Germany marks fall of Berlin Wall
AFP, Berlin :
From Seoul to the Vatican, the archipelago of Tonga to Los Angeles, remnants of the Berlin Wall have been installed around the world as paradoxical symbols of freedom 25 years after its fall.
As late as January 1989, communist East Germany’s leader Erich Honecker confidently declared the Wall, officially built as an “Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart” 28 years earlier, would still be standing in 50 or even 100 years’time.
Ten months later, it would be gone, figuratively at least, and people armed with chisels would gleefully set to work literally chipping away at the graffiti-covered concrete slabs that had cruelly divided Berliners.
“Aspirations of freedom, of democracy and of unity were so strong, it was
necessary to make the traces of the thing recalling this terrible history disappear,” said Anna Kaminsky, who compiled the photographic book, “Die Berliner Mauer In Der Welt” (The Berlin Wall in the World).
But after the turn of the millennium Berlin city officials became mindful that what still remained of the Cold War symbol should be preserved as a historical monument.
From Seoul to the Vatican, the archipelago of Tonga to Los Angeles, remnants of the Berlin Wall have been installed around the world as paradoxical symbols of freedom 25 years after its fall.
As late as January 1989, communist East Germany’s leader Erich Honecker confidently declared the Wall, officially built as an “Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart” 28 years earlier, would still be standing in 50 or even 100 years’time.
Ten months later, it would be gone, figuratively at least, and people armed with chisels would gleefully set to work literally chipping away at the graffiti-covered concrete slabs that had cruelly divided Berliners.
“Aspirations of freedom, of democracy and of unity were so strong, it was
necessary to make the traces of the thing recalling this terrible history disappear,” said Anna Kaminsky, who compiled the photographic book, “Die Berliner Mauer In Der Welt” (The Berlin Wall in the World).
But after the turn of the millennium Berlin city officials became mindful that what still remained of the Cold War symbol should be preserved as a historical monument.