Agenda Magazine

Remembering the Fall of the Berlin Wall

I believe that my generation - those born immediately after the Second World War - in both Finland and Germany now look back and feel lucky to have never experienced the atrocities and sufferings of real warfare. However, the international situation throughout the '50s and '60s was not without risks; the tension in Europe resulted from the division of the continent into two military and political blocks, especially perceptible in Germany and its former capital Berlin.

The violent suppression of the uprisings in East Germany 1953, Hungary 1956 and 1968 in Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union indicated that no change in the eastern bloc system was to be tolerated. The existence of East Germany as a socialist state could, since 1961, only be maintained by totally closing its borders. The most extreme solution was found: the construction of a 156km long concrete wall around West Berlin. Even in the 1980s the East Germany party leader Erich Honecker predicted in January 1989 its necessity for the next 100 years to come.

When this wall suddenly became pervious on November 9th 1989, when 10,000 East Berliners could not be stopped and were allowed to pass through the check points, it seemed unbelievable. I had once spent many years in West Berlin and part of my German family lived in East Germany, although I always had the possibility to visit them with my Finnish passport - they could not do the same. As realistic beings we had accepted the situation, but there always existed this longing, not only for freedom to travel, but for democratic and economic freedom. Had this moment come now? Had the citizens of East Germany overcome their fear and political paralysis?

I, as many others, was electrified by the news and decided to immediately fly to Berlin. From the airplane landing at the East German airport Schönefeld I could see hundreds of little Trabi-cars in a line and masses of people crossing the nearby, now completely open, border to West Berlin. For me, and certainly even more for East Germans, this was a moment of joy, yet I still remember the comments of some East German party functionaries sitting in row behind me who found all this “disgusting”.

After arriving in the centre of West Berlin, I noticed every free space was packed with curious people from the East. On that weekend over a million East Germans visited West Berlin. On the western side of the Wall some people had begun, little by little, hacking Honecker's Wall into pieces. The late famous cellist, conductor and humanitarian Mstislav Rostropovich had come to Berlin and we could listen to him playing in front of the Wall as a long and intolerable pressure had been taken away.

Certainly, the atmosphere of happiness was overwhelming, but when I talked to people there was also a kind of seriousness or uncertainty about what was still to come. One of the most symbolic places in Berlin is the Brandenburg Gate, the voluminous Wall which separated the Gate from the West, was now occupied by a string of border guards of the GDR. There were no delirious Berliners dancing on it anymore, as we know from the pictures from the first night and which have become one of the icons of this historical event. Could a provocative incident lead to shootings and outbreak of panic? What were the intentions of the Soviet army, of which more than 300,000 men were stationed around Berlin? However, not a single shot was fired and that was the real wonder of the fall of the Wall.

The people who were demanding democracy did not become aggressive, and most of the people in leading positions, not to mention the political leaders in Moscow and Washington D.C., did not want a military escalation. The results were not only the changes towards democracy in East Germany, but throughout all parts of Eastern Europe - in Germany it lead quickly to the unification of the country.

There is an argument that unification did come too fast, but I agree with those who say that it had to, otherwise the chance could have been lost. The East Germans built up great hopes, which partly were deceived. They measured all achievements, not with other former socialist countries, but always with the living standards in West Germany, which of course was no complete paradise either - perhaps the expectations were too optimistic.

Many people I knew lost their jobs and they had a hard time, but I never heard any of them say that they would have wanted the old system back. There have been many improvements and economic progress in the eastern parts of Germany. To see them, one has only to compare the infrastructure of the former GDR. Those who remember the gloominess of large parts of cities, such as Leipzig, and now see them must admit the positive changes. Mentally there are, of course, still differences between East and West, but that is nothing unusual in German history, and it is nothing to be worried too much about.