We Fall the Wall

November 9, 2009. Paris is singing for freedom. Thousands have gathered on the Palace de la Concorde to celebrate Germany and Europe. In Los Angeles a wall is being torn down. In Warsaw people are dancing on a wall and another wall is bricked up on the Spanish Stairs in Rome. In London a wall of ice bricks is gradually fading, melting till disappear. November 9 is a day the world celebrates with Germany.

It is the day the Berlin Wall fell.

It was November 4, 1989 when the Prague government gave permit to East German citizens to pass the boarders between Czechoslovakia and West Germany, and 10,000 people a day did. The German Democratic Republic (GDR) was endangered of crumbling and the wall was ridiculed. The pressure in the GDR kettle increased by the day and the SED government fell into serious considerations on what was to be done to ease that very pressure. It was in the evening of November 9, 1989 that the central committee let an incredible enormity through on a nod: A temporary solution which should create time for the leadership to breathe and which should be effective the following day, November 10. Scharbowski, member of the politburo, was the one to inform the media about the travel regulations "...which make it possible for every citizen of the GDR ... ahh ... via GDR boarder crossing points ... ahh ... to leave." And upon being asked when this regulation was to be effective he said: "..- this is to my .... knowledge ... it is immediately ... instantaneously..."

Instantaneously however meant to the politburo that it would be effective the following day, as people would have to first approach the offices to gain their documents of approval. But what neither Scharbowski nor Krenz nor anyone else in power anticipated was that people no longer wanted to wait for any approvals, but directly ran to the wall that very evening, November 9.

Thousands from the East came to the boarder crossing at Bornholmer Bridge, but the boarder guards there had no order to open gates. Resentments rose and the mob started crying "Tor auf! Tor auf" (Open gate! Open gate!) At the Brandenburger Tor West Germans started climbing onto the wall, which in fact was part of GDR territory. The situation became precarious, the tension grew.