Germany commemorates 35 years since fall of Berlin Wall
November 9, 2024
Thousands celebrated in Berlin Saturday on the 35th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the subsequent disintegration of former Communist East Germany, and eventually the Soviet Union, which led to German reunification.
Many placed flowers in a rare remaining chunk of the structure at the site the Berlin Wall memorial, including President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Economy Minister Robert Habeck also visited the commemorations.
And in a display that took rather longer to set up, an art installation of more than 5,000 placards spanning around 4 kilometers (roughly 2.5 miles) — made by children and adults alike under a motto that roughly translates to "we hold freedom aloft" — marked the path of the structure that once divided Germany's capital.
These signs included messages like "a wall should protect, not divide," "freedom of opinion without hate," and "freedom's not a gift."
A series of concerts were also planned, to offer what organizers touted as the "Soundtrack of Freedom," involving everything from East German rock to David Bowie, who famously spent time in divided Berlin, and culminating on Sunday with a performance from the Russian protest band Pussy Riot.
Scholz calls reunification 'a win for all of Europe'
Chancellor Olaf Scholz, likely more preoccupied with his coalition's sudden collapse at present, published a video message on Saturday commemorating the anniversary.
Alluding to the pro-democracy movements and protests in much of Eastern Europe that preceded the bringing down of the wall, Scholz said "the victory of freedom in the fall of 1989 was a win for all of Europe."
"The fall of the Berlin Wall 35 years ago was the happy climax of a movement spanning all of Europe," he said, calling November 9 "a day of joy, for which we Germans are grateful to this day."
He also said the "revolution of freedom" in 1989 had a core message that remained as current as ever, namely: "Courage, confidence and solidarity pay off. Against each other we achieve nothing, we're only strong together."
Berlin's mayor: 'Freedom and democracy were never matters of course'
Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner spoke at the Berlin Wall memorial, as did President Steinmeier on Saturday.
"Hold freedom aloft, for without freedom nothing else matters," Wegner said, echoing the motto of the display. "Freedom and democracy were never matters of course."
Wegner also alluded to the multiple momentous anniversaries in German 20th-century history that fell on November 9, saying the date was was a "fateful day" for Germany, in both a positive and negative sense.
Nazi legacy of November pogrom in 1938
November 9 is also the anniversary of the start of the November pogrom, often called the Night of Broken Glass in English, when Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany began the systematic vandalization of Jewish business, synagogues and properties.
More than 1,400 buildings were destroyed and in the region of 30,000 Jews were taken to concentration camps.
The violent attacks are seen as a key turning point where Hitler's German government began to move from the active persecution of Jews in Germany towards what would become the Holocaust and the killing of an estimated 6 million European Jews during World War II.
Twenty years earlier, on November 9, 1918, with the end of World War I and German capitulation imminent, Social Democrat politician Philip Scheidemann also declared what would become known as the Weimar Republic in the interwar years.
Hitler and the Nazis put a stop to this nascent first attempt at a democratic Germany within around 15 years. Bundestag speaker Bärbel Bas had alluded to this in a speech to the chamber at a ceremony on Friday, saying that Scheidemann had warned at the time that the nascent state he envisaged would need protecting.
"Our republic is no longer new today. But Scheidemann's words of warning remain up-to-date," Bas said, also drawing parallels to the political turbulence in Berlin in the days leading up to the anniversaries.
msh/jcg (AFP, dpa, KNA)