The fall of the Berlin Wall: what it meant to be there | Timothy Garton Ash

Twenty-five years on, Timothy Garton Ash asks what hindsight cant reveal and wonders where the 1989 generation might lead us

We throw chocolates up to the putty-faced East German frontier troops, as they stand guard against whom? defending what? atop a Wall that since yesterday has become useless. They push the chocs away with their boots. One of the West Berliners standing next to me tries again: Wouldnt you like a West-cigarette? Sheepish refusal. Then I ask: Why are you there? This time, I get an answer: Interview requests must be registered in advance, on this side as on yours.

Lines scribbled in my notebook. Surreal moments from the greatest turning point of our time. In German, all nouns take an initial capital letter, so even a bungalow wall is a Mauer with a capital M. In English, there are many walls, but only one Wall. Its the one that fell on the night of Thursday 9 November 1989, giving us historys new rhyme: the fall of the Wall.

It was the other side of the concrete barrier that mattered, the side that people had risked their lives to climb over

The multitude of those who recall that they somehow foresaw these events has grown like the relics of the true cross

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