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 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.
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.
“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’.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
