The fall of the Berlin Wall (PART 1) - East Germany opens the doors (BBC News November 9, 1989)
Summary I was in Berlin on the weekend of the Berlin Wall was torn down is the only written personal account of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
This account was published in the grammar for writing the full course by Phyllis Goldenberg et al Sadlier-Oxford, 1999; The Berlin Wall Cindy Wall Greenhaven Press, 2003; Writing and grammar Wayne King et al Bob Jones University Press, 3rd edition 2009; World Cultures and Geography McDougal Littell, 2008; The Chronicles of the Cold War of the Wars of America by Josepha Sherman Lerner Publications, 2003; published by Maskew Miller Longman South Africa, 2013 The author was interviewed by the BBC and ITN UK and NPR in the United States.
I earned my Master's degree at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, where was my minor in political science with a focus on the history of 20th century German politics.
Berlin, 11 and November 12, 1989 on Thursday, November 9, 1989, and Friday 10, the television and radio in Denmark was filled with news about events in Berlin Berlin Wall would fall Saturday morning, November 11 I heard on the radio that east Germany collapsed in the spur of the moment, I suggested to Karen, my Danish wife and two Danish friends, Rolf Reitan and Nana Kleist that we should go to Berlin we talked about what we should make a revolution, it was a very cold and dry November day we selected a dozen boiled eggs, coffee thermos pot extra warm clothing, sleeping bags, and a battery-powered radio the four of us piled into my old Volkswagen bug 25 years and we drove off.
It is normally an eight hour drive from Aarhus, Denmark, in Berlin we took the highway down to Hamburg, then through one of the transit routes in Berlin is the German center of the East There are only three roads to West Germany access to the border town of Brunswick Braunschweig, the German side, we started to see the first Trabant These are small cars is German they look like t toy cars, they look like Donald Duck's car was designed by a famous east German industrial designer in the 50 years and it has never changed is the only car in the world with tail it cheap thin metal that easily rust the two-stroke engine buzzes like a lawn mower and smoke clouds pumps God help you if you're standing near a Trabant, the Germans call trabis have a maximum speed 'envir is 50 mph.
After a pizza in Braunschweig, we drove to the German border with Germany It was about 23 hours at night now, traffic began to slow Soon there was heavy traffic in the distance, there was a huge cloud of light Nobody knew what was going on the radio, reports have followed, contradicting Soon we began to pass the cars that were parked along both sides of the Autobahn people were walking along, while moving towards the border.
We finally reached the border just after midnight, the East German border has always been a serious armed guards spot you kept in your car, watching the attempts of escapes Tonight was a different country, more than 20,000 East Germans and West gathered there in a big party like every Trabi came through, people cheered and clapped east Germans crossing the applause, grimacing, dazed, like thousands of flashbulbs went bottling was was spectacular the cloud of light turned out to be the tens of thousands of car lights in a huge cloud of exhaust Trabi We got out of the car and started walking between the car lanes, the flow of people walking, talking under one lig ht, a group of musicians playing violins and accordions and men and women were dancing in circles Despite brill amment the cold night, the car's windows were open and everyone is talking about.
We met people from Belgium, France, Sweden, Spain, England, they had all left home and come see the wall is demolished Germans were drunk with joy Everyone spoke in all kinds of languages and the languages of the french half spoke German and Spanish speaking french and everyone spoke a little German We walked for some time with a french family of Belgium, the mother had packed her two young daughters in the car and came bubbling German revolution.
With everyone heads to Berlin were thousands of East Germans; They had been in Western Europe for a tour blitz with children and grandmother in the back, looking around and drive again without passports, they had just driven across borders Amused border guards of Western Europe let them pass They smiled and waved to everyone.
At the checkpoint, which is a 25-way place, people milled around It was nearly 3 am by now it took us three hours to go through the bottling cheers and applause West Germans are environmentally conscious and if they're stuck in traffic, they turn the motor and push their cars Germans from the east, the other, sitting in their trabis, to clouds of exhaust all the world had their radios on and everywhere were people music had climbed into trees, signs, buildings, everything, wave and yell television crews stood by filming set up folding tables and handing out cups A coffee Polis engineer and his wife were out of gas; someone gave us a rope, so we tied the rope to his car dragged them along.
We crossed the border on both sides of the watchtowers were empty and the barbed wire was set aside in large heaps signs told us that we needed to drive document sets German guard asked if we had documents that I handed him my cat Danes s immunization records, Danish, he waved us through.
We finally were inside East Germany on the highway transit in Berlin We could see the lights stretching into the distance, a river of light that winds through the hills and valleys as far as the you could see that we had our odometer and saw that in the opposite direction the two routes were and would fill arrested for 35 kilometers We counted the people and cars for a kilometer and perhaps guessed another hundred thousand people were heading west to West Germany.
We drove along, listening to the radio The thing went back, describing events in the streets and where people gathered on the wall, there were reports of scuffles and arrests Large crowds began to form police in the crowds stood around There were reports of rumors of soldiers and military vehicles, the East and the West at some point in the wall, the crowd began to break down the wall They managed to win a slab of 3 meters.
We arrived in Berlin at 4: 30 pm five hours than usual at first led us to Brandenburgerplatz, where the law of the Winged Victory stands on top of a column of 50 meters, which celebrates a military victory in 1890 on Denmark cars were abandoned everywhere, wherever there was space over 5000 people were there, I began to talk to the people we left the car and started walking in a village of television trucks, giant satellite dishes, emergency generators, and cable reels, tents and slept under cameramen satellite dishes on the wall, West German police and the army was aligned to avoid chaos West German military trucks were lined up against the wall, to protect it against the Germans of the West hundreds of West German police stood in rows with their large shields above the wall, aligned with the rest parade If East German soldiers with their West German groups rifles stood around fires they built Nobody knew what was happening.
After a while, we went to Potsdamer Platz This used to be the center of Berlin All traffic once passed through the Potsdamer Platz Now there was a large empty field, bisecting the wall was near the mound that was the remains of Hitler's bunker, from which he commanded Germany in the total defeat we talked to the Germans, and many said that the next break in the wall would be, it was still very dark and cold 5 hours Maybe 7,000 people were pressed together, shouting, cheering, applause We pushed through the crowd on the German side of the East, we heard the sound of heavy machinery with a giant drill, they were holes in time a drill pushed through, everyone applauded the lights come on banks klieg people shot fireworks and flares and beaucou emergency flares p used hammers to chip away at the wall There were countless holes in one place a crowd of East German soldiers looked through a narrow hole We reached across and shook hands, they could not see th e crowd so they asked what was happening and we describes the scene for them someone lent me a hammer and I hit pieces of rubble from the wall, dropping several handles in my pocket the wall was made cheap concrete, breaking the Russians had used too much sand and water.
Progress seemed rather slow and we thought it would take a time The car wouldn t start without pushing more we returned to town for coffee or beer or whatever we rode on the Kurfurstendamm the Ku Damm, the plants hundreds of thousands of people boulevard walked, going in and out of stores, looking around, drinking thousands of cheap champagne east German champagne bottles littered the streets thousands of trabis were parked where they found a space between the trees, between the park benches, on the islands of traffic everything was open restaurants, bars, nightclubs, while yesterday more than two million East Germans had entered the Berlin radio reported that more than 100,000 came every hour with the Berlin population of three million, there were more than five million people milling around in the joy lirante to celebrate the meeting of the city after 28 years on August 12, 1961-9 November 1989 A newspaper banner headlines wrote Germany was reunited in the streets.
The East German government collapsed money is German was without West Germany gave value to all East Germans 100 Deutschmark, which amounted to several months wages Radio has announced that banks and post offices would open at 9 am so people can take their money with a stamp in their identity papers of thousands queued.
We left our car in front of Gedankniskirchen, the Memorial Church, a bombed ruins of a church, left as a memorial to victims of the war.
We entered a bar Almost everything was sold A huge crowd talking and laughing at once, we found a table An old woman came and asked if we were Germans told us no, Danish, and guest and family at our table we shared chairs and beer They were east Germans, the mother, father and daughter, she worked in a factory, her husband was a plumber, and daughter worked in a store they came from a small village of several hundred kilometers south the old woman said she had last seen it in Berlin 21 years ago and could not recognize it they told us about the chaos of recent weeks, I asked what they had bought in Berlin they all released their their water guns they thought it was so funny to fill water guns with beer and shoot everyone, the family had driven a cat in an alley and mang a dinner of bananas, a luxury for them, we talked about movies; they knew the directors and cameramen Father was very happy at the idea of being able to travel He wanted to go to Peru and see Machu Picchu, then in Egypt and see the pyramids They had no desire to live in the West they were unemployed current and drug problems Their apartment rent was 2 a month, a bus ticket costs less than one cent.
At about seven o'clock, we left and headed back to the Potsdamer Platz Old Volkswagens gift t have gas gauges The car ran out of gas someone said that there was a gas station five blocks from the people joined to push the car to the gas station when we arrived, people were standing around electricity failed in the neighborhood for petrol pumps were dead the owner shrugged the small and barely we waved to the cafe dozens of East Germans, young, old, children, stood around drinking coffee After an hour, electricity came and we filled the tank with a crowd of people, we pushed the car down the street three times to get it to start we went back to Potsdamer Platz.
Everything was out of control police on horses watched There was nothing they could do the crowd had swollen people were blowing horns galpine lon who made a huge noise There were fireworks, kites , flags and flags and flags, dogs, children the wall was finally broken levees cranes east side tiles and the west German Police had exchanged hats to get a better view, hundreds of people were climbing on the west German side store We scampered wall people helped each nine feet; some exercise, others fired Throughout the building, people have paid the wall Berlin Wall itself, which is 3 meters high, people had climbed up and sat astride the slab final has been moved away a stream of Germans from the East started flowing through people applauded and slapped back a woman handed me a giant bottle of wine, which I opened and she and I began paying wine cups and hand them to the east and television journalists struggling to hold their van cameras of a foreign news agency television cameras on top was in a crowd of people; he shook and cameramen pleaded with the crowd packed with thousands, I stood at the break in the wall above me, a German stood above the wall at the end, balanced, waving his arms and shouting reports to all East Germans to come to West Berlin, we thought it was just that we should go to Berlin is a counterflow started looking around, I saw an indescribable joy in the faces of people that was the end of the government telling people what not to do, it was the end of the wall, the war, the East, West Germans if East were to the west, we should go east, so we paid in East Berlin Around me, people spoke German, french, Polish, Russian, any language a woman handed his camera to someone who was au above the rubble so that he could take his picture I passed a group of American journalists; they nt speak nothing and could not understand what was going on, pushing their microphones in the faces of people asking you speak English Beside me, a person node applauded the East Berlin mayors and West Berlin met and shook hands, I stood with several east German guards, their guns slung, I asked them if they had bullets in them: they smiled and said not a few houses, someone had set up high Speakers and played the ninth symphony of Beethoven Alle Menschen werden Bruder All people become brothers in addition to all the buildings were thousands Berlin was out of control There was no government, neither in the East nor in the police and army were helpless soldiers themselves were overwhelmed by the event they were part of the crowd Their uniforms wanted nothing to say the wall was down.
After a while, we left and headed back to the city to find a television was made East German television Broadcasters have begun to show what they wanted mobile cameras in the street, film clips , porn, parliament speeches, statements, videos, nature films, live interviews West Berliners came out of their homes and that East Germans in the food and rest one of our friends in Berlin were two families who sleep in the living room radio said in Frankfurt, Trabant was hit by a Mercedes anything happened to the Mercedes, but the Trabant was destroyed a crowd of people raised funds for Germany s family 'East; the driver of the Mercedes gave them his keys and lent them his car for the weekend A West German went home, got his truck, and drove the Trabi back to the East Germany Sunday evening, the west German government said on radio and television that the East Germans had free access to all public transport buses, trams and trains, as well as free access to all zoos , museums, concerts, almost all over 80 East Germany was on vacation in West Germany, nearly 13 million people visit family and friends in the West After a week, almost all gone home.
After a spaghetti dinner, we returned to the Volkswagen and headed home radio spoke of delays ten, but then again, that wasjust another rumor on the border, there were no guards Anymore end thenext morning, we were back in Denmark.
In 1848, Europe has gone through a year of revolution, like the kings fell and democratic governments were created in 1989 was another of those years for Europe with countries that are literally a short car journey hand, where people tend to know each other, where international news is local news, political movements leap like a trail from town to town powder.
April 5 Poland's communist government and Solidarity agreed to share power and hold free elections.
May 8 Yugoslavia's nationalist Slobodan Milosevic was elected President.
Poland June 4 Solidarity won an overwhelming majority of votes, including 96 of the 100 Senate seats.
August 19 Poland Mazowiecki was elected the first non-communist prime minister of Poland.
September 10 Hungary 60,000 East Germans go through Hungary to enter Austria.
September 27 Yugoslavia Slovenia affirms its right to secede from Yugoslavia.
October 7th formerly communist Hungary Socialist Workers Party renounces Marxism embraces democratic socialism, and was renamed the Hungarian Socialist Party.
October 18th East German mass protests force President Eric Honecker to resign.
October 18 Hungary Parliament terminates the monopoly of the party and announced elections for next year.
November 9 East Germany The Berlin Wall is opened and five million people come to Berlin to celebrate the end of the Wall, the end of the Cold War, the end of communism and the reunification of Germany.
November 10 Bulgaria Todor Zhikov, head of state and head of the Communist Party for 35 years, resigned.
Czechoslovakia November 17, hundreds of thousands of protesters march to Prague.
December 10 President Husak resigned Czechoslovakia and installs a coalition cabinet with the Communists in the minority.
13 December Bulgaria Communist Party renounces its monopoly of power.
December 16 to 21 Forces Romania secruity opened fire on thousands of protesters; hundreds were killed and buried in mass graves As Christmas comes, everyone in Europe looks at the revolution in television.
Romania December 22 The revolts of the army, joining the protesters, and the national salvation Council says the government is overthrown.
Romania December 25 In a trial of two hours, the communist dictator Ceausecsu and his wife were found guilty of genocide and immediately executed by firing the machine.
December 26 Poland free radical market reform plan is announced.
29 December and rights Playwright Czechoslovakia man compaigner Vaclav Havel, who spent years in prison as a dissident, is the new president of Czechoslovakia.
If you're writing about the Berlin Wall for your school or study, you can consider other issues, for example, Korea has also been divided into communist and western parts They also have a wall that divides the country and families in North Korea is barely able to survive in the United States, Japan and China supported North Korea does he won South Korea wants to reunite collapse, but they can t bear the costs of development a country that is in ruins nearly so anything that happened in Germany will also occur again in Korea you can learn about Korea and compare the two.
Here's more about the origins and the Berlin Wall politics.
Andreas Ramos 1989 You are welcome to reprint this test has been included in four books of American history or English text book, a history book of Australian school, and a history book of the Canadian school it is also part of the historical archives of the Berlin Wall Just send me an email and I'll send you the date of authorization.
The fall of the Berlin Wall a personal account, fall Berlin Wall.