GDR 1989 Archive

Fall of the Berlin Wall – 20th Anniversary – links for 27 Oct 2009

By
Bill Dawson
Published: October 27, 2009 23:59
Posted in: Berlin WallTags: | | | | | |

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:

  • One of the things I have noticed during the past few weeks of scouring the web for Fall of the Berlin Wall articles is that not much of the content is emanating from the U.S. national media, with the exception of the Wall Street Journal.  I have frequently, however, come across articles from the States that have a local angle.  I’ve ignored a lot of it, probably unjustly.  Today I will remedy that with something from the Jefferson City (Missouri) News Tribune, which announces Westminster College’s plans for 09 November.  Westminster has a special connection to the Iron Curtain that was symbolized by the Berlin Wall: it was there that Winston Churchill gave the famous “Iron Curtain” speech.
  • Staying with the local theme, we have the Pocono Record informing us that East Stroudsburg University is marking the 20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall by showing two films, one of which is “The Lives of Others”, the film we highlighted in yesterday’s links.
  • The BBC has an absolutely fantastic story to tell, that of Miklos Nemeth, who was Hungary’s prime minister in 1988.  As Prime Minister, Nemeth used his power over the country’s budget to almost single-handedly dismantle Hungary’s border with Austria, leading to an opening of the dike (so to speak) and the trickling out of several East Germans into Austria via Hungary.  The BBC story highlights the risks that Nemeth faced.

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!

Until tomorrow’s links,

Bill Dawson
P.S. Speaking of Churchill, he’s featured in this collection of famous great speeches. Now I know it’s time for you to start thinking about holiday gifts for your history buff friends, and this DVD looks like a great choice! It includes speeches by Churchill (the famous wartime speeches), Roosevelt, John F and Robert F Kennedy, all the way up into more recent times with speeches from President Clinton and others.
 

Fall of the Berlin Wall – 20th Anniversary – links for 23 Oct 2009

By
Bill Dawson
Published: October 23, 2009 17:20
Posted in: Berlin WallTags: | | | | | | | | | |

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:

  • Today, the 23rd of October 2009, is itself an anniversary of some significance.  In 1989, the 23rd of October fell on a Monday, which means the special and now famous Monday prayer service was taking place at the Nikolaikirche (St. Nicholas’s Church) in Leipzig.  As had already become tradition, a peaceful protest followed the prayer services. The Wall Street Journal Online reminds us that over 300,000 took part in those Leipzig demonstrations on 23 October 1989.
  • At Guardian.co.uk, Will Buckley remembers the DDR-Oberliga, the top football (soccer) league in communist East Germany.  His tagline: “When the Berlin Wall came down 20 years ago this month, it took with it one of the world’s weirder football leagues.”  He describes the four types of teams in the league, starting with the first:

    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

Fall of the Berlin Wall – 20th Anniversary – links for 22 Oct 2009

By
Bill Dawson
Published: October 22, 2009 00:59
Posted in: GeneralTags: | | | | | | |
Fall of the Berlin Wall – 20th Anniversary – links for 22 Oct 2009

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.

  • At CNET News, Tim Leberecht praises the Berlin Twitter Wall. I tweeted to #fotw, did you? :)
  • Marcus Walker of the Wall Street Journal Online addresses the doubts about which reporter elicited the history-changing response from Günter Schabowski at the press conference (see lead photo of this blog post) on 09 November 1989. Today’s video (see below) shows this press conference and gives you the background of what I’m talking about. Was it, in fact, Italian reporter Riccardo Ehrman? He received Germany’s highest honor for doing so, but a West German reporter is claiming it was he, not Ehrman, who opened the Berlin Wall. A fight for journalistic honor!

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

15 October 2009: Berlin Wall / End of the GDR links for today

By
Bill Dawson
Published: October 16, 2009 00:30
Posted in: Berlin WallTags: | | | | | | |

Some links for today in my ongoing series commemorating the 20th Anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall:

  • Did East Germans originate from apes? Well to find the answer to that question (which is, of course, a joke) you will need to see today’s article at Telegraph.co.uk titled “West German spies collected jokes from behind the Berlin Wall”.
  • “Germany: East is East” is the title of an article by Wolfgang Kerler appearing at the ipsnews.net site. The article highlights some of the major differences — for example in income and optimism — between western and eastern parts of Germany even today, 20 years later. One example: unemployment is 12% in the “new states” (the states that were once part of the GDR), whereas only 7% of the west german working population is jobless.
  • At the Wall Street Journal’s WSJ.com, see a slideshow of the wall being erected right now in Berlin — a wall that will be toppled quite soon.

Today’s video comes from the geobeats.com site, which I had never seen before and which looks very interesting. It is a video about the Berlin Wall produced by Sybille Spinola and hosted by the very charming Dörthe Eickelberg, who speaks perfect English throughout the video.

14 October 2009: Berlin Wall / End of the GDR links for today

By
Bill Dawson
Published: October 14, 2009 23:10
Posted in: Berlin WallTags: | | | | | | | | | | |

I have a few links today. Warning: the first two could be construed as political, particularly the second. I generally avoid politics like the plague in this blog. But I think these two balance each other a bit:

The next two items are resources, one of them audio, the other a very impressive map-based online tour of the area of the Wall and the artifacts along the perimeter.

  • iMinds.com has an eight minute forty-four second audio clip all about the Berlin Wall, available for $0.99 at Audible.com. I have not purchased it or heard it. But I just think it’s cool that someone is selling bite size pieces of educational audio like that.
  • The Brandenburg Technical University has put up a fantastic virtual tour of the perimeter of the Berlin Wall. Unfortunately the text is all in German, so you may not understand the captions attached to each market spot along the perimeter. But I still think it would be fun to click around on the map and popup some photos. You’ll get the idea when you get there… click on the map on the right side of the page, then just play around with the larger map that appears.

Finally, here is another video available at YouTube. It’s from ABC News (U.S.), narrated by Peter Jennings. It’s a nice look at the Wall’s fall and the subsequent collapse of other European communist regimes:

12 October 2009: Berlin Wall / End of the GDR links for today

By
Bill Dawson
Published: October 13, 2009 00:09
Posted in: Berlin WallTags: | | | | | | | |

Here are a few links I came across today, and another video.

  • I thought this was cool: students at the Communication and Culture graduate program at Indiana University are going to be partying like it’s 1989 to help celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Wall’s fall.
  • The AP (linked via ABC News (U.S.) has a look at the tunnels secretly built below Berlin (and the Wall) to help those wanting to escape the East. I definitely want to go back to Berlin to tour the “underbelly of the German capital.”

Today’s video is from the folks at germany.info (the German mission to the United States). It’s a very short one video whose only purpose is to advertise the slogan “Freedom Without Walls”, which they are using for their commemorations within the United States. But I liked the use of multiple U.S. Presidents in it.

11 October 2009: Berlin Wall / End of the GDR links for today

By
Bill Dawson
Published: October 11, 2009 22:46
Posted in: Berlin WallTags: | | | | | | | | |

I’ll be posting lots of links in the next month as we come upon the 20th anniversary of the opening of the checkpoints in Berlin on 09 November 1989. Today’s textual links concentrate on what some might consider the true anniversary date: two days ago, 09 October. This was the day in 1989 when a mass of 70,000 people successfully made their way arm-in-arm around the city of Leipzig in East Germany, singing “Wir sind das Volk” (We are the People) as they passed Stasi headquarters. No shots were fired, no blood was let. To many, this signaled the regime’s weakness and thereby spurred on continuing, ever-growing demonstrations.

I enjoy Tony Paterson’s article, “Europe’s Revolution: The pastor who brought down the Berlin Wall”, because he can insert a bit of personal perspective, having visited Leipzig that year to cover the city’s annual trade fair. His piece concerns Christian Führer, pastor of Leipzig’s Nikolai Church, which had become the famous location of the Monday prayer meetings which climaxed with the events of 09 October. Paterson:

The Monday meetings just kept growing and growing: from about 600 in late 1988 to 4,000 in September 1989.

At that point, the regime started cracking down:

“There were these terrible beatings,” recalled Führer.

That was in September. So you can imagine the tension that grew each Monday, with the participants knowing that the regime had now shown itself to be willing to use violence. Read Paterson’s article for the rest of the story.

The BBC’s Brian Hanrahan (“The Day I Outflanked the Stasi“) became very familiar with the events of 9 October 1989, having traveled there incognito to cover them. He escaped Stasi attempts to apprehend him and was later able to report what he saw on BBC television news. Read Hanrahan’s article and view the original television news segment.

I close with another great video found at YouTube. This concerns 9 November 1989 itself (not 9 October like the two articles mentioned above). I really enjoy this video for the up-close and personal footage it offers. Hundreds of East Berliners have descended upon the Bornholmer Strasse and are anxious to cross. The hesitation of the authorities is very evident here. Watch and enjoy!

One Month until 20th Anniversary of the Fall of Berlin Wall, and a nice video

By
Bill Dawson
Published: October 9, 2009 15:00
Posted in: Berlin WallTags: | | | | | |
One Month until 20th Anniversary of the Fall of Berlin Wall, and a nice video

Today is 9 October 2009, so that means there’s just one more month until the 20th anniversary of the opening of checkpoints along the Berlin Wall, which occurred on 9 November 1989.

This is just a short note to say I’ll probably emphasize this bit of history almost exclusively for the next month. I hope you enjoy the content. And don’t forget my Berlin Wall resources page!

Let’s start it all off with a video that I really like because it has absolutely no commentary whatsoever! It’s just clips of original material, and you all know how much I love original material! Don’t worry, there are also subtitles in English.

It’s a video produced by Deutsche Welle, Germany’s official international broadcaster. Enjoy it and see you soon!

Photo Credit

The lead photo for this article shows the Berlin Wall being built in 1961. The photo is in the public domain and available at Wikimedia Commons.