Posted 6:58 pm Sunday, November 08, 2009
Germans Celebrate Democracy By Rebuilding Symbol Of Cold War
By JIM GIAMETTA
Executive Editor
BERLIN - As this once divided European city prepares to celebrate another milestone in democracy, there is a movement afoot to rebuild portions of the dreaded Berlin Wall.
Executive Editor
BERLIN - As this once divided European city prepares to celebrate another milestone in democracy, there is a movement afoot to rebuild portions of the dreaded Berlin Wall.
However, this time around it is not as a geopolitical barrier stymieing personal freedom but as a world reminder of what it means to lose those cherished rights of freedom and liberty.
A symbol of the "Iron Curtain" during the Cold War, the Berlin Wall came down Nov. 9, 1989, in a joyful unification of Germany's pivotal city that was completely sealed off shortly after the communist-led regime and its comrades became disenchanted with the allies' politics and territorial disputes over reconstruction.
The complaining parties were the Allied Command Forces, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the Russians.
Their constant bickering led to the erection of the concrete wall, barbed-wire fences and guard towers on Aug. 13, 1961. The aggression launched a campaign of harsh treatment for citizens living in the East Berlin sector.
This artwork on the Berlin Wall, seen in 1991, commemorates the day the wall came down. The car is a Trabant, a symbol of the failed former East Germany and the fall of communism, originally was made by an East German automaker.
As West Berlin began speedy reconstruction and embraced new ideas of independence and liberty after the war, the rest of the communist world, backed by the Soviet Union, towed the line as set by Moscow's leaders pushing an overbearing and relentless ideology.
For more than 28 years, the ruling regime embraced all methods to control the people, summarily using deadly force against those attempting to flee into West Berlin.
Armed guards and dog teams surrounded the perimeter, challenging anyone who attempted to approach the wall to escape. More than 100 people lost their lives trying to leave.
Two years before the fall of the wall, President Ronald Reagan gave his famous speech outside the Brandenburg Gate in which he called for Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down these walls." Reagan's passionate plea struck a historic chord around the world signaling the pending change in human rights.
Regan's speech said, "General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization ... come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
Berlin today is a beehive of economic growth as the unified city embraces capitalism by luring foreign investors to commit to phenomenal growth and industrial development.
Visitors to Berlin find a blending of the old world infrastructure with an air of modern skyscrapers and business center complexes. The city has become a tourist mecca for those wanting to know about the city's past.
The colored and poignant graffiti placed on the western wall had deteriorated over time, and there are movements to have the original artists repaint the panels using longer-life materials and texturing. Officials hope to have this completed by the 25th anniversary date.
In the meantime, tourists can visit museums around Berlin, including the Allied Forces Museum, where large panels of the wall are on display. Television cameras captured reels of footage showing throngs of joyful citizens dismantling the wall once it was declared a free zone.
A large percentage of the wall was chipped, hammered and reduced to rubble that found its way into museums across the world and in the pockets of all those who visited Berlin in the early days of unification.
So much of the material disappeared that it is now against German law to remove any chips or rocks from this historic site.
Also, while at the Allied Museum, visitors can see various parts of tunnels employed by enterprising East Germans to escape their tyranny. Docu-ments and maps captured after the war show in detail the people's struggle.
In addition to a couple of tanks, the museum features an entire section depicting aircraft that flew around the clock, airlifting food during the massive British-American Berlin airlift using C-46 cargo aircraft during the Berlin Blockade.
In downtown Berlin, there is a well-preserved and much photographed U.S. cargo plane suspended high above the busy business center.
Perhaps, the most recognizable landmark in Berlin besides the Brandenburg Gate and the wall itself is Veryl Goodnight's life-size bronze sculpture, "The Day the Wall Came Down."
The 7-ton monument was given by the United States government to the German people. It is on the grounds of the Allied Museum not far from the Brandenburg Gate.
Goodnight's sculpture, considered one of her best-known works, is a twin monument dedicated to freedom and features five Mustangs jumping pieces of a crumbling Berlin Wall. The original bronze is at the George H. Bush Presidential Library in College Station. Goodnight lives in San Juan National Forest in Colorado.
Bush was president when the wall came down and has never claimed any public credit for his role in history.
In 2001, the Brandenburg Gate underwent a massive facelift and to prove capitalism was alive and well, a German telephone company sponsored a giant curtain that encapsulated the entire monument from ground to crown.
The canvas curtain was painted jokingly to show numerous marble columns had been removed, giving the impression that major work had whittled the structure down. Since then, it's has been fully restored and allows entry and exit points to the former East Berlin.
A visitor to Berlin today can freely traverse the sectors and imagine what life was like 20 years ago, when a 100-mile wall divided a city. And what remains is a chalk-line on some city streets showing where liberty lost was regained, and preserved for history's sake.
