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.”

Douglas Hamilton, who came to Berlin from Paris to reinforce the bureau, was out on the streets on that night and describes the scene here. Paul Taylor, who later came to Berlin from Jerusalem, steps back here to look at Germany’s relations neighbours then and now. Ralph Boulton, who worked for many years in East Berlin for Reuters, recalls some of his experiences here in this post.

Fabrizio Bensch, who was in his last year of high school in West Berlin, grabbed his camera and went to Checkpoint Charlie when he heard on the news the Wall was opening. But it took another hour or so before the first East Germans came through. ”It changed my life,” said Bensch, who decided on that night he wanted to be a photojournalist. Here’s his story.

Perhaps the most moving story is Peter Jebautzke’s. He grew up in East Germany and always dreamed of climbing in the Alps. But the Berlin Wall (3.5 metres high) kept him away from the 4,000 metre high peaks — until Nov. 9. Here’s what Jebautzke did when the Wall finally opened. 

There are many theories about what led to the Wall’s opening in 1989 — my personal favourite story is that Bruce Springsteen may have helped let the genie out of the bottle a year earlier when he held a concert in front of 160,000 people in East Berlin and said: “I came here to play rock ‘n’ roll for you East Berliners in the hope that one day all the barriers will be torn down.”

But colleagues currently working in Berlin have also weighed in with interesting examinations of what’s going on now, 20 years later.  Paul Carrel writes that the economy in formerly Communist East Germany has recovered in the last two decades in this story even if it’s not quite the “flourishing landscapes” everywhere that then-Chancellor Helmut Kohl had promised.

And Madeline Chambers shows that thousands of former workers at the loathed Stasi security police still have no remorse for the repressive regime they so ruthlessly kept in power. Here’s her story.

The German media have also had a lot of great stories. The ARD network had a fascinating documentary “Schabowskis Zettel” (Schabowski’s note) that ends with the head of the border guards at the first crossing point to open the Wall, Harald Jaeger, getting home early in the morning of Nov. 10 and telling his wife: “Honey, I just opened the Wall last night.” And then she said: “Erzaehl nicht so dummes Zeug” (Don’t come in here with rubbish like that).

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.

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.

He has now added a new attribute to his résumé: “rousing speaker”.

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.

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.

One senior German official told me that Merkel warned President George W. Bush repeatedly last year about relying too heavily on Saakashvili. 

“Don’t tell me you told me so,” Bush sheepishly told the German chancellor, this official recounted, after the Georgian leader declared a state of emergency in November and cracked down on opposition protesters.

That challenge to Saakashvili faded and he was reelected to a new term as president in January in a vote deemed broadly fair, but that did not allay German concerns about his fitness to lead. Some officials in Berlin and other capitals may be quietly hoping Georgians rise up against Saakashvili again in the wake of his brief but bloody war with Russia. 

Perhaps NATO can avoid another embarassing public spat over Georgia’s bid when it meets in Brussels at the end of the year. By then, tensions in Georgia’s breakway provinces may have eased somewhat, along with Moscow’s readiness for confrontation.

More likely, NATO will struggle again to paper over its divisions on Georgia, particularly if Republican John McCain — a friend of Saakashvili and ardent supporter of his government — wins the U.S. election one month before the summit.

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.”

Thomas Schmania, sweeping the sidewalk near the Victory column,  expected Obama to try to create a “Kennedy moment” on Thursday, harking back to former U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 speech in which he told a cheering Berlin audience: “Ich bin ein Berliner!”. “Obama won’t be able to top that. A line like that, you get that once in history,” he said.

So there you have it.  A new Kennedy moment or a disappointment waiting to happen. What do you think?

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.

U.S. officials hope the new building will show America’s “warmer, fuzzier” side, although whether either the embassy building or November’s U.S. election will herald a significant improvement in ties is another matter.

And as if the embassy, which cost about 80 million euros and only went ahead after a protracted and ugly public dispute with Berlin officials about how to make the embassy secure without moving two busy nearby streets 30 metres away, hasn’t courted enough controversy, Michael Reagan, son of the former president, was this week reported as saying Berlin should commemorate his father’s contribution to bringing down the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall. Here’s the piece from Der Tagesspiegel.

The Cold War is over. There is a chill in German-U.S. relations.

 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.

For her counterpart Kurt Beck, the beleaguered chairman of the slumping Social Democrats, it was not hard to overlook the body language of someone having a rough run. Beck looked particularly unhappy — more perturbed and pained than when he masks his woes by putting on a happy face on at his news conferences and party speeches. Beck also looked shockingly lonely as he sipped on a beer at a small table off on the fringes. Not a lot of people were waiting to chat with him and he was gone before the party even really got going — he may well be gone as the leader of the SPD before long too.

Almost all parties and groups were represented. But oddly I didn’t see anyone from the Left party. It might be the most popular party in the formerly communist east (it traces its roots to East Germany’s Communist party) and third strongest in Germany. But it is (still) shunned by the western-dominated establishment and considered ineligible for any role in government. Bild, founded by staunch anti-Communist Axel Springer, has been a bandleader in a campaign to keep the Left ostracised.

The newspaper’s unrivalled influence certainly plays a role in making it such a coveted ticket (I was told that demand outstrips supply by about five to one). Bild’s front page headlines can make or break a career and its heavyweight political coverage on page two strike fears throughout the halls of the Reichstag. Its succinct stories — few exceed 100 words — often set the agenda. At least 10 people said the exact same sentence about the Spanish soccer team – “It’ll be easier for us to beat Spain in the final than Russia because their style is similar to Portugal’s. The Russians are a bit too lively for us. They’d cause us more problems.” I’d remembered reading those same words in Bild’s sport section earlier in the day.

Another interesting development this year was the high number of pregnant women — I counted at least 10 women visibly in the latter stages of their pregnancies. These are high powered TV moderators, journalists and lobbyists in mid-career. Maybe a new government subsidy for working women to take time off for a child with two-thirds of their pay guaranteed by the state has really had an impact after all.

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?