With the twentieth anniversary of the tearing down of the Berlin Wall yesterday, I have been reflecting a lot on divides.  I was lucky enough to spend a year working in Germany, from August 1988 to May 1989, in Cologne for the year between college and law school.  And, although it killed me not to get back on a plane to Berlin in November 1989 to experience that historic moment of the wall coming down — I was a first year law student at the time and too panicked to miss class! — I was always grateful that I lived in divided Germany so that I could experience it as it was.  I visited Berlin three times during my year, seeing the Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, the Brandenberg Gate from behind the wall.  It was nerve-wracking to take a train through East Germany to get to Berlin and somewhat surreal to visit the divided city.  In the summer of 1989, just as things were starting to open up, I visited Prague and Budapest.  Prague was gorgeous but still in the throes of communism – Vaclav Havel was still just a playwright – and I remember being struck that you could not find fresh fruit.  Budapest was already quite different with more open markets and more goods.  It was not quite the West, but it was not quite fully Communist either.  I returned to go to law school and the Wall came down while I watched. 

It is amazing in retrospect that the Wall came down without violence – this is not to say that there was not plenty of violence keeping it up all those years – but, when it finally came down, it was ordinary people with pickaxes.  And perhaps that is why this anniversary is celebrated with such joy – and a really cool artist’s exhibition of dominos placed on the original site of the wall.  It did not take an invasion, it did not involve a shoot-out or tanks or civilians being hurt – the government finally acknowledged that the divide could not, and should not, be sustained.

Berlin Wall Dominos 

Cross posted at Indisputably.