MfH When the Wall Came Down ~ German Unity Day

Moments from History

Volume 5 2020

TODAY, IN GERMANY it is German Unity Day. A National Public Holiday marking the reunification of Germany on 3 October 1990. The destruction of the Berlin Wall commenced on November 9, 1989, and the demolition of the entire wall commenced on June 6, 1990.

MfH 23 is the German Translation of this Moment from History.

I was in Berlin that same July, and despite ‘Checkpoint Charlie’ within the pillars of the Brandenburg Gate, there was a real sense that oppression was coming to an end. There was an excitement. Even so, when I left Berlin on the British Military Train, it seemed odd to be confined to our carriages, to have armed British troops patrolling the carriages, and the stops; when we would produce our passports and travel documents and, to the bemusement of the hundred young people (20-21) under my command within the RAF VR (Air Training Corps), the fields at the stopping points were smartly lined with East German border guards.

As one officer explained, we were now going throw the motions; the GDR knew things were coming to an end, but that there had been a time when these regulation stops were charged and heightened, each side bristling with disdain for the other.

It was the classic stand-off between NATO and the WARSAW PACT.

*

I remember, a year earlier, the incredible excitement as all of us, world-wide, watched the German People defy their governments and mount that dreaded wall and begin hacking it down. Not so long before, to even be near it would have meant being shot on the spot.

I remember too, as a child, the grown-ups chatting about the wall being built and being not a good thing, not a good thing at all.

As a very dear friend in Germany writes to me this morning,

For us in Germany it’s a very important day. 
My opinion: No one would have thought how difficult the reunification would be in daily life, in reality. Until today, even now, we experience a different mentality between west and east. I think we need one more generation to feel really united. The positive element is that we have a huge commercial and social development in the east area. But there is much between that needs time.

Yes, the time to heal, the time to rebuild.

When I was in Berlin I remember being moved to tears at the newsreel of an East German soldier - Herr Conrad Schumann - taking a chance, and running for all he was worth and taking a huge leap over the barbed wire. In the background housewives looked on, bemused, shocked. Can all this really be happening? People dangling from upstairs windows where the demarcation line ran literally through the middle of a building…

I remember at the time suddenly exclaiming, “for god’s sake run like hell! Do it!” I’d forgotten I was watching a newsreel! And my squadron looked on at me, not amused, but moved. They knew what their commanding officer was saying. And I remember that moment … Gentlemen THAT is the leap to Freedom! Never, EVER forget it.” And a chorus of “No Sir!” “No Sir, we won’t!”

*

There exists a bridge between my family and our German family friends. A bridge we are determined to maintain and strengthen. It has been strengthened still more by my friends Erik Wieman and IG Heimat Forschung. A bridge that was built by us all out of the ashes of the most horrendous war in the history of humankind. A bridge that dared to defy governments on both sides. We had fought, we had lost loved ones, and the most awful things would be revealed over the next seventy years, on all sides.

But my parents set the rule. It is no mere coincidence that they enabled my elder sister to visit Austria in 1968 and me to follow on one year later. We knew this was a huge move by our parents, given the immediate past. Why can I say this? Quite simply because had my parents held a grudge they would have forbidden those trips, and that would have been an end to the matter.

Today, there are still people who would have us all return to those dreadful times, and who dream of resurrecting the useless mutterings and ramblings of a megalomaniac.

FREEDOM - that which is cherished by freeborn men and women - WILL always eventually overcome those two ridiculous words total and ideal - totalitarianism and ideology.

3 October 2020
All Rights Reserved

© Kenneth Thomas Webb 2022

Der Brandenberger Tor, Unter den Linden, Berlin …Image Courtesy of Frau Rita Schneeweiß, Deutschland