35 years ago today, at breakfast, my mother told me that the Berlin Wall had fallen. \u201eYour brother Peter was already over there all night\u201c - in East Berlin.<\/p>\n
Since 1988, I had been closely following all available news about the civil rights movement in the East. A few days earlier, I had entered from West Berlin to participate in the large demonstration on Alexanderplatz, naturally without informing my parents of my intentions. Now, the Wall was history. I cried.<\/p>\n
But first, I went to school. My father gave me one last piece of advice: \u201eNow comes reunification.\u201c His words left me bewildered and also a little angry. I sympathized with the civil rights activists' goals for democracy, not with the idea that the larger German state would swallow the smaller one.<\/p>\n
There was a class test in German class. The topic: our thoughts on German reunification. My opinion was clear: From my perspective, a new, independent GDR should be created that deserves the name democracy. Looking back, these ideas were unrealistic. They reflected that I did not understand my father's feelings, and thus the feelings of many older Germans. I didn't understand what it meant that our family had once been separated by the Wall, especially since he rarely spoke of it. I was a Wall child.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, I sometimes wonder today how history would have unfolded if the GDR had remained an independent state. Would capitalist modernization in the GDR, Eastern Europe, and Russia have been less characterized by shady \"gun-toting capitalists\"? Would the geopolitical situation in Europe possibly be more peaceful today? But that remains speculation.<\/p>\n
After school, I set off. On the way to Checkpoint Charlie in Kreuzberg, a young German-Turk with a German flag came towards me and hugged me. Tears of joy flowed.<\/p>\n
The fall of the Wall was and remains the most beautiful political moment of my life. It gave my life a fundamentally new direction. I moved to East Berlin. An anarchic adventure began there, the likes of which are hard to imagine in today's cramped and gentrified city.<\/p>\n
Today, as hate preachers build new walls all over the world, I remember the fall of the wall and the peaceful revolution in the GDR.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
35 Years Since the Fall of the Berlin Wall<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-texte"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t