Berlin fall of the wall: 20th Anniversary

[Wilko]

Just reading a really good supplement in The Independent about the lead up to and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Despite being only 12 at the time I consider it to be one of the defining news moments of my lifetime.

I am interested to know other posters memories (especially older posters) as the news footage broke on 9th November 1989? Anyone have family or friends in Germany at the time or do you remember just watching the footgae unfold?

 

[Lady Whistledown]

David Hasselhoff singing Looking For Freedom to thousands of adoring Germans.

It was a big day for stonewashed denim.

 

[Wilko]

David Hasselhoff singing Looking For Freedom to thousands of adoring Germans.

It was a big day for stonewashed denim.

Funnily enough the picture on the front of the supplement is a bloke smashing the wall with an iron hammer. He has on a leather jacket, stonewashed tight denim jeans that stop at the ankles, white socks and slip on loafers with tassles on. I do not think the picture could be more iconic if it tried.

 

[Wilko]

And here it is....

 

[sod1]

i crossed over check point Charlie a few weeks before the wall came down, when i was travelling out to watch England play Poland. The difference between the two halves of Berlin was just incredible, bright lights etc in the west and drab grey buildings in the east which were adorned with the soviet flag, due to there being a big military parade a few days before.

To see the TV pictures a few weeks later was just amazing , made me feel lucky to have witnessed first hand the different sides

 

[clapham_gull]

i crossed over check point Charlie a few weeks before the wall came down, when i was travelling out to watch England play Poland. The difference between the two halves of Berlin was just incredible, bright lights etc in the west and drab grey buildings in the east which were adorned with the soviet flag, due to there being a big military parade a few days before.

To see the TV pictures a few weeks later was just amazing , made me feel lucky to have witnessed first hand the different sides

The difference between Western and Eastern Europe was also very apparent from the air.

I flew to Communist Poland a couple of times in the late 80s and you could literally see the all the colour start to run away below.

 

[Spun Cuppa]

I've recently been watching a VHS of Roger Waters et al performing 'The Wall' in Potsdamerplatz (sp?) in Berlin in 1990, which concludes with the assembled company optimistically singing, 'The Tide is Turning', with the first Iraq invasion/war a little way off...

Very poignant to behold...

 

[Leekbrookgull]

For,and maybe others have their own veiw,s 9/11 awful as it was was a terrorist attack,and a well planned one at that. However i never thought the Berlin Wall would come down. I can remember watching and reading news stories of people trying to flee to 'the west' (plenty on youtube) I can recall going to the pub that night the wall was broken and that was all people were talking about. How much was/is down to Reagan/Thatcher/Gorby i don't know. However Reagan,s remarks 1987 in Berlin, Germany to Gorby and the Russian people 'Mr President tear down this wall'. Had the desired effect.

 

[Gully]

I travelled from West Germany to Berlin by train in the days just after the wall came down, it might have been 4-5 days after but my memory is a bit hazy about it. What I can remember is travelling from Koln to Braunshweig and changing trains to go to Berlin, the station was full of people who had travelled through from the East to take their gift of something like 250 Marks, the majority seemed to have bought radios...it was easy to work out who they were, most were wearing stonewashed denim and sporting mullets...both men and women!

Berlin was its usual busy self, but there was a bit of an uneasy edge to it, the West Germans still didn't know whether the Govenment of the DDR would attempt to close the wall again...although by that stage it was obvious that any effort to do so would have been futile at best. There was still a worry that the visitors from the east would exercise their new freedom to travel by rioting and looting shops, to make up for all the years when they were controlled and generally went without, I don't think I have ever seen so many police on the streets...their fears went unfounded.

In the areas around the wall there were people removing chunks of if as souveniers, thus adding to the unlikelehood that it would be closed again...there were also armies of street traders flogging the usual t-shirts celebrating the event and uniforms from the now redundant border force. Around the city you could hear the buzz of Trabants, ferrying their owners on sightseeing trips around a place that many probably thought they may never see...as for the smell of their fumes, that was something never forgotten. It was a privelage to spend a few days in a city that was about to undergo another metamorphosis and at a time when history was being made.

 

[Mendoza]

David Hasselhoff singing Looking For Freedom to thousands of adoring Germans.

It was a big day for stonewashed denim.

it was the first thing I thought of too (well more the jacket avec fairy lights)

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[Wilko]

I travelled from West Germany to Berlin by train in the days just after the wall came down, it might have been 4-5 days after but my memory is a bit hazy about it. What I can remember is travelling from Koln to Braunshweig and changing trains to go to Berlin, the station was full of people who had travelled through from the East to take their gift of something like 250 Marks, the majority seemed to have bought radios...it was easy to work out who they were, most were wearing stonewashed denim and sporting mullets...both men and women!

Berlin was its usual busy self, but there was a bit of an uneasy edge to it, the West Germans still didn't know whether the Govenment of the DDR would attempt to close the wall again...although by that stage it was obvious that any effort to do so would have been futile at best. There was still a worry that the visitors from the east would exercise their new freedom to travel by rioting and looting shops, to make up for all the years when they were controlled and generally went without, I don't think I have ever seen so many police on the streets...their fears went unfounded.

In the areas around the wall there were people removing chunks of if as souveniers, thus adding to the unlikelehood that it would be closed again...there were also armies of street traders flogging the usual t-shirts celebrating the event and uniforms from the now redundant border force. Around the city you could hear the buzz of Trabants, ferrying their owners on sightseeing trips around a place that many probably thought they may never see...as for the smell of their fumes, that was something never forgotten. It was a privelage to spend a few days in a city that was about to undergo another metamorphosis and at a time when history was being made.

Thanks for that post, really interesting stuff.

 

[clapham_gull]

How much was/is down to Reagan/Thatcher/Gorby i don't know.

Thatcher told Gorbachev Britain did not want German reunification - Times Online

 

[Wilko]

Sorry, shameless bouncing of my own thread but as today is the anniversary day I wanted to hear from others as to what they remember the day the news broke?

 

[Wilko]

BBC NEWS | World | Europe | 'I was in a disco when the Wall fell'

Some great footage here

 

[The Spanish]

Funnily enough the picture on the front of the supplement is a bloke smashing the wall with an iron hammer. He has on a leather jacket, stonewashed tight denim jeans that stop at the ankles, white socks and slip on loafers with tassles on. I do not think the picture could be more iconic if it tried.

And they are the WEST Berliners. They are the ones the other lot thought were well cool and were tunnelling out to look like. No wonder it took so long for communism to collapse. If what you saw of the free world was that naff you would think twice.

The Secret Life of the Berlin Wall on BBC4 on iplayer is very good on a more serious note. An amazing moment in history, we forget now how we probably all expected to see a nuclear war in our lifetime.

 

[Gwylan]

I wasn't in Berlin for the fall of the Wall but was there for the actual unification day a year later. I was there with a friend and his mother who had escaped from the East nearly 30 years before - they were smuggled in under the false seat of a car. My friend was only about 7 at the time - it doesn't bear thinking about how scary that must have been for a child. Needless to say, they were both very emotional that day.

I'd travelled a bit in eastern Europe before the Wall came down and it was always a truly bizarre experience. The change in East Germany, the Czech Republic and Hungary is staggering.

 

[Wilko]

I'd travelled a bit in eastern Europe before the Wall came down and it was always a truly bizarre experience. The change in East Germany, the Czech Republic and Hungary is staggering.

I have been to all 3 of those countries but only in the last 5 years or so, interesting to see how much progress and change can occur in such a short space of time.

 

[Austrian Gull]

Thatcher told Gorbachev Britain did not want German reunification - Times Online

Glad my mind isn't playing tricks on me - I was sure that she had been against it.

There have been dozens of programmes on the theme over here in the last few weeks. One of the best I've seen was a programme about how the decision was made to open the border gates. It was decided by a police chief and announced by a startled party member at a press conference. He hadn't been briefed about it and was as stunned as anyone.

Having been to Berlin recently, it amazed me how old-fashioned and rundown the heart of West Berlin now seems (Kurfürstendamm and the memorial church) compared to parts of East Berlin.

 

[BLOCK F]

Was in the Hofbrauhaus in Munich,with my wife about a month after the wall came down.Got talking to quite a few East Germans and bought them a few beers as they didn't really have much dosh.It was fascinating and the lasting impression we got,was that the East Germans were more foreign in Munich than we Brits were!!Historic....glad were there and met these very bemused guys!
Also remember all the Trabants belching out smoke in the Munich streets!

 

[Wilko]

There have been dozens of programmes on the theme over here in the last few weeks. One of the best I've seen was a programme about how the decision was made to open the border gates. It was decided by a police chief and announced by a startled party member at a press conference. He hadn't been briefed about it and was as stunned as anyone.

.

The party member also failed to read (or he misread) the full details on border control, he then announced incorrect details live on air. Ooops.