CHANCELLOR ANGELA Merkel was joined by world leaders and millions of people at the Brandenburg Gate yesterday to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago, a day she described as “one of the happiest moments of my life”.
Before a worldwide audience, she expressed thanks to Germany’s European neighbours and to the former wartime Allies for preparing the ground for the fall of the wall, and German unity a year later.
“Today is such a beautiful day for us because it is not just a day of celebration for us Germans but for all of Europe,” she said.
“It is a day of celebration for all people who today have greater freedom. We thank everyone who helped us on this path.”
Before the happy scenes of that night 20 years ago, Dr Merkel recalled, too, what came before: a divided continent and countless lives lost or destroyed.
“If there’s one thing I have regretted in the last 20 years is that we needed so long to recognise the injustice for what it was and to do our best to make it right,” she said. “It’s easy enough to give back seized land, but lost life chances, and constant worry, that’s something that is very difficult to remember in hindsight.”
Speaking in concert, the leaders of the second World War Allies said the fall of the Berlin Wall was a call to challenge the 21st century, from tyranny to climate change.
French president Nicolas Sarkozy called the fall of the wall a “liberation, a call to us all to fight injustice everywhere”.
British prime minister Gordon Brown said the “whole world was proud of the people of Berlin” and their “unbreakable spirit”.
“Injustice is not the final word on the human condition,” said Mr Brown. “In a troubled world . . . individuals in pain need not suffer forever without hope.”
In a video message, US president Barack Obama said there was “no clearer rebuke of tyranny” than the fall of the wall. “There are still those who live within walls of tyranny, that is why this day is for them as much as it is for us,” he said. “Walls can truly come down.”
Russian president Dmitry Medvedev praised the “historical wisdom” of German unification in 1990. “In Europe, confrontation is a thing of the past,” he said.
“The move to a multi-polar world is very important for all countries in Europe.”
Civil rights campaigner Joachim Gauck, later the first custodian of the Stasi files, gave a nod to the US president in a short speech. “Our cheer from 1989 – ‘we are the people’ – was our ‘Yes we can’,” he said.
His successor as Stasi files custodian, Marianne Birthler, said that young Germans born after the fall of the wall were anxious to learn about the vanished German state.
Yesterday’s anniversary began on a solemn note, at the Bernauer Strasse memorial in eastern Berlin, where Dr Merkel laid a wreath for the estimated 136 people who lost their lives trying to cross the Berlin Wall.
At an ecumenical Mass, religious leaders recalled Germany's other anniversary on November 9th: Kristallnacht, the Nazi-organised night of violence against Jews and synagogues in 1938.
Later, attention shifted to the historical Bornholmer Bridge where, 20 years ago, Dr Merkel herself and thousands of others flooded through the first chink in the wall.
On the bridge, Dr Merkel praised the pivotal role in events of former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, at her side.
With his cooling-off in support for the reform-resistant east Berlin government, and by refusing to repeat history and send in Soviet tanks to quash protest, he ensured the events of 1989 became a peaceful revolution.
“Courageously, you allowed things happen, and that was far more than we could have expected,” Dr Merkel told him.
Poland’s Lech Walesa appeared to take issue with that view: the former leader of Poland’s Solidarity trade union saying he was “saddened” that people like Mr Gorbachev were being made into undeserved heroes. “He neither wanted to topple communism nor the Berlin Wall,” he said.
“When things are portrayed that way, that means Europe is built on a lie. Pope John Paul brought about half of the fall, 30 per cent was Solidarity and Lech Walesa, and just 20 per cent the rest of the world.”