$Unique_ID{bob00186}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Unified Germany
The Wall}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Black Star Publishing}
$Affiliation{German Embassy, Washington DC}
$Subject{wall
freedom
east
west
history
berlin
german
germans


see
pictures
see
figures
}
$Date{1990}
$Log{See Party on the Wall*0018601.scf
}
Title:       Unified Germany
Book:        Focus on the German Unification Process
Author:      Black Star Publishing
Affiliation: German Embassy, Washington DC
Date:        1990

The Wall

[See Party on the Wall: Courtesy Embassy of Germany, Washington DC]

     "Behold! human beings living in an underground den... Like ourselves...
they only see their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the
fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave."

Plato "The Republic"

     "The history of the world is none other than the progress of the
consciousness of freedom."

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel "Philosophy of History"

     "He only earns his freedom and existence who daily conquers them anew."

Goethe "The Gothic Chamber"

     "Yet Freedom! yet thy banner, torn, but flying, streams like the
thunderstorm, against the wind."

Lord Byron "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage"

     "For what avail the plow or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail?"

Ralph Waldo Emerson "Boston"

     "For the stone will cry out of the wall."

Habakkuk 2:11

"For the stone will cry out of the wall."

Habakkuk 2:11

     On the evening of November 9, 1989, a brief surprise announcement by the
crumbling East German government stirred Berliners on both sides of the Wall.
The few crossing points between East and West Berlin-and along the Iron
Curtain between East and West Germany-would be opened to East Germans with
valid passports to visit or emigrate to the West. The infamous Wall which has
been a symbol of the ideological confrontation between East and West and had
divided a great city in Central Europe was coming down.

     Within hours, more and more East Berliners, with and without passports,
stormed the crossing points. The bewildered border guards were overwhelmed by
the wave of humanity that swept through and over the Wall. Ecstatic West
Berliners smashed the Wall with hammer and chisel and frenziedly climbed its
heights. The scene was one of those suspended moments in history when euphoria
and exhilaration erupted in one spontaneous, joyous celebration. It was as if
a safety-valve had blown under the impact of continued pressure, leaving
behind a widening crack in a moribund vessel.

     This pressure had steadily grown during preceding weeks. While the East
German leadership had celebrated forty years of Socialist rule, their subjects
had been voting with their feet. Hundreds of thousands of East Germans had
either already fled to West Germany through Hungary or had taken to the
streets of Leipzig and other large cities in peaceful protests of
unprecedented size.

     With unexpected speed, a bloodless revolution was accomplished, spawned
by Gorbachev's "glasnost" and "perestroika," nurtured by contagious courage,
stirred by modern communications technology, and achieved by a spontaneous
outburst of people power.

     In 1989, the East Germans and Eastern Europeans confronted repression and
found it vulnerable. They risked life and livelihood for democracy and found
it possible. Unpopular regimes were swept away, to be replaced by governments
committed to rebuilding their societies based on Western values of democracy
and personal and economic freedom.

     The Berlin Wall was more than an eyesore. It was a symbol of the Cold
War, of the ideological confrontation between East and West, of democratic
pluralism and a free marketplace versus one party dictatorships and an
economic system of permits, planning, and poverty. Its destruction marks the
end of an era, while the sounds of its falling concrete slabs reverberate
throughout the world.

     Just as the Berlin Wall was a reminder of the Cold War, the enduring
freedom of the city's western half was symbolic of the United States' resolve
to defend the freedom of its German friends and allies from the Communist
threat. Had not President Truman initiated the Berlin Air Lift in 1948 when
the Soviet Union tried to strangle West Berlin, and had not President Kennedy
pledged American support for the freedom of West Berlin when the Wall was
built in 1961, the shattering of the Wall in 1989 could not have taken place.

     November 9 will not only be remembered as the day when the Germans and
their fellow Europeans were given a chance to overcome the division of their
continent in peace and freedom. Germans also remember November 9, 1938 as one
of the darkest nights in their history: it was the night when the Nazis began
to persecute Germany's Jewish communities by burning synagogues and ransacking
Jewish homes and businesses.

     The yearning for freedom and independence is innate to humanity. Freedom
can be repressed for days, decades or centuries, but ultimately man finds a
way to throw off the yoke of the oppressor and speak out for human dignity.
It was the youth of East Germany who catalyzed the democratic movement and
carried the candles of freedom in Leipzig. Their youthful and rebellious
spirit spread to the older generation of the discouraged and the dispossessed.

     The night of November 9, 1989 is but a micro-second in history, which
unfolded with awesome and breathtaking speed under the scrutiny of television
and still photographers like Black Star's Christopher Morris, Joanna Pinneo,
Ken Sakamoto, Anthony Suau, and David and Peter Turnley. Inspired by these
heroic events, these prize-winning photojournalists visually recorded the fall
of the Wall.

     Their pictures penetrate beyond spectacle. They reveal profound human
dimensions and deeper emotions. They monumentalize a brief and magnificent
moment in history when people joined together to tear down a wall and reaped
a harvest of freedom.

Howard Chapnick Curator