{"id":7942,"date":"2009-11-11T10:21:10","date_gmt":"2009-11-11T15:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=7942"},"modified":"2009-11-11T10:21:10","modified_gmt":"2009-11-11T15:21:10","slug":"take-down-this-wall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2009\/11\/take-down-this-wall\/","title":{"rendered":"Take Down This Wall"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the twentieth anniversary of the tearing down of the Berlin Wall yesterday, I have been reflecting a lot on divides.\u00a0 I was lucky enough to spend a year working\u00a0in Germany, from August 1988 to May 1989, in Cologne for the year between college and law school.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I visited Berlin three times during my year, seeing the Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, the Brandenberg Gate from behind the wall.\u00a0 It was nerve-wracking to take a train through East Germany to get to Berlin and somewhat surreal to visit the divided city.\u00a0 In the summer of 1989, just as things were starting to open up, I visited Prague and Budapest.\u00a0 Prague was gorgeous but still in the throes of communism \u2013 Vaclav Havel was still just a playwright \u2013 and I remember being struck that you could not find fresh fruit.\u00a0 Budapest was already quite different with more open markets and more goods.\u00a0 It was not quite the West, but it was not quite fully Communist either.\u00a0 I returned to go to law school and the Wall came down while I watched.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

It is amazing in retrospect that the Wall came down without violence \u2013 this is not to say that there was not plenty of violence keeping it up all those years \u2013 but, when it finally came down, it was ordinary people with pickaxes.\u00a0 And perhaps that is why this anniversary is celebrated with such joy \u2013 and a really cool artist\u2019s exhibition of dominos placed on the original site of the wall.\u00a0 It did not take an invasion, it did not involve a shoot-out or tanks or civilians being hurt \u2013 the government finally acknowledged that the divide could not, and should not, be sustained.<\/p>\n

\"Berlin Berlin Wall Dominos\u00a0<\/div>\n

Cross posted at Indisputably<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the twentieth anniversary of the tearing down of the Berlin Wall yesterday, I have been reflecting a lot on divides.\u00a0 I was lucky enough to spend a year working\u00a0in Germany, from August 1988 to May 1989, in Cologne for the year between college and law school.\u00a0 And, although it killed me not to get […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international-law","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7942\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}