The Berlin Wall Falls

My father's side of the my family lived (and died) in East Germany. My grandparents owned a small house with a meager piece of land on which they'd planted potatoes and other tubers. A few chickens, one or two pigs, a goat, their own butchering - they knew how to take care of themselves. I had one chance to visit them, when I was 11 years old. We needed visas to cross the border from Bavaria into East Germany, back in 1960.

My aunt Lisa had moved to East Berlin and married an architect. Uncle Peter rose to "fame and riches" as one of the builders of the "Stalin Allee" (later renamed "Karl Marx Allee"), East Berlin's "fancy" part of downtown, designed to impress foreign visitors. This area was kept clean, and the multi-storied office buildings presented a hint of "big city". The picture deteriorated quickly when I explored some of the side streets.

My uncle's "riches" manifested in the ownership of a tiny 3-bedroom house with a micro garden. They drove a Trabant car, the East German equivalent of...hmmm...I can't think of anything made in America and comparable to this sorry excuse of a vehicle. Yet, my uncle could buy it within 2 years of having reached his top executive position. All other citizens had to save for 20 years before they could afford this puny heap of 4-wheels-on-a-shoebox. Their "Trabi" would then be nurtured for decades - a second car purchase was completely out of the question.

During the 1970s, my work as a music producer brought me to Berlin quite often. In order to visit my family, I had to buy a 1-day visa and exchange a certain amount of West money into a bunch of hard-to-spend East marks. I had to be back at the border crossing by midnight, and if I wanted to go back, I had to complete another money exchange. The problem was, there was not much good stuff to buy. Except for arts and crafts, the quality of the goods for sale was incredibly inferior to their counterparts in the West.

I visited the Berlin Wall several times, taking in the depressing energy of many horrible memories connected to this monument of terror. By the time the wall came down in 1989, I had emigrated to the United States. My friends sent me pieces of rocks, commemorating the Fall of the Berlin Wall.

After Hungary had opened their borders to East German refugees, a huge number of citizens began to flee via Hungary and Chechoslovakia into West Germany. This movement created a state of civil unrest over several weeks preceding the events on November 9, 1989.

The East German government announced that the citizens would be permitted to travel into West Germany and West Berlin - and here is the important point - pending the approval of their visas. This announcement was somewhat misstated by the official during a TV interview. Paired with civil tension at the breaking point over ongoing chaos during the formation of a new governing body, the citizens of East Berlin "interpreted" this announcement according to their immediate wishes and started moving toward the border crossing points in the city.

Because of the official's mistake, there were no terms of engagement for the border guards. After an initial resistance, they gave up and let the people go. There was nothing they could have done, anyway.

Kennedy, Reagan, Gorbachev - they all played their part in improving some conditions for the Soviet-occupied territories. But in the end, it was up to the people - fed-up with another conditioned announcement of relief - to take the initiative and force a change.