The thirty-fourth anniversary of November 9, 1989 still echoed across Germany. “The fall of the Berlin Wall was not a gift of fate but the result of a long, arduous struggle of courageous, brave, hopeful people for freedom, democracy, and human rights,” said former publishing editor Wolfram Weimer, according to Tagesschau.
The evening’s drama began when Politburo spokesman Günter Schabowski unexpectedly told an international press conference that new travel regulations were effective “immediately.” “When this was said, there was no stopping,” Deutsche Welle reported. Crowds surged toward the inner-Berlin checkpoints. “Previously, they let people through one by one, and then they opened the gate. And now we could all pass without showing an ID, without anything… I don’t even have an ID with me,” recalled a jubilant citizen of the German Democratic Republic, according to Deutsche Welle.
Within hours people climbed the concrete barrier once branded the Wall of Shame by Westerners and No Passage for Fascism by the East. Joy and excitement were “literally boundless,” Deutsche Welle wrote, and thousands who had already escaped through Hungary and other Eastern European embassies were suddenly joined by millions who could now walk freely through Bornholmer Strasse and Checkpoint Charlie. The East-West conflict ended, and the German Democratic Republic began to dissolve. Federal leaders reminded citizens that internal unity required more time than state unity.
The official commemoration brought dignitaries and survivors together. Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier invited guests to Schloss Bellevue, where he planned to warn of “current dangers to democracy” and defend Germany’s “wehrhafte Demokratie,” Tagesschau noted. Actors Jens Harzer and Marina Galic were scheduled to read period texts, while the names of 55,696 Berlin Jews murdered in the Holocaust were to be read aloud outside the city’s Jewish Community Center. “The human desire for freedom is stronger than any wall,” said Weimer, and Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner observed that between Kristallnacht in 1938 and the Wall’s fall in 1989 lay “crimes, guilt, hope, and reconciliation.” “We bear the responsibility to keep the memory alive and to draw from our history again and again the mandate for an open, free, and humane society,” concluded Wegner, according to Tagesschau.
German historians called November 9 the nation’s “day of destiny,” Deutsche Welle explained. A half-century before the Wall fell, the same night produced one of Germany’s darkest chapters. On November 9-10, 1938, a pogrom cynically labeled Kristallnacht began; about 100 Jews were murdered, synagogues were smashed, and more than 800 businesses were looted. The shards inspired the Nazi propaganda term Night of Broken Glass. “Judah will fall and must fall… That is our holy faith,” proclaimed Robert Ley, head of the National Socialist German Workers’ Front, in words that foreshadowed a policy that from 1942 onward systematically exterminated Europe’s Jews and caused six million deaths. “On this day of remembrance, the flames that threatened Jewish businesses and Jewish people in Germany on the night of November 9, 1938 come very close to me,” said Auschwitz survivor Eva Umlauf. “But when it becomes increasingly palpable these days that people are once again being enthusiastic about ideologies of hatred and anti-Semitism, then it makes me very cold,” she added, Tagesschau reported. The International Auschwitz Committee appealed for solidarity with survivors and vigilance toward right-wing extremism.
Sixteen years before Kristallnacht, November 9 already held a different meaning. In 1923 Adolf Hitler led National Socialist supporters toward Munich’s Feldherrnhalle in the Beer Hall Putsch. The coup failed, but the date lodged itself in nationalist mythology. Ten years later Hitler became Chancellor, and in 1934 Führer of Germany, steering the country toward the catastrophe of the Holocaust and World War II.
The oldest epochal turn linked to the date came in 1918. As the First World War ground to a halt, Social Democrat Philipp Scheidemann stepped onto a Reichstag balcony and proclaimed the German Republic. “Workers and soldiers, be aware of the historical significance of this day… The old and rotten monarchy has collapsed. Long live the German Republic!” he declared, according to Hürriyet. Kaiser Wilhelm II fled to the Netherlands the next day, and a fragile democracy soon named the Weimar Republic was born. It faced challenges from its first days as both left-wing and right-wing factions sought its abolition, Deutsche Welle noted.
Germany kept vigil over the converging anniversaries. Memorial events on November 9 stretched from Berlin to Mödlareuth—Little Berlin, whose fifty inhabitants once stared across a three-meter wall. “In times when new walls are being erected—not necessarily of concrete, but especially in minds and hearts—Mödlareuth is a memorial,” said Weimer at the German-German Museum. The Federal Presidential Office viewed the date as mirroring “breakthroughs to democracy and freedom as well as the horrors of violent tyranny and anti-Semitism,” Tagesschau summarized.
Produced with the assistance of a news-analysis system.