glory night

Winter has come suddenly. The weekend was fine; it was even sunny on Saturday. But today, a harsh cold befell this town. After riding my bike home from work, I was frozen to the bone, my fingers numb and my chest paralyzed. Despite the physical pain, the cold is only superficial. My heart is warm with impossible memories, stories of a lifetime compressed into a few months. Twenty years ago today, the Wall came down.

It was the most important day of my life, it changed everything, and I, like every other East German, remember it as if it were only yesterday. With my family, I was sitting in front of the TV, following the evening news peter out to make way for one of the American action series that had recently arrived on our little black-and-white screen. The A-Team or Knight Rider or some such glorious monument of TV entertainment.

Our TV was tuned to RTL, a private West German station which, like any other West German station, East Germans weren't allowed to watch. Independent of the rules, in the Elbe valley where I lived we weren't able to watch them in the first place, shielded as we were from reception by the steep hills to either side of the river. However, around Easter of 1989, a huge parabolic antenna appeared mysteriously on top of the tallest building of our neighborhood. Henceforth, thanks to cables that were presciently laid when the building were constructed, a good 15,000 people could watch three officially illegal stations in all clarity, and countless kids would attend their Ideology and Interpretation of History classes in school with intellectual ammunition that their teachers didn't have and certainly didn't approve of. The installation of this satellite dish is my personal crucial moment because it showed clearly that things were not only changing but falling apart. A totalitarian system that can't keep its citizens' sources of information and thus opinions under tight control is doomed to fail.

RTL Aktuell, the news show, became our window to a new world, our voice of freedom, telling us about the storming of the embassies in Prague and Warsaw and about the cutting down of the Iron Curtain in Hungary. It told us about heroic demonstrations in Leipzig, swelling in numbers and courage every week, and about the official 40th birthday celebrations of our republic where the awkward guest of honor, Michail Gorbachev, received bold chants for help from dissidents that had crept into the parade.

Here's an aspect of recent history that's easily overlooked: Throughout its existence, East Germany was beholden to the Soviet Union. That huge country was always the model to emulate, its ideology pure and strong, its achievements breathtaking. It legitimized and protected our government and helped oppress dissent, sometimes brutally and sometimes subtly.

In the late 80s, the tables were slowly turning. Criticism was encouraged in Moscow, whereas East Berlin preached ideological austerity. Like Catholics sneering at the Pope for his leniency in questions of doctrine and faith, the East German regime turned away from its Soviet brother and defender for its lack of dogmatic rigor.

But the more East Germany withdrew officially, the more East Germans looked east for guidance and reassurance. The Soviet Union was omnipresent militarily, and the dissidents' only hope was that it wouldn't use its power, that it would avoid another 1953, 1956 or 1968. Gorbachev gave signals that Germans were on their own, that he wouldn't interfere. What precipitated the fall of the wall was thus the determination of the East Germans encouraged by the vision of Gorbachev. There were no other major players.

But we're not quite there yet in this story. It's still 1988. Like many others, my parents had subscribed to the Soviet monthly Sputnik that enjoyed a brief period of popularity because of its critical discussions of politics and bold reinterpretations of history that was uncontested before and whose questioning would get you jailed. When Sputnik was unceremoniously banned (in our country only), all the more people started asking questions.

Not only that. People started meeting, forming what were considered subversive groups whose only purpose it was to fill the official name of East Germany with life. While the west ridiculed the "so-called German Democratic Republic", East Germans started living it. In the chaotic months of 1989, one phrase stood above all. "We are the people." No slogan was more powerful, nothing united people more. Sick of decades of deceitful tyranny, people went on the streets to demand their voices be heard.

It brewed mightily in the little country. Demonstrations had spread to all major cities. The government had closed the last remaining borders for fear of an exodus. Suddenly all other socialist countries were off-limits. The situation became so ludicrous that only a sudden eruption could shake things free. On November 9th 1989, that day had come, and the blast, thank goodness, was peaceful.

The story is well known. The legendary press conference with its careless announcement, the unintentional promise of the freedom of travel, has been revisited a million times. East Germans could now get visas for travel abroad without having to meet preconditions. But where do you get a visa on a Thursday night? Hundreds went straight to the border, then thousands, and at some point the guards couldn't hold the masses back anymore. A human flood had forced a wall open that had stood for nearly thirty years and that had, just a few months earlier, seemed eternally impenetrable.

I remember the first time my grandmother was allowed to travel to West Germany. When she came back, after the gifts had been handed out and the shine of colors and smells elated our mood, my mom said pensively to us kids: "I don't think I will ever see this Wall gone, but I hope you will, some day." This was in 1988.

A year later, we were all sitting in front of the TV, watching the news with some attention but mostly looking forward to the Hoff when suddenly a live ticker appeared at the bottom of the screen, the first time we had ever seen such a thing. The borders are open, it said. At the same time, in my memory at least, the Scorpions started singing Wind of Change (though that song didn't come out for another year), and nothing was as it had been.