November 9, 1989 was “a happy day” which also reminds us that “freedom and democracy have never been taken for granted”, launched the mayor of Berlin Kai Wegner this Saturday, as his city celebrated the 35th anniversary of the fall of the wall which separated Berlin in two between 1961 and 1989.
Bernhard Hödtke, 93, who lived in the east, remembers venturing to the other side the day after the fall of the wall with his colleague, just as incredulous as him: “we went down Friedrichstrasse”, an arterial road central once cut off by the wall, and “we pinched our arm,” he says.
The end of the “Wall of Shame”, a symbol of the Cold War and the division between the Western and Soviet blocs, paved the way for the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the reunification of Germany a year later.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz stressed on Friday that the values of 1989 could not “be taken for granted”.
