Was Hasselhoff present when the Berlin Wall fell?
David Hasselhoff
His music career took off in the late 1980s and achieved success at the tops of the charts, with his album "Looking for Freedom" which went triple platinum in Europe. He had one #1 hit in the German pop charts in spring of 1989 ("Looking for Freedom"). He was noted for his performance of the single at the Berlin Wall on New Year's Eve 1989, two months after the East German government had opened the wall, but nine months before unification took place. Wearing a piano-keyboard scarf and a leather jacket covered in motion lights, Hasselhoff stood in a bucket crane and performed the song along with the crowd. The performance has had a lasting impact on German pop-culture with Hasselhoff commenting that the song became an "anthem" and "song of hope" for the people of East Germany. In 2004, Hasselhoff lamented the lack of a photo of him in the Checkpoint Charlie Museum in Berlin.
Zbigniew Brzezinski
In 1989, the Communists failed to mobilize support in Poland, and Solidarity swept the general elections. Later the same year, Brzezinski toured Russia and visited a memorial to the Katyn Massacre. This served as an opportunity for him to ask the Soviet government to acknowledge the truth about the event, for which he received a standing ovation in the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Ten days later, the Berlin Wall fell, and Soviet-supported governments in Eastern Europe began to totter. Strobe Talbott, one of Brzezinski's long-time critics, conducted an interview with him for "TIME" magazine entitled "Vindication of a Hardliner".
The Wall
In 1990, Waters and producer Tony Hollingsworth created "The Wall – Live in Berlin", staged for charity at a site once occupied by part of the Berlin Wall. Beginning in 2010 and with dates lasting into 2013, Waters performed the album worldwide on his tour, "The Wall Live". This had a much wider wall, updated higher quality projected content and leading-edge projection technology. Gilmour and Mason played at one show in London at The O2 Arena. A film of the live concert, "", was released in 2015.
Peaceful Revolution
On the day the Berlin Wall fell, West German chancellor Kohl and his foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher were on a state visit to Poland that was cut short to allow Kohl to directly react to the new situation. Only a day earlier, Kohl had set out new conditions for closer collaboration with the GDR leadership within a document entitled "Report on the state of the nation in divided Germany": The SED's abandonment of its monopoly on power, the allowing of independent parties, free elections and the building up of a market economy. During a telephone conversation on 11 November with SED General Secretary Egon Krenz – who stressed the positivity of the border opening and "radical reforms", but insisted that reunification was not on the agenda – Kohl conceded that the creation of "reasonable relations" was currently most pressing.
Barrie Dunsmore
As ABC's senior foreign correspondent from 1984–91, Dunsmore focused on events in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union as the Iron Curtain began to disintegrate. Throughout 1989, he witnessed dramatic moments in the collapse of communism and reported live for ABC News Nightline from the Berlin Wall the night it began to fall. After retirement in 1995, Dunsmore became a Fellow at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He received the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University's Edward Weintal Prize in 1995.
The Wall – Live in Berlin
"I did an interview a couple of years ago for a guy called Redbeard…" Waters recalled. "He said, 'Would you ever perform "The Wall" again on stage?' And I said, 'No'… Indoors, it made no sense financially; it's too expensive. And, as it's partially an attack on the inherently greedy nature of stadium rock shows, it would be wrong to do it in stadiums… I said, 'Well, I might do it outdoors if they ever take the wall down in Berlin.'… The Memorial Fund was in a council meeting, and felt they needed some kind of an event to focus attention on it… So I agreed to have a meeting with Leonard Cheshire. And I was very impressed, and said I would do what I could, although I thought it was very unlikely that it would come off… Then, in November [1989], when the wall started coming down, we started negotiating."
Berlin Blues (film)
Frank Lehmann (Christian Ulmen) is a bartender working in Kreuzberg, a borough of West Berlin in October 1989, in the final weeks before the fall of the Berlin Wall. As he is approaching his 30th birthday, his friends start teasing him by calling him "Herr Lehmann" ("Mr. Lehmann"). He has little interest in anything outside of SO 36, the eastern part of the borough of Kreuzberg. He has a brief relationship with Katrin (), a cook at a nearby bar. His best friend, Karl (Detlev Buck), slowly goes mad, and his parents show up for a visit, disrupting his laid-back lifestyle.At the 2004 German Film Awards, Detlev Buck was awarded Best Supporting Actor and Sven Regener Best Script.
Passerelle Debilly
In 1989, a German diplomat working for the Secret Service of the Democratic Republic of Germany was found dead on this footbridge, several days after the Fall of the Berlin Wall. As it turned out, the footbridge was used as a secret gathering place for the secret service agents of East Germany during the Cold War. It is certainly one of the reasons that pushed Brian De Palma to shoot a scene of his thriller "Femme Fatale" on that footbridge in 2002.
Ali Akbar Abdolrashidi
In 1984, Abdolrashidi returned to London as the British and European correspondent. He covered many historic events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the formation of the European Union.
Meistersaal
The falling of the Berlin Wall in 1989 meant the Meistersaal was back in the throng of things and lost some of the advantage it had had for recording music. Concurrently, the overall demand for recording studios of this kind was also in decline, meaning "Studio 2" became no longer economically feasible and was closed. However, it went out with a bang as the last production done there was "Achtung Baby" by U2.
Luiz Carlos Azenha
In 1988, Azenha interviewed Mikhail Gorbachev in the Kremlin. In 1989, he made the coverage of the fall of the Berlin Wall for Rede Manchete.
Thomas Heise
In December 1989, 4 weeks after the fall of the Berlin wall, his radio piece "Widerstand und Anpassung - Überlebensstrategie. Erinnerungen eines Mannes an das Lager Dachau" (Resistance and Adaptation - Survival Strategies. Memories of a Man of the Dachau Camp) was finally broadcast on Berlin radio.
Allied Museum
In the beginning East-West conflict, first marked by the withdrawal of the Soviet representatives from the Allied Kommandatura and the following Berlin Blockade in 1948–49, the US, Britain and France formed the Western Allies and came in opposition to the Soviet occupation forces. The increasing tensions culminated in the Berlin Crisis of 1961 and the building of the Berlin Wall. A significant step towards the easing of tensions was made in the 1971 Four Power Agreement on Berlin, until the "Berlin question" was solved after the East German Peaceful Revolution and the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989.
Das Goldene Lenkrad
Except for the years 2000 to 2002, the award ceremony always took place in the Axel-Springer-Haus in Berlin. In the three years mentioned, the "Golden Steering Wheel" was broadcast on ZDF
from Berlin's Tempelhof Airport. The most famous award ceremony was on 9 November 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell. At that time, many guests of the event took the opportunity to visit the eastern sector of the divided city for the first time during the night without checks. Conversely, numerous residents of East Berlin spontaneously attended the after-show party. At the 1999 award ceremony, Nina Ruge suffered minor burns during the burning down of a stage firework, which met with a great response from the media.
Vita Cola
After the fall of the Berlin Wall and Iron Curtain in 1989, Vita Cola's business quickly collapsed as Western cola brands took its place. However, with the advent of Ostalgie (nostalgia among East Germans for the "old days"), many former GDR products were brought back, Vita Cola being one of the most popular.
Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly
The collapse of the Berlin Wall and the new global political context this created gave rise to a new peace movement called the “Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly”. From October 19 to 22 1990, peace activists from all parts of Europe (chaired by Václav Havel, then president of Czechoslovakia) held a meeting. They agreed on the “Prague Appeal” and founded the HCA as a permanent forum, within which peace and civic groups, as well as individuals and institutions representing a broad spectrum of views, could exchange experiences, discuss common concerns and formulate joint campaigns and strategies.
Boris Snetkov
In November 1987, Snetkov was appointed commander of the GSFG, which became the Western Group of Forces (WGF) in June 1989 when it was shifted to a defensive role. During upheavals in East Germany during October and November, the WGF's troops did not intervene in the Leipzig Monday demonstrations and the Fall of the Berlin Wall as a result of orders given to Snetkov by the Soviet ambassador in East Germany, Vyacheslav Kochemasov, which were confirmed by the Soviet government. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the easing of Cold War tensions, discipline in the WGF began to break down. In response to charges of fatal recruit abuse, widespread desertion, and weapons smuggling among Soviet troops, Snetkov held a November 1990 press conference to deny the charges, in which he stated that only 84 soldiers had died in 1990, mostly in training or traffic accidents; that 83 soldiers had "left units without permission"; and denied allegations weapons smuggling, stating that only seven weapons were "missing". In response to German citizens' complaints, he also halted all training on weekends and holidays, and ended low-level flying over populated places.
Peter Millar (journalist)
Millar's early books include "Tomorrow Belongs to Me", a history of modern Germany, from the fall of Danzig to the fall of the Berlin Wall, that is told through the eyes of a Berlin pub landlord, and two thrillers in English: "Stealing Thunder", described by Robert Harris as "an expert blend of nuclear history and international intrigue" and "Bleak Midwinter", a thriller based on an outbreak of bubonic plague in modern Oxford.
In 2009 1989: "The Berlin Wall, My Part in its Downfall" was published, a memoir which covers events in Millar's career up to 1989. "The Spectator" described the book as "a witty, wry, elegiac account of his time as a Reuters and Sunday Times correspondent in Berlin throughout most of the 1980s…Millar's great strength as a reporter is that he mixed with a wide range of ordinary East Germans, drinking Pilsner with them in bars, going for country walks and visiting their homes. He understood they were not an alien species – and also a vital aspect of living under the system Erich Honecker used to describe, with no hint of irony, as 'actually existing Socialism'".
Edgar Wisniewski
The fall of the Berlin Wall, which was in the immediate vicinity of the Kulturforum, and the reconstruction of the Potsdamer Platz, completely changed the overall urban building context in Berlin. A number of Scharoun's original designs were never reaslised as a result, including the Senate guest-house for artists, which was part of the competition for the construction of the state library. Nevertheless, Wisniewski continued until the end to complete his overall concept, which had many critics since the beginning and triggered numerous debates.
Separation barrier
The Berlin Wall was a barrier that divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989, constructed by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off (by land) West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin until it was opened in November 1989. Its demolition officially began on 13 June 1990 and was completed in 1992. The barrier included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, which circumscribed a wide area (later known as the "death strip") that contained anti-vehicle trenches, "fakir beds" and other defenses. The Eastern Bloc claimed that the wall was erected to protect its population from fascist elements conspiring to prevent the "will of the people" in building a socialist state in East Germany. In practice, the Wall served to prevent the massive emigration and defection that marked East Germany and the communist Eastern Bloc during the post-World War II period.
Inner German border
The Berlin Wall was a specific piece of the Inner Border that became the physical embodiment of the Iron Curtain that stood between East Germany and West Germany in the decades following the conclusion of World War II. The Berlin Wall stretched approximately 28 miles (45 km) through the city of Berlin and another 75 miles (120 km) around the edges of West Berlin and stood close to 15 feet (5 meters) in height. The sheer physical stature of the Berlin Wall in addition to becoming an iconic, international symbol of the Cold War and its virtues, drove it to become a popular site of tourism throughout its existence, and even after its dismantling. Tourism of the Berlin Wall reached its height in 1961, although an exact number cannot be given for the number of visitors to the Berlin Wall, as there were no official records of tourism to the site made at the time. Estimates, however, are provided through the counting of tourists by Western and Eastern border guards. The numbers obtained from the border guards suggest that Berlin Wall tourism was a popular outing for German people and foreigners alike, it is reported that the Berlin Wall received approximately 1.65 million tourists in 1969 alone, with around 23,000 of those being foreign visitors. Day trips were the most popular of the ways to visit the Berlin Wall, which could be conducted even through organized tours that were governmentally funded, so long as they were presented as educational in nature.
Minol
All of the products of the VEB were marketed under the name Minol and when the Berlin wall fell, it had a market share of 97 per cent (according to the research "Grundlagenstudie MINOL in der BRD", September 1990). These brands were not used in other countries. The colours of Minol were red for the caption and yellow for the background. The mascot, Minol's golden oriole was widely known in the GDR.
Hanns Joachim Friedrichs
On 9 November 1989 he announced to the German public that the Berlin Wall had fallen.
Rave
By 1988, acid house was making as significant an impact on popular consciousness in Germany and Central Europe as it had in England. In 1989 German DJs Westbam and Dr. Motte established the Ufo Club, an illegal party venue, and co-founded the Love Parade. On 9 November 1989 the Berlin Wall fell, free underground Techno parties mushroomed in East Berlin, and a rave scene comparable to that in the UK was established. East German DJ Paul van Dyk has remarked that the Techno-based rave scene was a major force in re-establishing social connections between East and West Germany during the unification period. In urbanized Germany raves and techno parties often preferred industrial sceneries such as decommissioned power stations, factories, the canalization or former military properties of the cold war.
Berlin Wall
On 19 July 1988, 16 months before the Wall came down, Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band, played Rocking the Wall, a live concert in East Berlin, which was attended by 300,000 in person and broadcast delayed on television. Springsteen spoke to the crowd in German, saying: "I'm not here for or against any government. I've come to play rock 'n' roll for you in the hope that one day all the barriers will be torn down". East Germany and its FDJ youth organization were worried they were losing an entire generation. They hoped that by letting Springsteen in, they could improve their sentiment among East Germans. However, this strategy of "one step backwards, two steps forwards" backfired and the concert only made East Germans hungrier for more of the freedoms that Springsteen epitomized. While John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan delivered their famous speeches from the safety of West Berlin, Springsteen's speaking out against the Wall in the middle of East Berlin added to the euphoria.
Hedwig and the Angry Inch (soundtrack)
"Tear Me Down" is a song from the off-Broadway musical "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" and subsequent film. It was composed by Stephen Trask, and performed by the characters Hedwig (John Cameron Mitchell) and Yitzhak (Miriam Shor). It is the show's opening number. It contains a spoken section alluding to the construction of the Berlin Wall on August 13, 1961 and its fall on November 9, 1989.
Where Are We Now?
The footage on the screen and references in the lyrics include the Berlin Wall and mention of the , the first border crossing that opened when the Wall fell on 9 November 1989; 20,000 East Germans crossed over during the first hour the border was unofficially opened, wondering whether it was safe. The lyrics read: "twenty thousand people / Cross Bösebrücke / Fingers are crossed / just in case." Other reference points in the video and song are the Brandenburg Gate; the nightclub; the Fernsehturm, or television tower; KaDeWe, the department store; graffiti from Kunsthaus Tacheles, an art centre; Nürnberger Straße; Potsdamer Platz railway station; the Reichstag, where the Bundestag sits; the , or Victory Column; and the auto repair shop below the apartment in which Bowie lived.
Bursting Bubbles
Coyne would later perform "Children's Crusade" as part of his concert, on 6 October 1982, at the Tempodrom, celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall, the event captured in the German film "The Last Wall" directed by Diethard Küster.
Berlin Wall Monument (Chicago)
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, fragments of the Berlin Wall have been donated to various cities in the world. Chicago was offered a piece of the wall in 2008 by the German government and was placed in the Lincoln Square neighborhood due to its German roots. It is on permanent display at the Western Brown Line Station. Lincoln Square is just southwest of Ravenswood in the northern part of Chicago.
Fall of the inner German border
While the eyes of the world were on Berlin, watching the "Mauerfall" (fall of the Wall), a simultaneous process of "Grenzöffnung" (border opening) was taking place along the entire length of the inner German border. Existing border crossings were opened immediately, though their limited capacity caused long tailbacks as millions of East Germans crossed over to the West. Within the first four days, 4.3 million East Germans – a quarter of the country's entire population – poured into West Germany. At the Helmstedt crossing point on the Hanover–Berlin autobahn, cars were backed up for ; some drivers waited 11 hours to drive across to the West. The border was opened progressively over the course of the next few months. New crossing points were created at many points, reconnecting communities that had been separated for nearly 40 years. At Herrenhof on the Elbe, hundreds of East Germans pushed their way through the border fence to board the first cross-river ferry to run since April 1945. Hundreds of people from the East German town of Katherinenberg surged across the border to see the West German border town of Wanfried, while West Germans poured into East Germany "to see how you live on the other side". East German border guards, overwhelmed by the flood of people, soon gave up checking passports. Special trains were put on to transport people across the border. The BBC correspondent Ben Bradshaw described the jubilant scenes at the railway station of Hof in Bavaria in the early hours of 12 November:
Big Jay McNeely
In 1989, Big Jay McNeely was performing with Detroit Gary Wiggins (European Saxomania Tour II) at the Quasimodo Club in West Berlin the night the Berlin Wall came down, "and Cold War legend has it that they blew down the Berlin Wall in 1989 with earth-shaking sonic sax torrents outside the Quasimodo Club in West Germany". McNeely and Wiggins toured in Germany and Italy with "The International Blues Duo," Johnny Heartsman, Daryl Taylor (who worked with Arnett Cobb and Archie Bell & The Drells), Roy Gaines, Christian Rannenberg, Donald Robertson, Billy Davis, "Hyepockets" Robertson, Lee Allen.
Herwig Kipping
Between 1984 and 1989 Kipping worked as a free-lance script-writer. He regularly submitted scripts to DEFA, the state-owned film company, but none of his scripts was accepted. It was also during this period, in 1986, that he studied with Heiner Carow at the . Everything changed in November 1989 when the Berlin Wall was breached by protestors and it became apparent that the fraternal Soviet forces had received no orders to suppress protest, nor to restrain people crossing the hitherto lethal border dividing Berlin. This opened the way to an end for one party dictatorship and indeed, within a year, German reunification. A few years later Kipping would describe himself as a child of "Die Wende" (the changes triggered in November 1989), while insisting that the many people who encountered the "experience of no longer being needed" when the German Democratic Republic collapsed also deserved sympathy. It was something he himself knew, in a different context, from the years when his film scripts were routinely rejected by the only film company in town.
Henning Wehn
In May 2015, Wehn presented "An Immigrant's Guide to Britain" on Channel 4, telling "Radio Times": "[W]hat I really like about the programme it mixes light-hearted issues (the job market), with more serious ones (trouble of having two water taps instead of just one) to the ultra serious (the British class system)". In October that same year, Wehn was the presenter of the BBC World Service radio documentary "Wall in the Head" in which he explored "the invisible cultural and psychological divide" between East and West Germans twenty five years after German reunification following the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Berlin Wall
On 6 June 1987, David Bowie, who earlier for several years lived and recorded in West Berlin, played a concert close to the Wall. This was attended by thousands of Eastern concertgoers across the Wall, followed by violent rioting in East Berlin. According to Tobias Ruther, these protests in East Berlin were the first in the sequence of riots that led to those of November 1989.
Although other factors were probably more influential in the fall of the Wall, on his death, the German Foreign Office tweeted "Good-bye, David Bowie. You are now among #Heroes. Thank you for helping to bring down the #wall."
Ingo Hasselbach
Hasselbach's parents were two Communist-party loyal journalists. His mother was an editor at the ADN ("Allgemeiner Deutscher Nachrichtendienst", the former GDR's news service), while his father was employed at the broadcasting service in East Berlin. He was raised mostly with his grandparents. After graduating he began an apprenticeship to become a stonemason, but by 1985 he was subjected to legal censure because of rowdyism. His public appeal "The wall must fall!" brought him a prison sentence of nine months in 1987. In 1988 he joined the neo-Nazi community and was again legally censured for "subversive activities". After a first attempt to escape in August 1989 failed, he was detained again for three months until November 1989. Three days before the Berlin Wall fell a subsequent attempt to escape to West Germany succeeded.
German reunification
On 28 November 1989—two weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall—West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl announced a 10-point program calling for the two Germanies to expand their cooperation with a view toward eventual reunification.
Faisal Tehrani
Faisal poem entitled The Berlin Wall (2012) translated by Hedy Holzwarth, Holger Warnk, and Volker Wolf is included in Kuala Lumpur - Berlin / Berlin - Kuala Lumpur ITBM issue"." The poem, whose translation is called An der Berliner Mauer, warned him to commemorating Chris Gueffroy, the last victim of the Berlin Wall who died on February 5, 1989.
Robert Penfold
During his time as Bureau Chief in London, Penfold also reported on America's unsuccessful attempt to bring peace to Somalia and the triumphant march to freedom by Nelson Mandela. Memorable moments include live reports from Nelson Mandela's house in Soweto and the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989.
Cocacolonization
At the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of Communism in Germany in November 1989, Coca-Cola handed out sodas.
Kent Twitchell
November 2009 Kent Twitchell painted two murals on two pieces of the Berlin wall for the 20-year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. One was the portrait of John Kennedy, the other Ronald Reagan. They depicted the US Presidents at the beginning and the fall of the Berlin wall. Controversy ensued and Twitchell was disappointed when only one piece could fit in the installation as per the organizers of the exhibit. Twitchell decided to display half of each piece in the exhibit which worked out perfectly.
Berlin Babylon
Berlin Babylon is a 2001 German documentary film directed by Hubertus Siegert with industrial music performed by Einstürzende Neubauten. The film's main focus is on the extensive rebuilding projects in Berlin after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It features internationally acclaimed architects including Rem Koolhaas, Renzo Piano and I.M. Pei.
RAF Gatow
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Chipmunk reconnaissance flights soon ceased and the two Chipmunks were flown to RAF Laarbruch, in Western Germany to await disposal action. Chipmunk WG466 was flown back to Berlin and was donated to the "Alliiertenmuseum" in Berlin, where it remains on display today. WG486 is still in RAF service with the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight (see weblink at base of page).
People's Socialist Republic of Albania
After Hoxha's death, Ramiz Alia maintained firm control of the country and its security apparatus, but Albania's desperate economic situation required Alia to introduce some reforms. Continuing a policy set by Hoxha, Alia reestablished diplomatic relations with West Germany in return for development aid and he also courted Italy and France. The very gradual and slight reforms intensified as Mikhail Gorbachev introduced his new policies of glasnost and perestroika in the Soviet Union, culminating in the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and the collapse of communist governments across Central and Eastern Europe.
Censorship of images in the Soviet Union
As Berlin fell in the closing days of the World War in Europe, Red Army photographer Yevgeny Khaldei gathered some soldiers and posed a shot of them hoisting the flag (called the Victory Banner) on the roof of the Reichstag building. The photo represented a historic moment, the defeat of Germany in a war that cost the Soviet Union tens of millions of lives.
List of Berlin Wall segments
Two segments of the wall are displayed outside of the Mountain View Public Library. A plaque memorializes the fall of the wall as "a tribute to American resolve." The piece on the right has a cartoon Elvis painted on it and the one on the left says "Wir lieben Dich" (We love you).
Vyacheslav Kochemasov
During the evening of 9 November 1989, as The Berlin Wall came down, there was widespread speculation as to how the Soviet Ambassador to the German Democratic Republic might react. Vyacheslav Kochemasov did nothing.
Berlin Wall
After the fall of Berlin Wall, there were initiatives that they want to preserve the death strip walkways and redevelop it into a hiking and cycling area, known as Berliner Mauerweg. It is part of the initiative by Berlin Senate since 2005.
Schaut auf diese Stadt
Following World War II, another war started. Two nations became the frontrunners for world power: the US and the USSR. This created a power struggle between who would have the most influence for capitalism or socialism. Berlin was in the cross-fire between capitalist and socialist influence and it ended up splitting the city between East and West. Winston Churchill said that there was a metal curtain between the Eastern and Western hemisphere, and Berlin actually had a curtain, the Berlin Wall. Until its destruction in 1989, the city of Berlin was physically divided with little to no contact from the other side. This proves the influence that the US and USSR had on the world.
Reserved for the Death
"Reserved for the Death" was, according to author Sabine Hake, one of a "hyperbole of espionage thrillers" produced soon after the erection of the Berlin Wall.
Writer Gerhard Bensch told in an interview that the plot was based on "numerous authentic documents, files and details" gleaned by him from the intelligence services. After an evaluation board of DEFA viewed the unedited picture before its release, its members concluded that the producers managed to create a "good picture... Exposing the inhuman methods of the Imperialists... And allowing the audience to see the experiences of our society's heroes, engaged in brutal class struggle."
Inner German border
While the eyes of the world were on the "Mauerfall" (the fall of the Wall) in Berlin, a simultaneous process of "Grenzöffnung" (border opening) was taking place along the entire length of the inner German border. Existing crossings were opened immediately. Within the first four days, 4.3 million East Germans – a quarter of the country's entire population – poured into West Germany. At the Helmstedt crossing point on the Berlin–Hanover autobahn, cars were backed up for ; some drivers waited 11 hours to cross to the West. The border was opened in stages over the next few months. Many new crossing points were created, reconnecting communities that had been separated for nearly 40 years. BBC correspondent Ben Bradshaw described the jubilant scenes at the railway station of Hof in Bavaria in the early hours of 12 November:
Hermann Henselmann
Henselmann was appointed head architect for the city of Berlin in 1953 and held various town planning positions until his retirement. After Joseph Stalin's death and the rehabilitation of Modernism, Henselmann returned to his earlier concerns, designing flagship buildings for East Berlin such as the Haus des Lehrers (House of Teachers) and Congress Hall in Alexanderplatz and the housing complex of Leninplatz (which was renamed Platz der Vereinten Nationen or United Nations Square in 1992, and its large statue of Lenin removed). Plans for a 'Signal Tower' drafted in 1958 became early drafts for the vast Fernsehturm, finished in 1969. Other late projects in a modernist and high rise style included the cylindrical Jen-Tower in Jena and a tower for the Leipzig University in the shape of an open book. Henselmann's later projects gave a modern, technocratic face to the German Democratic Republic, akin to the skyscrapers being built at the time in Frankfurt. He dismissed the brief period of Socialist Realism as a 'childhood illness', though his buildings on Karl-Marx-Allee are now protected monuments. Henselmann retired as an architect in 1972.
Donald Trump's speech in Warsaw, Poland
The incident was evoked by Pope John Paul II in his return to Poland when he gave the speech to more than a million Polish people that shook the position of the atheistic communists in Poland. The event created a series of solidarity movement until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Berlin Wall
Not all segments of the Wall were ground up as the Wall was being torn down. Many segments have been given to various institutions in the world. They can be found, for instance, in presidential and historical museums, lobbies of hotels and corporations, at universities and government buildings, and in public spaces in different countries of the world.
On 13 August 2011, Germany marked the 50th anniversary of East Germany beginning the erection of the Berlin Wall. Chancellor Angela Merkel joined with President Christian Wulff and Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit at the Bernauer Straße memorial park to remember lives and liberty. Speeches extolled freedom and a minute of silence at noon honored those who died trying to flee to the West. "It is our shared responsibility to keep the memory alive and to pass it on to the coming generations as a reminder to stand up for freedom and democracy to ensure that such injustice may never happen again," entreated Mayor Wowereit. "It has been shown once again: Freedom is invincible at the end. No wall can permanently withstand the desire for freedom", proclaimed President Wulff."Notes
Bibliography
The Fall of Berlin (film)
Stalin asks his generals who will take Berlin, they or the Western Allies. The generals answer that they will capture the city. Alexei's Guards Army advances towards Berlin, while Hitler has a nervous breakdown and demands that his soldiers fight to the end. The Germans plan to execute the inmates of the concentration camp in which Natasha is held before the arrival of the Red Army, but Alexei's unit liberates the prisoners before they carry through their design. Natasha faints, and he does not find her. Hitler and the German leadership fall into despair and lose their grip on reality the closer the Soviets get to Berlin. Hitler orders to flood the subway stations as the Soviets approach, drowning thousands of civilians. He then marries Eva Braun and commits suicide. Gen. Hans Krebs carries the news of Hitler's death to the Red Army and begs for a ceasefire. Stalin orders to accept only an unconditional surrender. Alexei is chosen to carry the Victory Banner, alongside Mikhail Yegorov and Meliton Kantaria. Their division storms the Reichstag and the three hoist the banner atop of it. The Germans surrender and Red Army soldiers from throughout the USSR celebrate victory. Stalin's plane lands in Berlin, and he is greeted by an enthusiastic crowd of peoples of "all the nations", holding posters with his picture and waving various nations' flags. Stalin carries a speech in which he calls for world peace. Standing in the crowd, Alexei and Natasha recognize each other and are reunited. Natasha asks Stalin to let her kiss him on the cheek, and they hug while prisoners praise Stalin in numerous languages. The film ends with Stalin wishing all peace and happiness.
Falling Walls
The Falling Walls Conference is an annual science event in Berlin, Germany, that coincides with the anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall (November 9, 1989). The one-day scientific conference showcases the research work of international scientists from a wide range of fields.
List of Berlin Wall segments
"Every Wall Falls Eventually" is the name of a piece of the Berlin Wall on display in the food court area of the Bausch and Lomb Headquarters. It was installed there in 1995. This no longer resides in Rochester, NY because in 2013 Bausch and Lomb was purchased by Valeant Pharmaceuticals. The wall was given to a CEO in Switzerland as part of the business deal in August 2014.
Smirnoff
In 1990, after the Berlin Wall was demolished, Helmut Kohl made a deal with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev allowing the reunification of Germany provided that the Soviet army could remain in East Germany, due to a pre-existing security agreement between the German Democratic Republic and the USSR; such arrangements were to be paid by West Germany for three years. Suddenly, 500,000 Soviet soldiers were paid in hard currency and had almost nothing to do except drink. They then proceeded to spend their currency on Marlboro cigarettes, Levi jeans and Smirnoff vodka. The US-made variety of Smirnoff vodka was especially popular.
The Wall – Live in Berlin
The Wall – Live in Berlin was a live concert performance by Roger Waters and numerous guest artists, of the Pink Floyd studio album "The Wall", itself largely written by Waters during his time with the band. The show was held in Berlin on 21 July 1990, to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall eight months earlier. A live album of the concert was released 21 August 1990. A video of the concert was also commercially released.
Brandenburg Gate
Brandenburg Gate became the main venue for the 20th-anniversary celebrations of the fall of the Berlin Wall or "Festival of Freedom" on the evening of 9 November 2009. The high point of the celebrations was when over 1000 colorfully designed foam domino tiles, each over tall, were lined up along the route of the former wall through the city centre. The domino "wall" was then toppled in stages converging here.
The Lost World of Communism
The Lost World of Communism is a three-part British documentary series which examines the legacy of communism twenty years on from the fall of the Berlin Wall. Produced by Peter Molloy and Lucy Hetherington, the series takes a retrospective look at life behind the Iron Curtain between 1945 and 1989, focusing on three countries in the Eastern Bloc - East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania. Through film and television footage and the personal recollections of those who lived in these countries, the series offers a glimpse of what daily life was like during the years of Communist rule.
Fall of the inner German border
Within hours, thousands of people gathered at the Berlin Wall demanding that the border guards open the gates. The guards were unable to contact their superiors for instructions and, fearing a stampede, opened the gates. The iconic scenes that followed – people pouring into West Berlin, standing on the Wall and attacking it with pickaxes – were broadcast worldwide.
Brandenburg Gate
On 25 December 1989, less than two months after the Berlin Wall began to come down, the conductor Leonard Bernstein conducted the Berlin Philharmonic in a version of the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven at the then newly opened Brandenburg Gate. In the concluding choral movement of the symphony, the famous "Ode to Joy", the word "Freude" ("Joy") was replaced with "Freiheit" ("Freedom") to celebrate the fall of the Wall and the imminent reunification of Germany.
Berlin Wall
Excerpts from Schabowski's press conference were the lead story on West Germany's two main news programs that night—at 7:17 p.m. on ZDF's "heute" and at 8 p.m. on ARD's "Tagesschau". As ARD and ZDF had broadcast to nearly all of East Germany since the late 1950s and had become accepted by the East German authorities, the news was broadcast there as well simultaneously. Later that night, on ARD's "Tagesthemen", anchorman Hanns Joachim Friedrichs proclaimed, "This 9 November is a historic day. The GDR has announced that, starting immediately, its borders are open to everyone. The gates in the Wall stand open wide."
Alles wird gut
The song is about going to the new millennium depicting it intimidating, but promising, with irony though. The fact, that pieces of Berlin Wall (torn down in 1989) became popular souvenirs is referenced in the line "Mit einem Stein in der Hand als Souvenir von der Mauer in Berlin/Klopfen wir an die Hintertür vom neuen Paradies" ("With a stone in the hand as a souvenir from the wall in Berlin/We're knocking on the backdoor of the new paradise").
Deutsches Eck
After the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989, three concrete parts of the actual wall were installed next to the monument. On 3 October 1990, the emblems of the new federal states were added.
Claus Kleber
In the spring of 1989, Kleber returned to Germany as Chief Editor of RIAS Berlin, the city’s most influential radio station. There, he was on location for the Fall of the Berlin Wall, and brought eyewitness accounts of the crumbling Soviet Empire to Germany.
The Division Bell
Produced a few years after the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, "A Great Day for Freedom" juxtaposes the general euphoria of, for instance, the fall of the Berlin Wall, with the subsequent wars and ethnic cleansing, particularly in Yugoslavia. Audio samples of Stephen Hawking, originally recorded for a BT television advertisement, were used in "Keep Talking"; Gilmour was so moved by Hawking's sentiment in the advert that he contacted the advertising company for permission to use the recordings on the album. Mason said it felt "politically incorrect to take ideas from advertising, but it seemed a very relevant piece." At the end of the album Gilmour's stepson Charlie is heard hanging up the telephone receiver on Pink Floyd manager Steve O'Rourke, who had pleaded to be allowed to appear on a Pink Floyd album.
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall (, ) was a guarded concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. Constructed by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany), starting on 13 August 1961, the Wall cut off (by land) West Berlin from virtually all of surrounding East Germany and East Berlin until government officials opened it in November 1989. Its demolition officially began on 13 June 1990 and finished in 1992. The barrier included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, accompanied by a wide area (later known as the "death strip") that contained anti-vehicle trenches, "fakir beds" and other defenses. The Eastern Bloc portrayed the Wall as protecting its population from fascist elements conspiring to prevent the "will of the people" in building a socialist state in East Germany.
Spy fiction
In March 2015, filming of Howard Kaplan's best selling "The Damascus Cover" as "Damascus Cover" wrapped in Casablanca starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers, John Hurt, Jurgen Prochnow and Olivia Thirlby. It is set in Damascus and Jerusalem circa 1989 at the time of the Berlin Wall falling.
Potsdamer Platz
With the construction of the Berlin Wall on 13 August 1961, along the intracity frontier, Potsdamer Platz now found itself physically divided in two. What had once been a busy intersection had become totally desolate. With the clearance of most of the remaining bomb-damaged buildings on both sides (on the eastern side, this was done chiefly to give border guards a clear view of would-be escapees and an uninterrupted line of fire), little was left in an area of dozens of hectares. Further demolitions occurred up until 1976 when the Haus Vaterland finally disappeared. After that, only two buildings in the immediate vicinity of Potsdamer Platz still stood – one complete, the other in a half-ruined fragmented form: the Weinhaus Huth's steel skeleton had enabled the building to withstand the pounding of World War II virtually undamaged, and it stood out starkly amid a great levelled wasteland, although now occupied only by groups of squatters. A short distance away stood portions of the former Hotel Esplanade, including the Kaisersaal, used at various times as a much scaled-down hotel, cinema, nightclub and occasional film-set (scenes from Cabaret were shot there). Apart from these, no other buildings remained. Below ground, the U-Bahn section through Potsdamer Platz had closed entirely; although the S-Bahn line itself remained open, it suffered from a quirk of geography in that it briefly passed through East German territory en route from one part of West Berlin to another. Consequently, Potsdamer Platz S-Bahn station became the most infamous of several "Geisterbahnhofe" (ghost stations), through which trains ran without stopping, its previously bustling platforms now decrepit, sealed off from the outside world, and patrolled by armed guards.
Janeil Engelstad
"Voices From the Center" was an oral history project on changes in Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary since the demolition of the Berlin Wall. The project stemmed from Engelstad’s experience as a Fulbright Scholar teaching at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Bratislava, Slovak Republic. Wanting to understand the impact of socialism on individuals and their outlook towards the USA, in relationship to her own experience growing up in the Western side of The Cold War, Engelstad had conversations with people about their lives before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Many of the participants, who ranged in age from 45–85, felt that despite the historical attention paid to life during Eastern bloc communism, the profundity of their experiences was being lost to history. Engelstad created "Voices From the Center" with the intention of including views on socialism in Central Europe from all of the Visegrad Group countries. The project also included contributions from young adults, who had been children when the wall came down, about their views of life in the post-communist era. People from both groups talked about what freedom meant to them and had the opportunity to express their dreams, fears and hopes for themselves, their country and the world. Material from "Voices From the Center" was exhibited in museums and galleries, public art, libraries, and public talks in Central Europe and the United States and on the project's website.
Yearbook on International Communist Affairs
Near the end of the series, and shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Gerald Segal writing in 1990 for the "International Affairs" journal, commented on the declining relevance of the book series as communism as a major geopolitical factor was fading; for "those who dare to retain an interest in comparative communism" the 1990 volume may continue to offer them an "essential" "meticulous report" on the prior year's events, but for most, the events in the communist world had become "esoteric history".
Germany
The Berlin Wall, rapidly built on 13 August 1961 prevented East German citizens from escaping to West Germany, eventually becoming a symbol of the Cold War. Ronald Reagan's "Tear down this wall!" speech at the Wall on 12 June 1987 echoed John F. Kennedy's "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech of 26 June 1963. The fall of the Wall in 1989 became a symbol of the Fall of Communism, the Dissolution of the Soviet Union, German Reunification and "Die Wende".
List of deaths at the Berlin Wall
With the help of other artists, performance artist Ben Wagin founded the Parliament of Trees in the former death strip on the east side of the Spree River, opposite the Reichstag. 258 names of victims of the Wall are listed on granite slabs. Some listed as "unknown man" or "unknown woman" are merely identified with a date of death. The collection, which was created in 1990, contains people who were later not considered to be victims of the Wall. Black and white painted segments of the Wall stand in the background. The memorial needed to be minimized for the construction of the Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus. In 2005, a further memorial was opened in the basement of the Bundestag building. They used wall segments of the former Parliament of Trees. In 1998, the Republic of Germany and the state of Berlin established the Berlin Wall Memorial on Bernauer Straße and declared it as a national memorial. The memorial harks back to a draft drawn up by the architects Kohlhoff & Kohlhoff. Later, it was extended and today it includes the Berlin Wall Documentation Center, a visiting center, the Chapel of Reconciliation, the Window of Remembrance with portraits of those who lost their lives on the grounds of the Berlin Wall, and a 60-meter-long section of the former border installations which is enclosed by steel walls at both ends.
The northern wall bears the inscription:"In memory of the city's division from 13. August 1961 to 9. November 1989 and in commemoration of the victims of the communist reign of violence". In remembrance of the Building of the Berlin Wall's 50th anniversary the foundation "Berliner Mauer" erected 29 steles, which commemorate the victims, along the former border between West Germany and the GDR. Apart from the 3,6 meters large, orange pillars, several signs inform about the wall victims. A planned stele for Lothar Hennig in Sacrow was not built for the time being, because Henning is viewed skeptically as a result of his actions for the MfS as a former IM.
History of Berlin
The Fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 marks the end of the Cold War. On 9 November 1989, border guards allowed crowds from East Berlin to cross the frontier at the Bösebrücke. The guards believed that the authorities had decided to open the wall, but in reality no firm decision was taken and events gathered steam on their own.
People of East and West Berlin climbed up and danced on the wall at the Brandenburg Gate in scenes of wild celebration broadcast worldwide. This time no Soviet tanks rolled through Berlin. The wall never closed again, and was soon on its way to demolition, with countless Berliners and tourists wielding hammers and chisels to secure souvenir chunks.
Thierry Noir
In 2009, in celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, ten original sections of the Berlin Wall, including artworks by Noir, were exhibited in Los Angeles as a part of the Wende Museum's "The Wall Project". In addition, Noir and local artists, like Shepard Fairey and Kent Twitchell, were commissioned to create new pieces of artwork to display alongside the original pieces of the Berlin Wall.
German reunification
While the fall of the Berlin Wall had broad economic, political and social impacts globally, it also had significant consequence for the local urban environment. In fact, the events of
9 November 1989 saw East Berlin and West Berlin, two halves of a single city that had ignored one another for the better part of 40 years, finally "in confrontation with one another".
As expressed by Grésillon "the fall of the Berlin Wall [marked] the end of 40 years of divided political, economic and cultural histories" and was "accompanied by a strong belief that [the city] was now back on its 'natural' way to become again a major metropolis".
Berlin Wall
In the United States, the German Embassy coordinated a public diplomacy campaign with the motto "Freedom Without Walls", to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The campaign was focused on promoting awareness of the fall of the Berlin Wall among current college students. Students at over 30 universities participated in "Freedom Without Walls" events in late 2009. First place winner of the Freedom Without Walls Speaking Contest Robert Cannon received a free trip to Berlin for 2010.
Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer
The idea of a memorial was suggested by the Deutsches Historisches Museum (German Historical Museum) on behalf of the federal government of Berlin, and architects Kohlhoff & Kohlhoff were commissioned to design it. The cost of the competition and completion was 2.2 million Marks. The federal government took over the construction costs, while the state covers the maintenance costs. On 11 September 2008 the Berlin House of Representatives approved the opening of the memorial on the anniversary of the day that the Berlin Wall fell.
Allied Museum
Near the Allied Museum, in Clayallee, the 1998 sculpture "The Day the Wall Came Down" by Veryl Goodnight remembers the joyous event of November 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall was effectively neutralized. Five wild horses are shown jumping over actual remains of the wall. A statue of General Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben stands nearby.
Ostalgie
After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the German reunification that followed a year later, many of the symbols of the "German Democratic Republic" were swept away. Almost all "GDR" brands ("DDR" in German) of products disappeared from the stores and were replaced by Western products. However, after some time many Eastern Germans began to miss more or less aspects of their former lives (like culture or the known brand marks). "Ostalgie" particularly refers to the nostalgia for aspects of regular daily life and culture in the former GDR, which disappeared after reunification.
Jack F. Matlock Jr.
The Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989, and on November 15, the U.S. and U.S.S.R. submitted a joint resolution to the United Nations on the "Consolidation of International Peace, Security and Cooperation", the first such joint initiative. A December meeting in Malta brought Gorbachev and George H. W. Bush together for their first summit.
86th Airlift Wing
With the rest of the world, the members of the 86th watched the Communist Bloc countries of Eastern Europe with fascination as the events of the late 1989 unfolded. When the Berlin Wall finally began to come down on 9 November 1989 and the celebrations began, many members of the Ramstein community and 86th TFW went to Berlin to see the events and take pieces of the Wall.
Potsdamer Platz
On 21 July 1990, ex-Pink Floyd member Roger Waters staged a gigantic charity concert of his former band's rock extravaganza "The Wall" to commemorate the end of the division between East and West Germany. The concert took place at Potsdamer Platz – specifically an area of the former no man's land just to the north of the Reich Chancellery site, and featured many guest superstars. It was preparations for this concert, rather than historical interest, that brought about the first detailed post-Cold War survey of the area with a view to determining what, if anything, was left of Hitler's bunker and any other underground installations. Although sections of the main Führerbunker were found, partially destroyed or filled in, another bunker complex was found further north that even the East German authorities had apparently missed, plus other cavities beneath land bordering the east side of Ebertstraße, although these turned out to be underground garages belonging to a former SS accommodation block.
Tear down this wall!
Former West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl said he would never forget standing near Reagan when he challenged Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall. "He was a stroke of luck for the world, especially for Europe."
Brian Williams
A reference to the fall of the Berlin Wall also received scrutiny. In 2008, Williams said that he was "at the Brandenburg Gate the night the wall came down", while CBS and other sources report that Williams did not arrive until November 10, the day after the gates between the two halves of Berlin were opened. The night the wall came down' is widely recognized as November 9, 1989", according to a CNN report. Williams joked in 2014 that he was upset that NBC's Tom Brokaw had arrived first in Berlin, adding that "by the second night of the story, we were all there."
List of Berlin Wall segments
One year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, artist Edwina Sandys, granddaughter of Winston Churchill, proposed the idea of placing a piece of the Wall at the Westminster College campus. With the support of Westminster College, Sandys and her husband, Richard Kaplan, met with officials in East Berlin in February 1990. Upon arrival in Berlin, the couple realized their plans to secure large sections of the wall would be costly, as -wide sections were selling at a cost of $60,000 to $200,000. This obstacle, however, was solved when officials, impressed by the idea of a Berlin Wall monument being erected near the site of Churchill's 1946 "Iron Curtain" speech, allowed Sandys to choose eight sections as a gift to the College. Sandys chose her sections from an area near the Brandenburg Gate, frequented by artists, because of the dramatic color of the graffiti. The repeated use of the word "unwahr," within the sections, which in German means "untrue", also appealed to her.
John Kosh
In 2005, Kosh led Ten Worlds Entertainment into its evolution – becoming Ten Worlds Productions, Inc. Under its new name, it produced and directed a pilot for The History Channel, "Declassified: The Rise and Fall of the Wall", which sheds new light on the Berlin Wall. This pilot soon became a 13-part documentary series. The subjects of these documentaries focus on such figures as John Lennon, Fidel Castro, the Tet Offensive, Charles Lindbergh, Joseph Stalin and World War I.
Crossover (fiction)
One of the earlier instances of crossovers in TV productions outside the US is the episode "Unter Brüdern" (1990), which was produced by WDR and DFF as a crossover between the West German crime series "Tatort" and the East German crime series "Polizeiruf 110". Their respective popular heroes Horst Schimanski and Peter Fuchs join forces to solve a case in the turmoil of the time after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The episode was produced during the short transition period between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany.
List of Berlin Wall segments
A section of the wall was installed by Warminster's local German-American club in 1991. It is the first segment that was sent to America after the fall of the wall and was presented in the 1990 Steuben parade in Philadelphia.
History of Berlin
On Christmas Day December 25, 1989, the American conductor Leonard Bernstein shared with East and West Berliners and the world his Berlin Celebration Concert in order to celebrate the Fall of the Berlin Wall. "Ode to Joy", which Bernstein had reworded "Ode to Freedom", was performed.
Post-politics
The disintegration of the Eastern communist bloc following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 announced the end of the Cold War era, and with it the great ideological stand-off between East and West, between the communist and capitalist worlds. In eyes of Western society Capitalism emerged the victor with liberal democracy as its corresponding political doctrine. With the fall of state-communism in Eastern Europe and Eurasia as the final blow to an already crisis-ridden system, the USSR as a key political player on side of communism abandoned its social democratic, Keynesian form; and neoliberalism entered a new global phase. In the USSR the main driver for this change was idea of "convergention" between socialism and communism formulated by Andrej Sakharov in his Nobel price speech. With Francis Fukuyama's End of History as its founding statement, this was the birth of the post-political, post-ideological "Zeitgeist".
Stahnsdorf
The construction of the Berlin Wall on 13 August 1961 severed the connections to the bordering Berlin. In the communist era, the place was dominated economically, especially through the semiconductor business as a major operation and farms. The fall of the Berlin Wall set a renewing development by inflows, opening new home communities, and in recent years by commercial development, particularly in "Green Park", a large industrial park.
International Security Studies Program (Fletcher School)
Since the inception of Simulex, Professor Robert Pfaltzgraff has designed the scenarios, which typically reflect contemporary tensions and developments. Notably, Simulex 1989 scenario envisioned the fall of the Berlin Wall, which was played one week before the actual event.
Max Hofmann
On 30 May 2010, Max Hofmann and Christoph Lanz received the RIAS Berlin Commission New Media Award for their documentary, "Eingemauert" or "Walled In". 
This production, first published as a streaming video on the DW website, is an exploration of the nature 
of the inner German border. This animated reconstruction of the Berlin Wall is an educational work published on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall.
Haralampi G. Oroschakoff
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was followed by yet another change in perspective. The physical encounter broadened the hitherto theoretical confrontation with the art and culture of Eastern Europe. Friendship developed with representatives of the local avant-garde of the time, such as Boris Groys, IRWIN, Andrei Filippov, Yuri Albert, Vadim Zahkarov and Luchezar Boyadjiev. Curatorial projects and lectures consolidated Oroschakoff's reputation as expert in the East-West art dialogue: Kräftemessen (Munich 1994) with Margarita Tupitsyn, Boris Groys and Viktor Misiano; Bulgariaavantgarde (Munich 1998) with Iara Boubnova; 4th Internationale (Almaty 1998) with Yerbossyn Meldibekov and Kanat Ibragimov.
Performativity
The German news anchorman Hanns Joachim Friedrichs once argued that a good journalist should never act in collusion with anything, not even with a good thing. In the evening of November 9, 1989, the evening of the fall of the Berlin Wall, however, Friedrichs reportedly broke his own rule when he announced: "The gates of the wall are wide open." („Die Tore in der Mauer stehen weit offen.“) In reality, the gates were still closed. According to a historian, it was this announcement that encouraged thousands of East Berliners to march towards the wall, finally forcing the border guards to open the gates. In the sense of performativity, Friedrichs's words became a reality.
Berlin Wall
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, French President François Mitterrand warned Thatcher that a unified Germany could make more ground than Adolf Hitler ever had and that Europe would have to bear the consequences.
Berlin Wall
The International Spy Museum in Washington DC hosted a Trabant car rally where 20 Trabants gathered in recognition of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Rides were raffled every half-hour and a Trabant crashed through a Berlin Wall mock up. The Trabant was the East German people's car that many used to leave DDR after the collapse.
The Lives of Others
Released 17 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, marking the end of the East German socialist state, it was the first notable drama film about the subject after a series of comedies such as "Good Bye, Lenin!" and "Sonnenallee". This approach was widely applauded in Germany even as some criticized the humanization of Wiesler's character. Many former East Germans were stunned by the factual accuracy of the film's set and atmosphere, accurately portraying a state which merged with West Germany and ceased to exist 16 years prior to the release. The film's authenticity was considered notable, given that the director grew up outside of East Germany and was only 16 when the Berlin Wall fell.
Rathaus Schöneberg
There was a large assembly in front of the Rathaus on 10 November 1989, the day after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Prominent people attending were chancellor Helmut Kohl, former chancellor Willy Brandt, and foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher.