Global News Journal
Beyond the World news headlines
Berlin Wall went down with a party — rather than a bang
One of the most amazing aspects about the Berlin Wall’s sudden collapse 20 years ago was that no one lost their nerve. Not a single shot was fired. The Cold War ended with the biggest street party Berlin, or any city anywhere, has ever seen.
Who would have thought that’s how the Berlin Wall would go out? Berlin’s long division was the result of World War Two. The Wall was the focal point of the Cold War — Soviet and American tanks faced off almost barrel-to-barrel at Checkpoint Charlie. Not surprisingly, many people thought that the stalemate would only be changed by another war. But instead on Nov. 9, 1989 there was no bang, no blood. Just a lot of celebrating. And a lot of tears.
That’s for me probably the most fascinating thing about the sudden implosion of the Communist East German regime — it went out so peacefully. And that’s one of the themes that has been touched upon in the myriad of German media accounts in recent weeks ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Wall’s fall on Nov. 9.
It’s also an issue that’s been explored by Reuters correspondents in Berlin past and present — in a series of stories that you can read on this special page .
The collapse of the Wall was for Reuters a special occasion — not only because it was both the first to report the news to the world that the Wall had fallen but also because it was the first to report it was being built 28 years earlier, as my German language service colleague Volker Warkentin notes in his illumating story (click here) about the famous press conference on Nov. 9, 1989 that led to the Wall bursting open in the hours that followed.
Guenter Schabowski, a Politburo member, had inadverently announced at the very end of that otherwise dull hour-long news conference that East Germans would be allowed to travel directly to the West from now on. Schabowski was asked when the new rules took effect and stammered: “That comes into effect…according to my information…. immediately, without delay,” he said, shuffling through the papers spread in front of him as he sought in vain for more information. It later emerged the announcement was not supposed to be released until 4 a.m. the next morning and it was supposed to include instructions for an orderly process of applying for visas first — not the mad dash to the border that he caused.
Tom Heneghan, the bureau chief for Germany at the time, was in East Berlin writing many of the stories on that famous evening when the Wall burst open. But as the American journalist notes in his intriguing story (click here) there was so much going on that many of the details of the action only came to be known later. “What we only found out much later was that Schabowski silently asked himself: ‘I wonder if this has been cleared with the Soviets.’ He didn’t know!”, Heneghan writes. “Later that evening, as the world’s eyes zeroed in on the partying at the Wall, East Germany’s communist leader Egon Krenz was pacing the long corridors of the Central Committee headquarters alone mumbling ‘What should I do now?’ What a gem that would have been in our story that night.”
The Berlin Wall 2.0
The Berlin Wall fell 20 years ago on Nov. 9, 1989. A team of Reuters correspondents and multimedia journalists from Berlin and London will be covering the major event in a completely new way — Berlin Wall 2.0. The team from The Berlin Project are joining forces with the Reuters text, pictures and TV correspondents in Berlin to present real-time coverage and impressions of everything going on in Germany’s reunited capital city.
You can also view the best of Reuters’ content on our Berlin Wall global coverage page, follow the team in Berlin on Facebook and get a behind the scenes look at Berlin 2.0 by visiting The Berlin Project. Please send us your thoughts and memories by commenting on the live blog below.
Click on the points on the map below to find out where in the city the Berlin Project team have been reporting from and to listen to their audio reports.
Oh yeh, Obama should have gone to Berln to observe the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. No doubt about it! He’s the president of the USA. He represents all that is good about our way of life.
How the hell did hos advisors convince him that he should not be there? What, was he still po’d about his snub in 2008? Hell, he wasn’t president yet. He was a wanna-be then.
Now, he could have been there and echoed Reagan’s speech and got himself a boat load of good press.
The significance of that historical moment was lost on him, I guess!!
Steinmeier sheds dull image with rousing speech
As Germany’s foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier has delivered many speeches, but none that anyone can particularly remember. Germany’s top diplomat has impeccable credentials yet has rarely come close to stirring anyone with his balanced, cautious, usually dry and sometimes rather dull addresses. No one would ever think of ticking the box “rousing speaker” next to his name.
That all changed on Saturday — when Steinmeier gave the speech of his life to a congress of his centre-left Social Democrats (SPD). The 500 delegates interrupted the white-haired lawyer’s riveting 88-minute address with applause 114 times. They then elected Steinmeier, who had never won election for any public office, as their candidate for the 2009 election with 95 percent of the vote.
By brilliantly latching on to the dominant issue of the moment — the global financial crisis – Steinmeier told the SPD delegates who have suffered post-war record lows in opinion polls this year and are worrying about their own job security in next year’s elections that it is the SPD more than any other party that is ideally positioned to benefit from the banking crisis. The SPD has long pushed for more state controls, he reminded them, and always stood up to protect the proverbial “little guy”.
“Let’s close our flanks, let’s not settle for second place but rather let’s fight for the victory next year,” Steinmeier told the delegates, who gave him a five-minute standing ovation for the fiery address.
It was also more than the usual vague piddle-paddle that German leaders often offer up. Steinmeier, until now seen more aligned to the conservative wing of the SPD, gave the party’s left plenty to cheer about. He spoke out clearly against extending nuclear power, unambiguously endorsed Gesine Schwan as the party’s candidate for the office of president even though SPD conservatives would prefer her withdrawal, and promised new government spending to boost the economy.
“People are looking to us to lead them through the crisis and we can do it. We’ve buried our differences. We believe in ourselves again and that’s making us strong. At critical moments we’ve been the ones that provided the answers.” Before Saturday the SPD had been a party in disarray. They had struggled to make their mark with voters. Trailing Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats by about 10 points in opinion polls, the party has been deeply frustrated, fed up with Merkel getting much of the credit for the achievements of their grand coalition.
“I was extremely impressed with his speech,” said former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who sat cheering Steinemeier in the front row with another ex SPD chancellor, Helmut Schmidt. An accolyte of Schroeder’s, Steinmeier served as his chief of staff. Before Saturday, he was seen as a steady pair of hands, holding an office (foreign minister) that almost automatically makes him one of the country’s most popular leaders. Before Saturday he was respected, admired perhaps.
Replacing the leaders is particularly difficult in Germany given that right now the government is a grand coalition, so the opposition is reduced to Greens, Free Democrats and Die Linke, none of which parties would be in a possibility to form a government coalition. The next German elections could produce:
either another grand coalition of Christian Democrats and Social Democrats
a CDU-FDP and prehaps Green coalition
An SPD-Die Linke coalition? Which is precisely where wxe return to Steinmeier, he doesn’t seem like the sort of leader that Die Linke would accept to govern with, but one must never underestimate political opportunism.
I don’t know how the situation compares in Greece and in Italy. Berlusconi is pretty harshly judged outside the country (it’s fair to say also there are a lot of Italians who don’t like him either, though not enough to defeat him in elections). Like Germany though Berlusconi appears to have a pretty go it alone approach when it comes to tackling the crisis. He also holds the same foreign policy line as the Germans when it comes to accomodating Russia.
“I told you so!” Merkel tells U.S., Britain
German Chancellor Angela Merkel sent a clear “I told you so!” to the United States and Britain at the weekend, criticising them in unusually frank terms for resisting measures that might have contained the current financial crisis. The conservative leader of Europe’s largest economy reminded her partners that she had pushed for steps to boost the transparency of hedge funds during Germany’s presidency of the Group of Eight last year. ”We got things moving, but we didn’t get enough support, especially in the United States and Britain,” she told the Muenchner Merkur newspaper. Merkel expanded on her point in a speech in Austria, suggesting that both Washington and London were only now coming around to her view.
“It was said for a long time ‘Let the markets take care of themselves’ and that there is ‘no need for more transparency’…Today we are a step further because even America and Britain are saying ‘Yes, we need more transparency, we need better standards for the ratings agencies’.
Germany had made greater transparency a key theme of its rotating presidency of the G8, which includes the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Canada and Russia. Berlin had expressed fears that hedge funds could threaten the stability of the financial system through their heavy reliance on borrowing to finance risky trading strategies. But it ran into resistance from the United States and Britain, achieving little.
Whether Merkel’s G8 initiative could have averted or limited the current financial market crisis if it had been successful is certainly debatable. But reminding voters that she had sought to address the problem as early as last year could help Merkel score points on the domestic front ahead of a general election next year. Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) rule in an uneasy grand coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD), and both sides have been trying to play up their own role as crisis manager in the current financial market turmoil.
Both Merkel and her SPD finance minister, Peer Steinbrueck, have tried to take credit for Germany’s efforts last year to agree better transparency rules for financial markets. SPD budget expert Carsten Schneider praised Steinbrueck’s efforts during Germany’s G8 presidency in a newspaper interview on Monday, adding: “At the time, the United States and Britain demonised every effort to agree more transparency and rules.”
As Germany’s election approaches, the “I told you so!” Berlin seemed to send to Washington and London on the weekend could turn into an “I told you so first!”-competition between Merkel’s CDU and her SPD rivals.
Nancy Pelosi having an investigation of the very people she has been supporting for years. That’s funny. Throw them all out–wholesale.
Berlin angst about Georgia’s U.S.-backed leader
There was an awkward moment on Sunday, when Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili stood next to German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Tbilisi and thanked her for having “initiated” plans to bring his country into NATO.
Anyone who followed NATO’s last summit in Bucharest back in April knows that it was Merkel who broke with Washington and spearheaded opposition to such a move.
Shifting uncomfortably, Merkel couldn’t help but interject: “Give credit where credit is due,” she said curtly, taken aback by Saakashvili’s strange distortion of her stance.
The moment was instructive, underlining one of the main reasons why Berlin remains opposed to giving Georgia a seat in the military alliance anytime soon.
Merkel continues to view Saakashvili and his U.S.-backed bid to join NATO with a good dose of scepticism — a view reinforced by the Georgian president’s actions and rhetorical eruptions since his violent showdown with Moscow began earlier this month.
Last week, the Georgian president drew parallels between Europe’s reaction to the conflict and its appeasement of Hitler in the run-up to World War Two — not the best way to win friends.
Merkel did offer Saakashvili some of her most encouraging language to date on his NATO aspirations, saying Georgia was on a “clear path” to membership. But it would be wrong to read too much into that.
And Saakasshvili IS a hysterical idiot, that’s what caused him to react to provocations in the first place.
What people in Germany are saying about Obama’s visit
Obamamania has hit Germany hard, but many here are wary of the big show the Democratic presidential candidate will put on in Berlin on Thursday, when his speech at the “Victory Column“ could attract hundreds of thousands.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told Die Zeit magazine that the “young and open” Obama was raising hopes of a renewal in transatlantic relations and for that reason he should be heeded.
But Eckart von Klaeden, a foreign policy expert for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, recalled that Germans had seen big political events like Obama’s speech before. Hundreds of thousands had turned out for Helmut Kohl and Willy Brandt during during German unification , but the message was clear: “Euphoria in politics is an invitation to disappointment.”
Obama is at least not like Bush, seen by many Germans as a war-monger, said Manfred Guellner, head of the Forsa opinion polling group. “There is a lot of hope associated with Obama. People hope he’ll be a peace, rather than a war president.” But the charismatic Democratic senator will find that if he asks Germany to get more involved militarily in Afghanistan or even Iraq, “the positive feeling towards him could change very quickly”.
Josef Joffe, editor and publisher of Die Zeit, agreed that Iraq and Afghanistan could well lead to “dissonances” with Obama. “Germany’s Obamamania has disappointment written all over it,” he wrote in his Newsweek blog.
In fact, opined one official in Merkel’s office, it would be much better for Obama to give a low-key speech at a university or think tank. That way, the risk of disappointment will be lower.
Wolfgang Rossbach, a pensioner who lives near the Victory Column where Obama will speak, was rather more upbeat, saying: “He’s black and he’s new. And he promises to change things. I think that’s good.”
I am particularly interested in the views expressed by Ralph. I am wondering what exactly qualifies America to be in the leadership role around the world? Is it the falling dollar/economy, the unemployment, the pushy pro-life views that are not shared by a lot of countries around the world, the understanding of religions around the world, or the amount of money they put into bringing their own troops resulting in statistics that state that you are as likely to be shot by your own army mates as by the people you are fighting. From my personal experience, America never/currently had an appropriate understanding of European or any other politics, enough to actually intervene in foreign affairs and do some good. In Europe almost every country has more than 2 neighbors that are also powerful. Hence nations have to be careful and smart about whose foreign affairs they stick their nose into.
It is so easy for US to stay on their own continent and try and bring order to chaos in affairs of countries that they do not understand. This is not to mention that fact that states cause more problems and then try to fix them blaming someone else. Where not Afgan soldiers trained by the US during the cold war? Yes, they were. But hey, now America needs to go back and try and settle the chaos that has been going on for ages by spending their own money and risking lives of so many of their young men. Truth is that no one in US understands life style and beliefs of any other countries enough to make a positive impact.
This is the problem with North American thinking: “it took American-led army to end the genocide”. Yeah because to this day that is mostly what America has to offer: army and force. As we are currently witnessing that kind of thinking doesn’t exactly gain many fans in today’s civilized world. As for sitting around and not getting involved, let’s go back to World War II when states didn’t get involved in 1939, when the events stirring up the war actually started. Monetary and materialistic help was to the allies was of course there, but let’s not kid ourselves war propaganda is a great way to make business until Pearl Harbour.
New U.S. embassy: symbol of U.S.-German relations
The ferocity of the reaction in the German media to the fortress-like new U.S. embassy in Berlin, which former U.S. President George Bush will inaugurate on Friday, strikes me as a reflection of the strains in German-U.S. relations since 2003′s Iraq conflict.
It underlines just how long gone the days of the Cold War really are. Then, when Berlin was the front line in the Cold War, America was West Germany’s best friend and U.S. soldiers were welcome across the country.
Architectural crticis in Germany have slammed the boxy building with narrow windows as being reminiscent of Baghdad’s Green Zone.
The embassy is a picture of a country traumatised by 9/11 and by the consequences of globalisation, of a nation with such heavy armour that it can no longer see the world,” wrote conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung earlier this year.
Other critics have been just as hostile, deriding it as a discount supermarket, a prison, a bunker and like Fort Knox.
Admittedly, the beige building — in the heart of the city next to the Brandenburg Gate and just metres from where the Berlin Wall used to stand — looks rather bland and the metal bollards emphasise the barrier between the embassy and Berlin’s residents and tourists. But it isn’t so different from U.S. embassies in other European capitals which have boosted security.
Germans who fondly remember former U.S. President John F. Kennedy declaring “Ich bin ein Berliner” in 1963 and former President Ronald Reagan calling on the Soviet Union’s Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall” in 1987 long for an improvement in trans-Atlantic relations.
Perhaps the Americans are just fast-forwarding to 2050 when Germany will be a majority Muslim country?
For the time being relations between the US and Germany seem much better than in the 1980′s when Reagan was busy draining the USSR’s coffers in fighting the Afghan War and Star Wars program.
Snapshot of German power at Bild summer fest
At any one of the dozen high-powered Berlin summer parties thrown by major media outlets and the political parties in Germany each year you can count on finding a reasonable cross-section of government and industry movers and shakers to rub elbows with. But nowhere in Germany can you find as rich an assortment of A-list government, business, media and entertainment industry types as at the “Sommerfest” held by Bild newspaper.
From Chancellor Angela Merkel and Deutsche Bank chairman Josef Ackermann to heavyweight boxers, assorted actors and actresses, and people famous for just being famous, there is no more eclectic gathering of 750 people who see themselves as Germany’s best and brightest — all on fine form ahead of Germany’s cherished two-month long summer holiday season.
Many countries have their own special events — awards ceremonies, banquets or parties — that can sometimes be used to gauge the national mood. In Germany it’s the Bild fest.
“We like to party in Berlin and the Bild people know how to organise a great bash,” said Cherno Jobatey, a well-known television host for public broadcaster ZDF who said he had been to 10 such events in the last 14 days (“my fridge was always empty and the food is usually pretty good”). “But seriously, you can run into all the people you wanted to run into here. You can talk to people you’ve always wanted to talk to in a way you wouldn’t normally be able to.”
Even politicians, captains of industry or celebrities who have been bashed in the headlines of Bild, Germany’s best-selling tabloid-style newspaper, are usually more than happy to show up for the unique German-style barbecue party — it’s “informal” but everyone still wears a suit.
“Someone once said ‘You haven’t really lived until you’ve battled with Bild’ and I think there’s some truth to that,” Bild editor-in-chief Kai Diekmann said with a big smile after pointing to some of those who had been thrashed in his paper but still came to the party. “I’m always happy to see the people here that we’ve had rip-roaring battles with. You can really find everyone here — from the ruling coalition to the opposition and across industry. There are lots of fellow journalists here as well. There’s a cheerful atmosphere to it all, there’s nothing forced about it. You can swap ideas with just about anyone you want.”
This year’s Bild fest provided a rich harvest for anyone looking for nuances in German politics as pretty much every member of the cabinet was there. Merkel, in especially high spirits presumably due to her superb opinion poll numbers, was easily the most sought after person to talk to. And those she spend extra time chatting with (such as Lower-Saxony’s ambitious state premier Christian Wulff) are sure to be seen as rising stars in the months ahead. Conversely those she doesn’t talk with (but had in the past) are on the way down.
Bush absence baffles Berliners
Berlin has had a deep and enduring love affair with American presidents. Berliners have never forgotten the U.S. leaders who helped keep West Berlin free during the Cold War with the Airlift and many can still recite the words of John F. Kennedy’s legendary “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech at City Hall in 1963. So it is all the more glaring that George W. Bush has once again avoided the German capital on his fifth and final visit to the country , spending just minutes at Berlin airport on his way in and out of Germany. It was also odd that Bush failed to mention the Airlift, one of the brightest moments of post-war U.S. foreign policy, at his news conference with Chancellor Angela Merkel in the rural village of Meseberg (pop. 150) about 100 km (60 miles) north of the capital. The Airlift’s 60th anniversary is being marked this month and was supposed to be the reason for Bush’s visit. Perhaps it was the memories of 10,000 anti-war protesters who disrupted Bush’s first and only stay in Berlin in May 2002. Or maybe it was the recollections of the 10,000 German police needed to guard him in the centre of Berlin, which he turned into a veritable ghost town. Bush lamented about “living in a bubble” when he was here for 20 hours in 2002. His next trip was to Mainz, a provincial city in the far west — there were anti-war protests there too. After that he went to small northeastern villages in 2006 and 2007 — but stayed clear of Berlin. The reason is clear — Iraq. Former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder won re-election against long odds in 2002 by standing up to Bush on Iraq, a hugely popular position in war-scarred Germany that nevertheless got him ostracised by Bush. Differences were later patched up, but even Bush acknowledged in Meseberg on Wednesday: “It’s obviously been a contentious issue between our countries in the past.” Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper columnist Kurt Kister wrote: “Bush is spending his entire visit hidden away in the provincial town of Meseberg. Meseberg has the advantage that it’s easy to seal it off from the rest of the world with fences and police. It’s not surprising because for the overwhelming majority of Germans Bush is the most unpopular U.S. president in the last two generations.” As an American who’s lived in Berlin for much of the past 15 years, I have felt at first hand the city’s affinity for all things American. In 1994, I saw tears running down the cheeks of American GIs, overwhelmed by 250,000 cheering Berliners giving them a thunderous farewell, as the city’s Cold War defence force marched in a farewell parade . And I have seen the tens of thousands that lined the streets to cheer Bill Clinton in 1993, when he became the first U.S. president to walk through the Brandenburg Gate, and in 1998 when he came to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Airlift. Clinton even went for jogs in the city’s Tiergarten park and dropped into trendy restaurants with only minimal protection. So, after watching Bush avoid Berlin for the fourth time and knowing how fond Berliners are of America, I’m wondering what’s next. Will the next U.S. president be able to or want to walk the streets of Berlin again? Will that perhaps be a useful barometer? What does it say about the state of international affairs if the world’s most powerful leader doesn’t feel welcome and safe in a city that, in many ways, owes its very survival to U.S. presidents?
To Mike T:
G. W. Bush is an appointed puppet, not an elected U.S. President, who says he gets his direction, in particular about the war he prosecutes in Iraq, from his conversations with God. Why in the world would anyone cheer him?
But you are correct about his not being a pop singer. Not even digital software could get him on key.
it took 40 years after WWII…and look what is happening to Russia after the “so called” collapse of communism. People are so afraid there, because of organized crimes control. They need help. Somebody help them. If not, maybe China will. Hey, by the way, why is China a communist country? How come they never tore down their wall? …and North Korea?