Tearing down the Berlin Wall

Part of the wall saved as a memorial.

I was in Berlin twenty-five years ago when the Berlin Wall, erected in 1961 to separate East Berlin from the West, began to crumble (and would eventually come down.) In November 1989, following months of civil unrest in East Germany, the Communist government said people could travel between East and West.

My wife, Mary (died December 29, 2010), and I took advantage of a great price on an American Airlines flight to Germany to enjoy our first overseas trip together. We traveled in both East (Communist controlled) and West Germany, and spent a night in Salzburg, Austria.

We landed in Frankfurt and went on to Munich. While there we visited Dachau, the first concentration camp established by the Nazis. We were deeply sorrowed and affected by the horrific place in history the camp represents. We traveled to Oberammergau and visited some castles. Our next stop was Berchtesgaden but it was late when we arrived and we stayed the night across the border in Salzburg.

We drove the Autobahn toward Berlin through East Germany (getting in and out was an exercise in paperwork and paying fees) and later spent more two hours stuck on the road because of an accident ahead of us. We eventually arrived in West Berlin, the most exciting part of the journey. I visited Kennedy Platz where President Kennedy gave his “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech and talked with a German who had been there on the occasion so many years earlier. I was at Checkpoint Charlie and considered crossing over in the night to sight see but an American military officer recommended waiting for daylight. We took an organized bus tour of East Berlin the next day and found it much subdued in contrast to the lively and vigorous West Berlin.

We went to the Wall, separating Berlin into the Communist zone and the Democratic West, which was being attacked with small hammers and light hand tools by enthusiastic and almost delirious Berliners. (Starting officially in 1990, the government used heavy duty demolition equipment and by 1992 the nine miles of concrete, barbed wire, alarms, lights and buffer zones (killing fields) were gone.) Mary and I joined the throng of Berliners – West and East - and knocked some stones and bricks loose. I gathered a large handful of small pieces of rock and stone. Later, when we were back home, I divided these into five small plastic snack bags, labeled them and gave one to each of our children at Christmas as a memento of an historic moment in their lifetime.

On our final day we went on to Magdeburg, at the time one of the most depressing towns in East Germany, and then to Bonn and Frankfurt for the flight home.

Complete blog here.

Comment to: Arch@archibald99.com