Berkley Center

When I was younger, there were four dates that my father drilled into my head, even before I had a firm understanding of their true significance: 753 BC—the year Rome was founded; July 14, 1789—the “start” of the French Revolution; September 1, 1939—the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany; and November 9, 1989—the fall of the Berlin Wall. November 9, 2019 was a date I have been looking forward to since applying to study abroad in Berlin. After my experiences with Tag der Deutschen Einheit (German Unification Day), which is celebrated on October 3, my anticipation for the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall only intensified.

During the course of the week leading up to the official date of the fall of the wall, there were a variety of events and exhibits set up around the city. Many of these exhibits employed video montages and “then vs. now” photographic comparisons in order to not only celebrate the opening-up of the border between East and West Berlin, but also to pay tribute to what the reality “once was” in Berlin. The week-long commemoration culminated in an enormous celebration at the Brandenburg Gate on the night of November 9.

That night I could hear a variety of languages being spoken around me as I stood on Straße des 17. Juni with hundreds of others who had come together to celebrate the date on which the trajectory of world history was completely altered. The cold of the night was forgotten as we watched photo and video montages of life with and after the wall, listened to speeches from men and women who fled from East Germany to the west, and watched a spectacular firework show that lit up the united Berlin sky.

When I returned home from the celebrations at the Brandenburg Gate, I found my host mother in the living room watching a program on the development of eastern and western Germany since 1989. Based on our previous conversations about her life and experiences living in West Berlin after the construction of the wall, I was a bit surprised that she did not attend the celebrations herself. She asked me how the event was, and I told her about my experience amidst the multitude of people and how during the entire celebration I could not get over the fact that for nearly 30 years, none of us would have been able to walk to the other side of the gate. 

In response to my reflection, my host mother shared with me how much happiness she felt in her heart remembering the moment 30 years ago, when she realized what had happened. Her face beamed with pure joy when she recounted how she and her family went to the east-west border in the early hours of November 10, 1989 to welcome East Berliners, who were still pouring into the west after having overpowered the border control the night before. She had personally lived through the dissolution of the divide that I was celebrating with a music concert, fireworks, and hundreds of other people. But such a celebration was incongruous with her emotions and reflections on the memory of the wall and its fall. I then understood why she had not attended the event. I was celebrating something I had read about and studied as a general historical narrative. She was reflecting on and commemorating something she experienced first-hand, a lived historical narrative. The articles I read and the facts I learned were based on her story, the stories of individual people.

We sat down together at the kitchen table and looked through a series of images that juxtaposed locations around Berlin when the wall was still standing and what these exact same places look like today. My host mother remarked how she had largely forgotten where the wall once stood. She had not fully grasped how much the older concrete border overlapped with her daily life today. As we sat and looked together, I realized how fleeting the past was: Something that had been a fact of life for 30 years was essentially overnight no longer the case. While my host mom used to be threatened with bullets by East German border guards for getting too close to the wall during Sunday strolls, today she travels to what was once East Berlin every day for work. Along with this realization regarding “that which once was,” comes the significance of remembrance. In this case, the remembrance of what the wall had meant and how different life was during its existence. Remembrance also of the fact that if it could happen once, it could happen again.

As our discussion came to a close, my host mother asked me if I had seen the candle outside of the apartment building. I had. On the sidewalk just beside the door to the building is a Stoperstein, “stumbling stone,” which my host mother had had installed in the memory of a man who lived in the building before her and who had been a victim of the Third Reich. November 9 also marks the day of Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass.” My host mother had lit a candle beside the stumbling stone, in remembrance.

Regarding the Berlin Wall, my experiences with its remembrance have left lasting impressions on me since the moment I stepped foot in Berlin, months before November 9. Prior to coming to Berlin, I saw the Berlin Wall and its historical end as fascinating political phenomena. I had studied them as historical facts and had analyzed their political implications—on European integration, Cold War politics, the role of the United States on a global level, etc. My time in Berlin has completely altered my understanding of the historical reality of the Wall, starting with one of the very first trips I went on with my program here. During the second week of my study abroad program, I visited the Berlin Wall Memorial. By that time, I had already had the chance to get to know Berlin a little bit. I had had the chance to interact with locals and to begin to feel a part of the life of the city. Berlin was no longer a history term or a dot on a map. It became people.

Our group watched a video clip about both the Berlin Wall in the museum part of the memorial. The video included scenes of workers constructing the Wall and an explanation of how the Wall and its accompanying Todesstreifen (death strip) functioned to “protect” German Democratic Republic from fascism. At the end of the video was footage from November 9, 1989 and the days that followed. When I watched the scenes of East Berliners overpowering the border guards, sitting on top of the wall, embracing West Berliners and themselves, I could not help but cry.

After spending so much time in Berlin it is even more difficult for me to imagine how a wall could have been erected through the heart of the city—completely dividing the lives of East- and West-Berliners. It is hard for me to wrap my head around how a concrete wall could have existed in areas that I walked through so casually: the crisscrossing sidewalks of Kreuzberg, the Oberbauerbrücke, and the Brandenburg Gate.

Nevertheless, the wall was the reality for nearly 30 years. But in 1989, the wall came down. It did not just fall; it was brought down. It was brought down by ordinary people who decided for themselves that enough was enough. Both the wall and Berlin have completely different meanings for me today. They are not just the manifestations of Cold War politics. The fall of the Berlin Wall embodies something inexplicably humanizing about the world. On November 9, 1989, ordinary people decided that no more would they be denied basic rights to human freedoms. On November 9, there were no guns. There was no battle. Just people. And in the end—at the foundations of international affairs, diplomacy, and war and behind the theorems and jargon and politicking—that is all that there is.