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I can’t believe it’s been twenty years already.
I was fourteen when the Wall fell. Just a few weeks earlier my mother had left my father and me. I remember sitting glued to the TV for many nights, with my father explaining patiently WTF was going on there. I remember my heart soaring when Hungary and the Czech Republic helped the refugees from the GDR and let them go. I remember watching the endless trains of refugees storming across the border, climbing the Wall…the lines of cars queuing up at the border.
My husband had just finished compulsory military service…strictly speaking, he was on leave so he could start on time at law school. For a few days he was terrified of being called back—for a war.
Things were teetering on a very perilous edge way back then, for a few years. Peaceful, or even just bloodless revolutions are rare…
And we’re talking about a regime that shot people who wanted to leave that country in order to live their lives in freedom. A state that had spies selected from your nearest and dearest watching your every move. A dictatorship that imprisoned people for reading the wrong things, for saying the wrong things, for writing the wrong things. A tyranny of terror that tortured political prisoners and anyone whose religious or philosophical outlook they considered “dangerous”.
A dictatorship that also watched people and interfered with people and politics in other countries…on important, and on not so important levels.
I remember my father telling me of a trip he went on as a teacher, taking students to Eastern Berlin. Back in those days, you were forced to exchange a certain amount of western currency into worthless eastern money for that. And you were not allowed to take any eastern money back with you. So my dad still had a bit of money left, and he simply forgot about it. At the border, he was taken aside and searched. He had no picture of me (then in elementary school) in his wallet or anything else that indicated he had a little daughter. One of the officers suggested to my dad in a vaguely threatening manner how it might be a good idea to use the money to buy a present for his little daughter (name). It ended all harmlessly, with my father opening a bank account for the leftover money.
My mother and my grandmother were late to escape to the free West. On the way to the border, they were caught and imprisoned for a night. My mother was only six years old then, I think. The following day, an officer was charged with putting them back on the train eastwards. He looked at my grandmother, and told her that so and so many metres THIS way you could cross the river to the West. But, he said, you’re getting on the train and back to the East now. And then he turned around and left them. My grandmother and my mother went so and so many metres THIS way, nearly drowned in the process…but eventually made it to freedom.
And in 1990 I could for the first time in my life I was allowed to meet members of my family who had remained behind in the East.
A lot has happened the past twenty years.
Many good things.
Many bad things.
But I still maintain that it’s a better world than it was back then.
And I hope that in another twenty years it will be a little bit better yet.
November 9th, 2009
21 comments to “And the Wall Came Tumbling Down…”
Send an Owl?
Yes – there is always hope that the future will be a better place.
So many incredible stories from the last century though – your family’s being one of them.
*haz the thoughts*
I’m sure you have some amazing stories about your family to tell, too…
The Cold War. Good times, that. We didn’t worry about planes getting blown up, we worried about the entire fucking planet getting turned into a glowing pile of radioactive ash. For realz. We knew “Duck and Cover” was a joke, so we had “In case of nuclear war, put your head between your legs and kiss your ass good-bye!”
Would you like to play Global Thermonuclear War? I can haz Mutually Assured Destruction!
I remember this day very well, because my German instructor was a graduate student from West Germany, and I remember her coming into the computer lab with a HUGE smile on her face and she asked if I’d heard the news.
Yes, things were already starting to move this direction thanks to things like Solidarity and Perestroika, but the Wall coming down was the dam bursting on the Cold War, and it’s a day that every person in the world should be thankful for. No, it didn’t make this a world of unicorns farting rainbows, but at least that global annihilation thing is no longer a real danger.
At least something.
Complaining about the million things that suck politically and economically, I think it’s sometimes easy to forget of how much dire the situation was already…
*hugs Juno*
It was an amazing day!
I remember that day so well, and the excitement of the previous days. The news were unbelievable, everybody talked about it. The quiet East-Germans were demanding freedom.
15 years earlier we had our own “revolution” also a peaceful one.
We also had to live with the fear of the next door neighbour,of saying the wrong word. Both my father and grandfather were arrested. We also lived a few days with the fear of an impending war between brothers and friends.
And after that , we had to live with the fear of a communist regime. And we ,small as we are survived,somehow. And we knew you would to. You were stronger!
I cried with emotion, the day i saw those people walking freely and the wall fall!
People are so amazing when they wish to! When they think as one.
Yes, with all the problems the world faces now, it is still a better world.
Good point.
I think it would all do us some good to remember what people CAN do if they just really, really want to.
Amazing to be a part of history like that, isn’t it?
I’d also like to think the world’s a better place to be in at this point. Must be the optimist in me.
Sometimes, there’s a reason for optimism, even in world history.
Happy Reunification Day to you and your people.
I remember watching it on TV. It was like a dream. As a child of the Cold War, The Wall falling down was beyond symbolic.
My wife’s best friend’s family is from Germany and they had half a family who were cut off from them. When she heard it on the radio, she pulled her car over to the side of the road and had to cry for a bit.
I remember when it went up. The pictures of the original barbed wire barrier, and all the soldiers on both sides. People running and trying to jump across the wire and being shot to death while the soldiers from the West had to look on helplessly.
The father of my best friend at the time it went up was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Reserve. His unit got called up and sent to Germany. He was gone for a year.
This is a good reminder that however bleak the world situation seems, it will change. Nothing remains the same, enemies fade with time, and new problems replace the old. As bad as it could get is a lot worse than what we have to put up with today.
mk
*nods* Indeed. Things change. And sometimes even for the better!
I remember watching it on TV and not understanding what the big deal was – it was just a wall – and then I saw my mom crying. She explained to me a little about what was going on – my parents had tried to shelter me from all the horrible things in the world before that. She told me to pay close attention, that history was being made, and that this was a huge day that would be remembered for a long time.
It’s hard to imagine living through that. I think I take for granted sometimes the (relative) safety of my country.
*Hugs* And Happy Reunification Day!
It’s strange…looking back. Especially with the added dimensions of being an adult looking back at the memories of a young teenager.
Thank you for your kind words.
I think it’s important not to forget how much the world has changed for the better in the last twenty years.
It’s really so weird to think that was 20 years ago, especially since 1989 is one of those rare years that stands out so strongly in my mind.
Well, 1988-1991, really, but 1989 had the Big Moments – for us, also the Baltic chain, which was probably bigger for us in general, but I actually remember writing it down by the date in a school notebook; “the Berlin wall came down today”.
It’s not been an easy road since then, and I imagine it hasn’t been one for either East or West Germans either. And it will take more than one generation for people on both sides (not speaking particularly of Germans here, but Western Europeans vs Eastern Europeans in general) to get over their complexes, but eventually, we’ll get there. Just as long as this – and what happened to lead to that division in the first place – isn’t forgotten.
*nods* It will definitely take time. Maybe a generation, maybe more. But I’m so glad. In spite of all the things that are wrong with the world today, there are also some things that are less wrong, and more right.
Growing up, I remember thinking that reunification was a totally unrealistic pipe dream, given the regime at the time. I never expected to see it in my lifetime.
That is what my dad said, too.
We’re so lucky, and we tend to forget it, caught up as we are in our daily stress and griping…
I remember how shocked I was when the Wall came down; I never thought that would happen during my lifetime. Things have definitely changed for the better, even if the world today isn’t perfect.