After the Fall: Looking Back on Berlin 30 Years Later

Apparently the author feels that it is a great idea to just open borders and let anyone go where they want. Oddly, many of us feel that is a recipe for total disaster. The barriers and walls between Mexico and the US weren't put up to keep people in Mexico. They were put up to keep people out of the US. The Berlin Wall was put up to keep people in. Sad that the author doesn't comprehend the minor details.

I was her during the wall. I am here again now. During the days of the celebration I have found myself sitting with "Osties" and hearing their stories. Today I walked the wall in a drizzle on Bernauer Strasse and looked again at the posted photos of life behind the wall. My brief acquaintances are musicians. photographers and book shop owners. One is a costume designer, another a concierge. They don´t miss the GDR. They remember. It is for them not about a guaranteed job and an apartment, but about being able to live and speak and think and write as they desire, what we for a long time considered secured American values and rights. Pompeo was in Berlin. I know this because my new friends were held up by his motorcade. That seems to be the only impression he left here. America, which kept Berlin alive with the Templehof airlift, is today of vanishing importance in the celebration of German democracy. Our Ambassador is subject to mocking, to the extent that anyone even knows he exists. Pompeo, a man obviously devoid of a sense of irony, gave a speech condemning the wall and praising its destruction. Every time I visit the rows of rebar that mark the location of the old wall, I leave enormously saddened by the wall´s history and its victims and simultaneously buoyed by its demise, all the while feeling that there is far less separation between the status of freedom in the US and the possibility of a Honneker control state than I once believed.

Look at the government of Frau Dr. Merkel, a former citizen of the GDR but one whose heart broke the day that a young Lebanese girl started crying. I lived, worked and studied in Germany for almost 30 years. Still today I do not understand why so many Germans expect Germany to be perfect. Sie leben wie die Maden im Speck und jammern vom Sonnenaufgang bis zum Sonnenuntergang. (They live like the maggots in lard but complain from sunrise to sunset.) I visited Dresden while it was still "Communist" and saw how ridiculous life there was. The guy I stayed with had "organized" a new bath tub (meaning, finagled a bit of bribery with an acquaintance who worked in a ceramic factory). A female government official tapped me on the shoulder at a gay dance party and told me that "we do not dance west here!". I wanted to buy a tie from a shop display but was told that it was already sold and just left there because it looked good. A woman stopped me and asked me for a banana. A policeman stopped me in my car - he wanted to drive around the block just to have the feeling of a Western car. Life wasn't horrible, just comical - sort of silly. And yes, Wessies and Ossies have to grow together, but so do the Batzis and the Nordlichter. Germany isn't and never was a perfect Volksstaat. The idea of a homogeneous German Volk is a myth. And "Multikulti" doesn't only mean accepting Greeks and Turks but also Rheinländer and Hessen, Sachsen and Schwaben with a few Danes and Sorbians thrown in.

Meanwhile, the Republicans have just unveiled a statue of Saint Ronnie on top of the US embassy overlooking the Brandenburg Gate, a statue the Berliners didn't want on their turf. In contrast, the Berliners themselves long ago renamed the square in front of the Rathaus Schoneberg John F. Kennedy Platz in honor of the thrilling speech he gave there shortly before his assassination. These days, the Republicans love to toss around the word "Stalinist". Ironically, it was the Stalinists who also threw up statues in the city Berliners didn't want either. Hopefully one of the first acts of the US ambassador who replaces the current Trumpist shill will have the god-awful thing removed.

It lacks a little nuance to oppose the wonderfulness of breaking through an actual and metaphorical ideological wall that stifled the liberty of millions, to a country's - any country's - desire to control its sovereign boundaries. Eg., the former allowed inhabitants of East Germany the opportunity to escape immoral/illiberal restrictions. The latter promises the unfettered entry of people not locked behind a wall the unfettered right to enter and reside anywhere - uncontrolled and in numbers that could harm the stability and security of the target country. I would be thrilled to claim a number of other countries as my new home by no more effort than a plane ticket. And the more public benefits they offer - the higher they are on my list. We need some balance and pragmatism brought to the conversation theoretical utopian futures. And, yes, the thriving countries need to hurry up and figure out ways to likewise thrive. There is too much suffering, but the better answer is to empower people to thrive in place, not empty out the countries of their best and brightest.

I was born in West Berlin (American military), a qualifying distinction that is often no longer available on electronic forms. This disconcerts me. Has the now world forgotten the state of the world then which made this distinction so important? I allow a glimmer of concession that perhaps the absence of that distinction shows the unity that was the promise when the wall came down. Still, something annoys me that it has been removed; something about forgetting. [Interim history deleted because comment too long otherwise.] I am sorry there are Eastern Germans who feel left behind. I am sorry that too many feel their identity must be a specific culture. I wish more would understand their identity to be one’s own collection of experience, knowledge, interactions, introspection and outlook. A person should have no walls. And this is where the significance of that political distinction remains important to me. There once was a wall built to impose a predefined identity on one side. That great moment when people of both sides intermingled with champagne spilling remains one of my favorite moments of history – a moment when people asserted that their identity could not be walled in. Let's not forget.

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” Oh, the irony. Look who's leading the U.S. now.

In this celebration of the fall of the wall, we should not forget the critical role played by Gorbachev, upon whose orders the Soviet military units in East Germany remained in their barracks. Thus, there would be no return to Khrushchev's intervention as in Hungary in 1956 or Brezhnev's suppression of the Czechs in 1968. Gorbachev's fortitude showed that he deserved the 1990 Nobel award.

There is the irony of Trump trying to build a wall while we celebrate the Wall coming down thirty years ago. I visited Berlin a year after the wall came down when telephone lines and road maps often did connect east and west. Asking directions was a problem. Many Germans only knew their side of the artificial border. I went back to Berlin five years ago where the wall stands in portions like the old Roman ruins stand, a curious ruin. Or place for selfies. When the wall fell my husband, born in Germany , said the Second World War was finally over. I wonder what we will say when Trump's wall is destroyed...or finished. Walls are like periods at the end of a sentence inviting us to think no further.

Who could have predicted that the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany would, a generation later, lead to autocrats and dictators running much of the world? Now that the greatest generation is mostly gone, we can undo their hard-won victory over the Axis Powers, and re-establish evil alliances.

Under the German Democratic Republic and Socialism, the common people there had a worker centric government--with guaranteed employment, low rents, nearly free transit, free medical care, free education and free day care . . . Capitalism, on the other hand, has brought the "Easterners" exploitation, radical insecurity and a drastic drop in living standards. No wonder a large majority of those people repeatedly express their regret over losing their Socialist system. The destruction of the GDR by the West was not a unification but an annexation.

Politics is not a fairy tale. There are no "happily ever afters." The fall of the Berlin Wall was a moment of triumph, rightly celebrated at the time and rightly remembered as an historical turning point today. But those in a position to help the former Soviet states build successful democratic institutions messed up. Today we live with the consequences: one man rule in Putin's Russia, populist "illiberal" democracy in Orban's Hungary, and the spread of something similar to Germany, Poland, and Trump's America. Nativism, xenophobia, and authoritarianism are on the rise seemingly everywhere. How many times must the Berlin Walls of the world come down before freedom and democracy are given a sound foundation? How many times must the fall before we realize that the campaign to bring them down never ends.

Gorbachev was 54 when he became General Secretary and 58 when the wall fell. I'm not sure that qualifies as a young new leader. The analogy between a border wall with Mexico and the Berlin Wall is false as well, but an anti-Trump theme seems required for a NYT op-ed these days. The surveillance of today may be ubiquitous, but it's primarily self-inflicted via internet tracking. Comparison to the Stasi is a stretch.

One big difference between the Berlin wall and the southern boarder wall, one was built to keep people in and the other is being built to keep people out. And not one word about Ronald Reagan in this article. Shameless!

Joyous happiness is ephemeral. Work for contentment. It lasts. Die Mauer muss weg!!

I still cry when i see these pictures and videos, even though I'd seen them so often. My mother grew up 100m from the border that was to become the wall. My aunt fled the GDR to marry my uncle in West Berlin. Half my family on my mother's side I never knew, them living in East Germany. Racing home with my bike after hearing the news and hugging my mother, crying, after what we never realistically hoped to experience, makes this day still one of the best days in my life. I just hope that people remember every now and then, that without freedom, everything else just pales and is worth hardly half as much. And that they fight against those who want to it away from them.

What a great article. Rabbits? Sure, the analogy is apt. But now I think of Germans more as valiant lions. Lions because the Germans have been heroic. Heroic for subsidizing a profligate EU. Heroic for subsidizing unification with a hopelessly corrupted East Germany. Heroic for welcoming refugees, even though they did not cause the problem in Iraq and Syria. Merkel did this at great cost, and full on faced the hate her moves triggered in and outside Germany. No people will forget the great German people who have welcomed people since 1945 - despite all costs. My hat is off to them. They will forever be part of the beautiful narrative of post WWII Europe.

Like most Berliners, I never thought I'd see the Wall come down. And like most Berliners, I still have mixed feelings about it. Gone are the first few days of euphoria when the city (and the country) felt reunited again after years of being surgically separated by a country that bore little resemblance to the rest of Germany. Now it just seems we're left with the festering resentment of those from the East who never felt like they were accepted, and confronted with a different set of problems that haven't been able to draw us any closer together. For those who never had the experience of crossing from West-Berlin into East-Berlin, it's hard to describe just how harrowing it could be. Let it suffice it to say that any country that builds watchtowers and has border guards with orders to shoot and kill those trying to escape, is not a place where one would choose to stay. That's why they left in droves. But they also brought the wall with them. And here we are three decades later still coming to terms with it. Old divisions have been replaced with new ones. Now it's not the East German Communist Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands that holds sway over the people, it's the Alternative für Deutschland and other right-wing nationalist groups that champion German heritage and anti-immigrant sentiments that have taken hold. And Germans are now forced to ask themselves what does "being German" really mean. Maybe it will take another 30 years for us to find the answer.

Amen. The U.S. chattering classes, depressed by Trump, have become too pessimistic about humankind generally. When I came of age in the 1970s, the Free World was a sliver in a planet dominated by dictatorship. Now even the last great authoritarian bastion, China, is free in ways that were unimaginable then.

I recommend watching “The same sky” on Netflix. A fantastic miniseries about two families in 1970s Germany, separated by the wall.

I remember sitting in a bar in my hometown that New Years Eve watching the news of the past year. As a young man worried about all out nuclear war, the Soviets pouring through the Fulda Gap, or worst case, fighting them in my backyard a la “Red Dawn”. It was a remarkable time, that we might actually make it through this. Although the Soviet Union dissolved itself two years later, this is when the high state of fear and anxiety fell significantly. I read George H. W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft’s book A World Transformed a few years ago. I would highly recommend it to anyone curious about this period. I had forgotten how much the U.K., France, and the Soviet Union (along with many other European nations) opposed German reunification. Seems amazing now how President Bush and Chancellor Kohl managed that without massive disruption or realignment in the international order.

A moving, effective piece, thank you. (I also recommend clicking on the Fukuyama link included here -- a remarkable summary of history!) Like others commenting, I recollect the emotion surrounding the destruction of the Wall -- and contrast it with the ugly irony of Trump's desire to (re)build his own version today. As a Texan, I see that he's got a chunk of it now going up this moment in this state -- a great way to distract from impeachment news. The rabbits are a brilliant intro here: in a way, we are today all walled-in rabbits anxiously trapped between yesterday and tomorrow. God knows whether we'll stay stuck between fears of a growing autocracy and hopes for a renewed democracy -- let's hope we have the courage to break down the wall ourselves and avoid the catastrophe that comes from inaction.

Nicely done, Serge.

Yesterday I heard a German woman interviewed on NPR; she curates a museum about the wall, one filled with unbearably poignant memorabilia about the impact on those on the ground and the desperate efforts to scale and sail over it. There is a balloon. The man in it died. There was a car where the insides had been jiggered so a person could be concealed where the engine lies. It made 8 successful journeys, but on the 9th a perceptive guard noticed it was hanging low; the woman inside was shot. The curator described the day the wall fell. Thirty years later she was crying just as she had wept that day. I sat in my car crying with her, lingering so I could hear every word of these outposts from a time of nearly unimaginable tribulation and triumph. I can't be the only person who roots my deep-seated loathing of this notion of building a wall along our borders in an equally deep understanding of the history of walls. Nations invested in building bridges--cultural, financial, social, educational, international --are invested in life. Walls are designed to incarcerate, keep some out, privilege territory over people. Late in his life, Frost continued to marvel that so many readers had fundamentally misunderstood his poem, "Mending Wall." He wondered how it could be that anyone reading it had missed the sarcasm. No. He did not think walls make "good neighbors." The poem suggests the opposite and the opening line is the key. "Something there is that doesn't love a wall".

So the left is comparing the Berlin Wall to Trunp’s border wall now? That’s offensive to Americans and Germans alike.

So close. But so far away. The essay begins as a reflection on false hope. And it is so clearly right. Then, it goes to the fact that the future is so very hard to know. Clearly right again. But then it degenerates into a slobbery assurance that Nirvana is just around the corner. Woe unto the rabbits who expect to inherit the earth. Animal Farm dipes not turn out well for the animals. And over and over, the new boss is the same as the old boss. The first half of the essay hits the mark. The second half is pie in the sky. Rabbits should never forget that the tortoises may outrun them and the future may bring rabbit stew.

Don't smile at your utopian naiveté. The world might have turned out the way we hoped, had we all pulled together. Unfortunately, our National Security Establishment, probably to maintain the market for its services, led the US into two actions that were at least part of the reason for the tragic outcome. First, Poland, Hungary, and Romania, at least, did not go through the self-examination of the dark side of their actions in WWII. Rather, unlike the west Europeans, they were encouraged to continue with their victim ideology, heroic nations that had nothing of which to be ashamed. The object for the West was to maintain East Europe's antipathy toward Russia, shiningly cleansed though it had become. Contemporary self-regarding authoritarian Hungary, Poland, and much of the rest of that part of the continent is the result of America's opportunistic coddling of the various states' anti-Russian chauvinism. Three years after the fall, the West cashed in on this opportunism to begin the march of NATO to the Russian border. Of course, we Russians, at home and in the Diaspora both, are to blame for all this. After all, we invaded Ukraine five years ago. No wonder the West had to come after us twenty-five years ago. I don't know about you. I'm Russian and like an alley cat can handle just about anything. I do find the racism toward us in my native America irritating. Am I fantasizing it? Check out the Comments on Russian items (or Trump items) in the Number 2 paper.

this boomer has two great memories of the "Wall" Kennedy's "ich bin ein berliner" speech and leonard bernstein conducting the berlin philharmonic playing beetoven's ode to joy (freedom) at the wall ,in the rain,on christmas day 1989 a moment filled with such hope for the future.......

Ironic, We are building a wall to keep people out . oh well. Germany, you have come a long way, Your country is kind of like a 1976 2002. Kinda cool in it's fighting spirit. You grow to love it.

As someone who lived and worked in both East Germany and Moscow for brief periods during the eighties, I can assure you that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical tragedy of the twentieth century.

We had an au pair living with us from West Germany. She was learning English and we had a hard time describing what was going on, so I just called her parents in Germany and passed the phone over to her.

This is an exhilarating article that brought back a flood of memories from 30 years ago. Arguably the assimilation of the East and West in Germany has been a tough slog. The allegorical bunnies who were looking for lettuce found "cats, dogs, and cars" instead. This does not take away from the yearning for freedom as those in the Arab world and Hong Kong are clamoring for. These movements seem to go one step forward only to go back two steps. All this suggests is that we must be vigilant and continue the fight against tyranny and oppression even as we celebrate past victories. There is much work left to be done.

Right. The human spirit is strong; the hope for freedom eternal. Often to those of us living in a free society, folks living under oppression can seem to have accepted their situation. Then an opening occurs in their world and their true desires show forth. I volunteer teaching refugees English. Their stories are ones of courage, perseverance, disappointment, and pain. They are often harrowing. Still, they have pushed on. The few who are lucky enough to actually reach this country still face a long and tough road ahead, yet they are energized, joyful, and hopeful for a future where they can have a good measure of peace and freedom. Others will take other routes and end up in different places, but they will never stop trying even when they meet huge obstacles. Such is the human spirit.

Rather interesting. Gorbachev gets a brief mention. Even Trump, but in a negative context. No mention, however, of Pope John Paul II or Reagan.

The Berlin Wall was the central symbol of the iron curtain, and its accidental opening a turning point leading to the demise of the Cold War of the Soviet Union, but the opening did not originate in Berlin. Its origins lay with with western TV and Radio Free Europe reaching people in the East, with the peaceful coexistence Ostpolitik of Brandt, with West Germans being allowed to visit relatives in East Germany, with the Solidarity movement in Poland, with Gorbachev's reforms, and then -in 1989- the inspiring but sobering experience of the crushed protest movement in China, church rallies in East Germany, and Hungary allowing East Germans to emigrate west via Austria. All that and more helped prompt the accidental Berlin wall opening.

Astounding that the wall has been down more years than it divided! Do admit that I am always puzzled at how often these articles of rememberence seem to studiously avoid arguably the most substantial triggering event - Reagan's famous 'tear down this wall' speech.

There is a lot of criticism in Germany about how the reunification was done, but the fall of the wall will always remain a testimony to the impossibility to keep a population under tyranny forever.

The euphoria back then was reflected in the jokes about bewildered East Germans emerging into an opulent West. Most of them had never seen exotic fruit like mangoes, papaya, and even bananas. "How do you use a banana as a compass?" "Put it on the Berlin Wall. The end that is bitten off points East."

Walls imprison people living on both sides of it. In the US, those who support building The Wall may not recognize how the physical wall - along with the language and policies that go with it - trap them as well as those they would keep out. Because of course the Trumpian Wall is much more than a physical barrier - it is a psychological and rhetorical barrier that blocks the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual freedom of its adherents. In that sense, Trump’s Wall imprisons and diminishes those in the US as much or more than those on the other side.

Listened to the wall description falling down on public radio in my car. In 1989. It occupied our collective consciousness as the outcome of world war2 . Peace? Finally? Violent reports from the 1950’s airlifts of food to those locked behind “ the Iron Curtain”. I thought we would finally enjoy the “peace dividend “ fighting and dying in wars ad nauseum had caused. But Washington and our leaders had other plans. Look at what they wrought to date on society to keep their warmongering . So sad to know that was our last peaceful and joyful moment as humans worldwide. I thought my sleeping baby in her car seat would have a better world now at age 32. Every day brings more disgusting news stories of division. Dishonesty and ruminating war plans.