Germany celebrates 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall

"The modern skyscrapers of Berlin's Potsdamer Platz glisten in the sun. Stylish Berliners sip coffee in swanky sidewalk cafes. And the streets are packed with cyclists and tour buses.

Hard to imagine this used to be the Death Strip. If you had tried to come here 20 years ago, you would have been shot.

The Berlin Wall ran right through the middle of this square, making it a deadly no man's land between freedom in West Berlin and Communist dictatorship in East Germany. Instead of skyscrapers were barbed wire, watchtowers and the wall.

But on Nov. 9, 1989, the wall fell. Two decades later, Berlin has roared back to life, offering visitors both a taste of modern Germany and a firsthand encounter with the wall's history.

To understand Berlin, you have to understand the story of the wall."

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Travel | Germany celebrates 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall | Seattle Times Newspaper

 

It's odd when you think about it, how it meant Germany was once again reunified/recreated, not by the Bismark under blood and steel this time but by "foreigners" who at the time essentially saw Germany as a strategic military base.

I do wonder if Prussia will ever return though.

 

Yes, it is hard to believe that it is now 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall; and without the Wall the good old DDR was on its last legs with less than 12 months later German reunification being effected. I am inclined to agree with Günter Grass that there ought to have been a referendum or plebiscite in East Germany on the constitutional future of the former DDR after the collapse of the rule of the SED, the East-German Communist party. To go straight to reunification without a referendum or plebiscite on the matter was a bit presumptuous on the part of the West Germans, in my opinion. Too late, now, of course: the deed is done.