?
Today’s video is a report from Reuters about where pieces of the Wall have ended up:
Bill Dawson
P.S. We’re now just 11 days away from the 20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall. I’m going to be cutting back on these daily links — they won’t be daily anymore, because I almost feel like I’ve been spamming my own blog! 
So they’ll be a bit less frequent, and with some other bigger blog posts interspersed.
Here are links for 27 October 2009 concerning that very important moment in German History (and world history), the fall of the Berlin Wall. The 20th anniversary of that momentous event is coming up on 09 November 2009.
If you missed them, consider reviewing other recent entries containing links regarding the anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall. And don’t forget our special page dedicated wholly to Fall of the Berlin Wall Resources.
And now to today’s links:
Today’s video is a bit of a mystery. It’s a very well done production using the metaphor of the birth of a baby on November 9, 1989, to describe the birth of a new Europe. It looks very much like it could have been produced as an official advertisement for 20th Anniversary celebrations, but the person who posted the video did not provide any information at all concerning its origin. But that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable!
Here are links for 26 October 2009 concerning that very important moment in German History (and world history), the fall of the Berlin Wall. The 20th anniversary of that momentous event is coming up on 09 November 2009.
If you missed them, consider reviewing other recent entries containing links regarding the anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall. And don’t forget our special page dedicated wholly to Fall of the Berlin Wall Resources.
And now to today’s links:
Today’s video is from Sony Pictures Classics’ account at YouTube and features the trailer for the film “The Lives of Others” (Das Leben der Anderen), a German film concerning the Stasi and how it spied on East German citizens, particularly (as in the film) prominent authors or other artists who were seen as politically unreliable or even subversive.
More links tomorrow.
Until then,
Bill Dawson
P.S. “The Lives of Others”, the film whose trailer is shown above, is now available on DVD at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.ca and — in the original German — at Amazon.de.
Here are links for 23 October 2009 concerning that very important moment in German History (and world history), the fall of the Berlin Wall. The 20th anniversary of that momentous event is coming up on 09 November 2009.
If you missed them, consider reviewing other recent entries containing links regarding the anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall. And don’t forget our special page dedicated wholly to Fall of the Berlin Wall Resources.
And now to today’s links:
The Dynamos: Connected to the secret police. Every club with the Dynamo prefix (eg Berlin, Dresden) was directly answerable to the head of the Stasi, Erich Mielke, who had little difficulty jumping the “fit and proper person” hurdle.
It’s a fine article to remind us how utterly bizarre dictatorships sometimes are.
Today’s video is a bit humorous. It’s a segment from Intrepid Berkeley Explorer’s “Septemberfest” series. Watch those tourists hammer away at The Wall!
That’s it for this week. Come back next week for more links concerning the Fall of the Berlin Wall
Here are links for 22 October 2009 concerning that very important moment in German History (and world history), the fall of the Berlin Wall.
If you missed them, consider reviewing other recent entries containing Berlin Wall / GDR links. And don’t forget the Berlin Wall Resources page.
Today’s video is another in the Guardian’s series, “Berlin Wall: 20 Years On.” Unfortunately, the Guardian does not provide any embed code for this video, so you will actually have to visit that link to see it. This part — part four — of the series recalls 09 November 1989 itself. It includes a bit of trivia that I think a lot of people don’t know about: Günter Schabowski‘s mistaken belief — which he uttered aloud at a press conference — that the checkpoints were to be opened immediately. This was not, in fact, what the East German government had intended.
The transcript of Schabowski’s screw up can be seen at this PDF link from wilsoncenter.org. The critical part:
Schabowski: (um…)(reads:) “Permanent exit is possible via all GDR border crossings to the FRG. These changes replace the temporary practice of issuing [travel] authorizations through GDR consulates and permanent exit with a GDR personal identity card via third countries.”
(Looks up) (um) I cannot answer the question about passports at this point.
(Looks questioningly at Labs and Banaschak.) That is also a technical question. I don’t know, the passports have to … so that everyone has a passport, they first have to be distributed. But we want to…Banaschak: The substance of the announcement is decisive…
Schabowski: … is the …
Question: When does it come into effect?
Schabowski: (Looks through his papers…) That comes into effect, according to my information, immediately, without delay (looking through his papers further).
Labs: (quietly) …without delay.
Beil: (quietly) That has to be decided by the Council of Ministers.
Question: (…Many voices…) You only said the FRG, is the regulation also valid for West Berlin?
Schabowski: (reading aloud quickly) “As the Press Office of the Ministry … the Council of Ministers decided that until the Volkskammer implements a corresponding law, this transition regulation will be in effect.”
And that, as they say, was that.
Until next time,
Bill Dawson
A 15-page essay exploring the paths to treason taken by two of the most important members of the German military resistance to the National Socialist regime: General Ludwig Beck and Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg.
Choosing Disloyalty: Ludwig Beck & Claus von Stauffenberg
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From Beck's fastidious professionalism to Stauffenberg's aristocratic romanticism, the essay explores their rejection of the Hitler Oath and describes the thought processes they undertook to rationalize their eventual commitment to tyrannicide.
Available now for your Kindle device or Kindle Reader application.
Mary Fulbrook
The People's State: East German
Society from Hitler to Honecker
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My Overview (1)
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Previous Books of the Week
