Germany kicked off celebrations of the 25th anniversary of the epochal fall of the Berlin Wall Friday, set to culminate in rock stars and freedom icons joining millions at an open-air party.
Chancellor Angela Merkel, who grew up in communist East Germany, will lead three days of commemorations for those killed trying to flee the repressive state, leading up to a giant festival Sunday marking the joyous breach of Europe’s Cold War division on November 9, 1989.
“I think you never forget how you felt that day — at least I will never forget it,” Merkel, 60, said in a recent podcast.
“I had to wait 35 years for that feeling of liberty. It changed my life.”
The festivities under the banner “Courage for Freedom” are remembering the peaceful revolution that led communist authorities to finally open the border after 28 years in which Easterners were prisoners of their own country.
Germany would reunite within the year, on October 3, 1990.
Dissident singer Wolf Biermann, who was kicked out of East Germany in 1976, performed his protest song “Ermutigung” (Encouragement) in the Bundestag lower house of parliament, in a tribute to those who resisted the regime.
He used the opportunity to take a swipe at the far-left Linke, which has roots in East Germany’s ruling party and had criticised Biermann’s invitation to appear at the session.
“Your punishment is to have to listen to me here — enjoy,” he called out to heckling Linke deputies, calling them “the wretched remains of what has fortunately been surmounted”.
Compared to previous anniversaries, the organisation this time has been more grassroots, with Berlin embracing its image as an international capital of the arts.
Later Friday an ambitious installation featuring 8,000 white balloons pegged to the ground along a 15-kilometre (nine-mile) stretch of the Wall’s former 155-kilometre path will be illuminated.
The glowing orbs, which from above will look like a long string of pearls, are to be released Sunday from their ropes and set free into the night sky, to the stirring strains of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”.
The last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, whose “perestroika” and “glasnost” reforms helped pave the way for the Wall’s fall, was to greet crowds at the former Checkpoint Charlie border crossing.
Gorbachev, 83, who is revered here for having refrained from a bloody crackdown on protesters in 1989, will then on Saturday join former German foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher for a debate about the legacy of those heady days, and the resurgence of tensions between Russia and the West.
Source: Prothom Alo
