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Younghusband
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Younghusband

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November 8th, 2009

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And the wall came tumbling down

London Herald 1989 - Berlin Wall tumbles

Already today media outlets across the world are featuring tomorrow’s 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. I do not having anything to add except for my own memory: the coming down of the wall was the first international political event that I remember experiencing as a boy. I remember thinking, “History is being made today.”

I thought I would leave this an open thread if anyone has any comments or experiences to relate.

Comments to this entry

Roy Berman
November 8, 2009
12:51 pm
Same for me. Amazingly, I actually have a vague memory of watching it live on TV at my grandparent's house and while I don't remember what they were saying, they certainly seemed to think it was a big deal. I already knew about the wall, and how it represented communist and Russian oppression, but I don't think at the time I quite grasped the East/West Germany situation, and probably thought that the wall was between Berlin and Russia or something.
Joe Jones
November 8, 2009
1:24 pm
And same for me, too. I watched on an ancient black-and-white TV set in my family's dining room. I was taking German in elementary school at the time, and we made placemats in class the next day that looked like the German flag and said "Tag den Deutschen Einheit" (assuming that's correct; I've forgotten most of my German) Even back then, I was fascinated by the maps of divided Germany in our classroom--particularly the oddness of the West Berlin exclave. I really wanted to experience that sole autobahn connecting it to West Germany.
M-Bone
November 8, 2009
2:08 pm
Vague memory of the wall coming down. I remember Tiananmen Square more clearly. I was watching "Saved by the Bell" and it was preempted for a report.

I have even more clear memories of "Baby Jessica" in 1987. Guess that says something about the reportage priorities at the time.
Thomas
November 8, 2009
4:30 pm
I think that both the fall of the Berlin Wall and Tiananmen Square were turning points in our understanding of the world.

I'm 30. I was in the fourth and fifth grade when these things happened. I still remember what a big deal the cold war was, how every movie bad guy was Russian, that so many buildings in my home town bore the three inverted triangles indicating a fallout shelter, how, even in the late eighties, I was still taught to hide under my desk in case of a nuclear attack.

My girlfriend, who's coming up on 26, doesn't have a clear recollection of these things. To her Soviet-style socialism, the eastern bloc, glasnost, M.A.D. and "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" are all historical relics with no more obvious connection to modern life than the Boer War and the Teapot Dome scandal.

What's particularly interesting about that moment in history is that it was also at the same time that computers were becoming household objects. Anyone with experiential memories of the Soviet collapse also remembers a time before the internet, before cell phones and often before cable television.

There's a very clear generational divide between people born before the about 1983 and those born after. If only because that's right when CD's first hit the market, we might call them the Analog and the Digital generations. If you have a clear memory of Germans climbing atop the Brandenberg gate, of them chipping away at the wall with hammers and bits of rebar, of whole sheets of graffiti-strewn concrete being tugged down by cranes and, more importantly, if you understood the significance of these events as they took place, you are probably of the Analog generation. If you lack these memories, then you're probably more Digital.
Chief Wiggum
November 8, 2009
6:56 pm
The anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall at same time the EU Lisbon is ratified is not without irony. This is from the 11-4-2009 issue of Pravda:

Twenty Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall, the EU is a Reincarnation of the Former Soviet Union
By Hans Vogel

(Excerpt)

"Now that the Czech Republic has announced it will ratify the Lisbon Treaty, the EU will be even closer yet to becoming a unified monster state, with more than half a billion inhabitants. Inhabitants is the correct term, since “citizens” would indicate a set of political rights. The people living in the EU should rather be called “subjects,” since they have no influence whatsoever on the constitution of the centralized European government, the “European Commission.” The Europeans are allowed to vote for members of the European Parliament, but this body has about as much political power as the ineffectual German parliament meeting at Frankfurt in 1848. Political power in the EU is firmly in the hands of the European Commission, which is set to obtain even more power under the Lisbon Treaty. This infamous treaty does not hold the peoples of Europe in high regard. As a matter of fact, it is only halfway through the treaty (originally presented as a “Constitution”) that one finds the first references to the people."

http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/04-11-2009/110289-berlin_wall-0
M-Bone
November 8, 2009
8:42 pm
Great points Thomas. One thing to add would be the Gulf War around grades 7 and 8 - the war about which CNN told us everything material (a friend of mine was upset that the war ended before he got to see good footage of a A-10 blowing up tanks) and nothing human that couldn't easily fit on our trading cards.
Mikhail
November 9, 2009
12:34 am
Did anyone guess what was going through the minds of Western leaders?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6829716.ece
tdaxp
November 9, 2009
2:47 am
I /think/ I remember the wall coming down, but I have very clear memories before and after. I remember looking at maps of Europe, and thinking it was sad that because the world was normal now, the borders would never change again. (This was a pre-wall memory). I also remember expecting East Germany to become part of West Germany, though I am sure I did not appreciate the real dynamics of what was going on.
Curzon
November 9, 2009
3:41 am
Great article Mikhail -- thank you!!
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November 10, 2009
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David
November 17, 2009
12:38 am
I was in the Army during that time, and stationed in Baumholder, West Germany. I visited Berlin twice and was able to join in chipping away the wall. I still have a few small pieces.

It was two sets of walls of very tough slab of concrete - fiber reinforced with lots of rebar and huge round concrete tops - with a plain of finely raked sand in between. The wall on the East side (viewed from within East Berlin) was painted white and I never saw anyone walk near it. The wall facing West Berlin, which was actually within East Berlin territory, was painted all over in graffiti.