(continued)
. . . I happened to visiting my birthplace, West Berlin, in the autumn of 1989. On a crisp November day, I went for a leisurely walk along the infamous Wall. The bustling city dead-ended there, so it was quiet, perfect for pushing my toddler in her stroller while carrying the baby in her snuggly. From a spectator platform at Potsdamer Platz, I gazed at the desolate stretch of no man’s land beyond the fortified concrete barrier. Undaunted by trip mines, rabbits scurried between sentry towers manned by sharpshooters. East Berlin was only a hundred yards off, and yet, so far away. In the slanted November sunlight, the Wall appeared solid and insurmountable, forebidding as always. I had no idea I was looking at it for the last time. Standing there, I recalled the warm summer morning of August 13, 1961, when Berliners woke up to a new reality: East German soldiers guarding a barbed wire fence that separated the city. A young girl at the time, I felt the adults’ fear acutely: Two Germanys? Impossible! But as the fence became a Wall, people adjusted their thinking. East and West were no longer geographic orientations, but opposing worldviews, incompatible governments, competing economic systems and hostile armies. For Germans, the Wall was a deadly barrier, a giant “No Exit” sign, and a painful reminder of World War Two. For the rest of the world, it was the unquestioned dividing line of the Cold War, an unfortunate fact of Realpolitik. The Wall held everyone captive in a mindset of division. Millions of people abhorred this most fortified of all national borders, yet they could not imagine its collapse. Even during the daylight hours of November 9, no one envisioned that die Mauer would be obsolete by evening. Looking back, it seems obvious that the dismally corrupt and unproductive economic and political structures were bound to collapse. Gorbatchev’s Perestroika had already changed the face of politics in the Eastern Bloc. On November 3, I was glued to the television, watching one million East Berliners gather in front of their city hall to demand democratic reforms and the freedom to travel. Everyone in Berlin could feel the energy of change. But the Wall opening? No one saw it coming.
I went to bed early that evening, so I missed out on the first hours of ecstatic freedom. I wasn’t the only one – my East German friend Regina told me later that she had turned on the radio in the middle of night. People dancing on the wall? Certain that she had tuned in to a fantasy feature, she went back to bed. The morning of November 10 was still dark when my doorbell rang insistently. My friend Grischa from East Berlin stood there, grinning. This did not make sense - I knew that he could not visit me in my home. Not in this lifetime. In order to see the friends that I had made during my research stints in East Germany, I had to go to them, which meant procuring a visa, putting up with notoriously invasive border guards, and paying the “entry fee” to get to the “other side.” “Die Mauer is open!” Grischa shouted. “Come and see!” Hurriedly, I bundled my daughters up and we set out to join history. Already, it was impossible to drive, because the streets of Berlin were clogged with pedestrians and flimsy East German Trabants. Even the subways were so packed that I worried about the baby getting squished in the crowd.
In Kreuzberg, not far from the Brandenburg gate, the people had claimed the Wall. Those sitting on top were singing, while the crowds below danced to tunes played by jamming musicians. Many were chipping away at the concrete with hammers and chisels; others shared champagne, chocolate and cookies. Someone was distributing bananas. Cameras whirred and flashed. “A dream come true” one woman chanted rhythmically, her hammer striking the beat. A man grabbed my hand. “It’s like every birthday and Christmas put together”, he exclaimed, “only better.” When giant cranes arrived and picked up entire sections of the Wall, the hammering gave way to thunderous applause. Goosebumps raised on my arms as fortifications were lifted into the air. In this opening, anything was possible – or so it seemed. Berliners reveled for days, generous, grateful and proud. I watched the spirit of unity dissolve into the normalcy of individual opinions, habits and mindsets. The entrepreneurial minded citizens who began hawking the detritus of the East German regime to tourists - graffiti colored chunks of Wall, party insignia, military uniforms - signaled the new era: the East disappearing in German unification. Regrettably, the German government did not mark this historic moment. Instead of designating November 9 as a national holiday, Chancellor Kohl’s Conservative party chose October 3 – the day of unification. – because November 9 is also the date of the infamous Kristallnacht, when Nazis led the first large-scale pogrom against the German Jewish population in 1938. I wish that we had a day to commemorate the fact that our history is riddled with contradictions. to remember that the Volk can choose destruction or liberation, to honor our responsibility and the sense of possibility.
Two decades later, the euphoria of November 9, 1989 can seem like a phantasmagoria. But I remember that the sense of freedom was intoxicating, unifying and creative. Together, we pounded away at a history of division and intolerance. Every chunk that we loosened was evidence that all walls could crash, including those in our minds. This spirit was powerful. It offered a kind of redemption. Actually, it felt a lot like love.
This is what I think of when I see the lavender-colored chip of concrete that I chiseled from the Berlin Wall.
