Enlarge image

Angela Merkel with the East German civil rights activists Joachim Gauck and Wolf Biermann (left to right).

(© REGIERUNGonline / Kugler )

As Berlin celebrated the twentieth anniverary of the opening of the Berlin Wall, Chancellor Angela Merkel walked across the bridge where it all began on November 9, 2009 with Mikhail Gorbachev, Lech Walesa and East German civil rights activists.

Of course it really began much earlier than November 9, 1989, namely with the Monday Demonstrations in Leipzig at the beginning of October. The East German leadership came increasingly under pressure. When, on the evening of November 9, it was finally announced that East Germans would be allowed to travel to the West in a controlled fashion, the leaders were overtaken by events.

At the Böse Bridge, which today once again connects the East Berlin district Prenzlauer Berg with the West Berlin district of Wedding, things initially moved slowly. The border officials insisted on stamping every single passport, irrespective of any new regulations.

Only a few hours after the new freedom to travel was announced, however, the border control point could no longer cope with the masses waiting to pass. "When we came back from the 'Kudamm' after midnight, the gates were wide open," recalls one man who was there on the night. "We just walked straight through."

It was like a dream come true, the men and women who were there that night told the Chancellor. Angela Merkel was there, along with Mikhail Gorbachev, then General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and thus head of state, and Lech Walesa who was the leader of the underground Polish trade union 'Solidarnosc"' to commemorate the events that took place twenty years ago.

Along with civil rights activists including Bärbel Bohley, Joachim Gauck and Wolf Biermann, they once again walked across the Böse Bridge at the Bornholmer Straße. Huge crowds had gathered to join them.

Just like his visit to East Berlin twenty years ago, the "Gorbi, Gorbi" calls were loud and clear. The Chancellor praised the support that the former Soviet leader gave to German reunification.

"You were brave enough to let these things happen, and that made everything possible," she told Mikhail Gorbachev. "But before they could experience the happiness born of liberty, a great many people suffered here," she stated, recalling the way the East German state dealt with dissidents. She called on her audience to recognise the wrongs of the past, the lost opportunities, the fears and concerns of many people under the East German regime.

A celebration for all of Europe

Enlarge image

Angela Merkel with Mikhail Gorbachev, Lech Walesa and the East German civil rights activist Marcus Meckel (left to right)

(© REGIERUNGonline / Kugler)

With his policy of "Glasnost", Mikhail Gorbachev launched radical reforms in the Soviet Union in 1986. He never did anything to stop the peaceful revolution in the German Democratic Republic.

In autumn 1989 the Iron Curtain which had separated East and West Europe, opened a chink at a time. The Warsaw Pact, the Eastern military alliance, crumbled little by little, and the Cold War was at last over, and with it the post-war period.

"That is why today it is not only Germany that should be celebrating," called the Chancellor to the crowd, "Today is a celebration for all of Europe!" In the evening Angela Merkel hosted a reception at the Federal Chancellery for the heads of state and government of all EU member states.