BERLIN—Germany celebrated 25 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall with tributes to the power of freedom and a dance party at the Brandenburg Gate, the symbol of unity where Europe’s east-west divide once ran.
About 8,000 white balloons lined up along 15 kilometres of the former wall soared away into the night sky as Daniel Barenboim conducted Beethoven’s 'Ode to Joy,' culminating a festive weekend that drew hundreds of thousands from Germany and abroad to relive the wall’s opening by communist East Germany.
“We seized that opportunity,” Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit said in a speech to an audience including ex-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and former Polish President Lech Walesa. “We have every reason to feel that joy just as much today. Nobody will ever forget November 9, 1989.”
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While the Cold War’s end led eastern Europe to join the European Union and expanded Germany’s economic power, conflict in Ukraine and the Middle East hovered over the celebration as Chancellor Angela Merkel cited global crisis spots.
“The collapse of the wall showed us that dreams can come true, that nothing has to remain as it is,” Merkel said in a speech at the Berlin Wall Memorial. “It’s a message of encouragement to tear down other walls, walls of dictatorship, violence, ideologies and enmity.”
Merkel, 60, who grew up under communism in former East Germany, alluded to Russia’s encroachment on Ukraine and the advances of Islamic militants in Syria and Iraq. “Human rights are threatened or trampled upon” in many places, she said.
At the Brandenburg Gate, cheers went up from a government-estimated 300,000 people as the first balloons floated up in a choreography symbolizing the razing of the wall. Rocker Peter Gabriel sang 'Heroes,' David Bowie’s Wall-themed tune from the 1970s, and crowds gathered at former crossings including the one the western Allies dubbed Checkpoint Charlie.
East German soldiers had shoot-to-kill orders at the wall, which was built in 1961 to stop people fleeing to the West. As pro-democracy protests swept the country in 1989, Guenter Schabowski, a communist party official, fumbled remarks at a news conference on Nov. 9 on easing exit-visa restrictions.
As the news spread, crowds gathered at border crossings to West Berlin. Guards eventually opened the gates without firing a shot, Soviet tanks and troops stayed in their barracks, and East and West Germany reunited as one nation 11 months later.
Merkel noted the important examples set by the democracy movements in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and praised those East Germans who were inspired by them to stand up to the dictatorship.
She also honoured the many who suffered under the communist regime.
At least 872 people died trying to flee East Germany, including 138 including at the fortified border to West Berlin, according to the archive of the Stasi, the Soviet-backed regime’s former secret police. Merkel, a Lutheran pastor’s daughter, lit a candle for the victims as she recalled the peaceful revolution of 1989.
“It was about reclaiming freedom,” she said. “It was about being a citizen, not a subject. It was about the liberty that humanity needs to be human.
With files from Associated Press