In October 1989 the German Democratic Republic celebrated its 40th anniversary and just a few weeks later, on 9 November, the Berlin Wall fell. The images beamed around the world, of thousands of people dancing on the wall and East Germans streaming into the West, were a dramatic symbol of the end of the Communist era in Europe.

Ironically enough, the fall of the Berlin wall and the domino effect it created, leading to the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union, came about more or less by mistake. A member of the GDR’s politburo (the Communist-era central executive) famously misinterpreted a press release detailing new travel regulations for East Germans. GDR citizens flooded the Berlin checkpoints and the border police were taken completely by surprise. The collapse was swift and unexpected and in the days and weeks that followed a constant stream of East Berliners flooded into the West.

Too much choice
Each received 100 deutschmarks as “welcome money” – as their own currency was useless in the West. Pieter Liebisch and his wife Heidrun rushed to West Berlin’s biggest department store with their money. “It was overwhelming,” says Pieter, describing the contrast with the meagre choice of goods on offer in GDR shops. “My wife even found it unbearable. We didn’t go through the whole department store, just the first floor. And there were so many influences and impressions she couldn’t comprehend”. Pieter himself seized the opportunity to stock on books by authors banned in the East such as Gunther Grass.

Tension in the air
Dimo Boehmer was ten years old and at home with his family in East Berlin when they heard an announcement on television that the border was opening that very evening. Their reaction was one of shock and disbelief and they stayed home. But when he went to school the next day some of his fellow students were missing - gone to the West and not returned, “There was some tension in the air, because no-one knew what would come next, how things would develop.”

And what came next of course was the slow inexorable collapse of Europe’s Communist regimes and the re-unification of Germany. All this weekend their will be events in Berlin commemorating the Fall of the Wall – but there is now a whole generation of young Germans who’ve never known their country as divided. For them the Wall is history. One student told us she believed her generation should know about their history but, “for me personally it doesn’t really matter”. A view backed up by her friend who admitted that the celebrations were simply unimportant to him.