For almost three decades, the Berlin Wall was a symbol of the division of the world into East and West. It not only separated West from East Berlin but encircled all of West Berlin, making it an islet within the state of East Germany. Residents of West Berlin could travel to West Germany via certain roads and railways or visit East Germany. For the East Germans, however, a trip to West Germany or the rest of Western Europe was an elusive dream, as travel was only allowed in sister socialist states, as they were then called.
The life of the East Germans changed, however, from one moment to the next, on November 9, 1989. At a press conference broadcast live on East German television, a new law was announced that allowed travel abroad, and therefore to West Germany. After a few hours, thousands of people began flocking to the Berlin Wall, which, under pressure from the masses, opened its gates that had been closed for many years, effectively marking the end of Germany’s division into East and West. In October 1990 the two Germanys became one state again.
It all started with the political changes in Moscow
The Glasnost and Perestroika political reforms promoted by the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, when he took over the reins of the mighty Soviet Union in 1985, played a key role in the catastrophic developments in East Germany. which the satellite countries of Moscow were obliged to faithfully follow the course set by the Kremlin and allowing the sister socialist states to make independent decisions.
East German border guards refuse to shake hands with a Berliner.
Opposition and civil rights activists across Eastern Europe have slowly begun to rise. In Poland, for example, the ruling Communist Party paved the way for dialogue with the then-banned Solidarnosc union to hold elections in which opposition candidates were running for the first time.
German Reunification took place peacefully
In the summer of 1989, Hungary timidly but decisively opened its border with Austria, which had hitherto separated the so-called “iron curtain” from the Western world, allowing many thousands of East Germans to leave their homeland and reach West Germany via Austria.
A few months later, the first mass demonstrations against the regime began in East Germany with slogans such as “We are the people” and “No to violence”. The culmination of the demonstrations was on November 4, when more than 500,000 people took part in a demonstration in the center of East Berlin in Alexanderplatz.
November 9, 1989 paved the way for German reunification and even peacefully without a single bullet falling. In the months that followed, more and more countries in Eastern Europe took the path of independence from Moscow. The cycle ended at the end of 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, from where it all began in 1985 with the election of Mikhail Gorbachev as leader of the Communist Party.
DW – Marcel Firstenau / Stefanos Georgakopoulos
.
