The Fall of the Wall:
"nothing special to report "
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| The fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 |
A Vatican Radio Archive programme marks the Fall of the
Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989.
By Vatican News
As Europeans across the continent mark 30 years from the
fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, one cannot but recall
the role played by Pope Saint John Paul II in unifying Europe
in freedom.
The military guarded concrete barrier physically and
ideologically divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. Along with the separate
and much longer Inner German border, which demarcated the border between
East and West Germany, the Berlin wall came to physically symbolize the
"Iron Curtain" that separated Western Europe and the Eastern
Bloc during the Cold War.
The Polish Pope’s Apostolic Visit to his native country in
June of 1979 made a great impact on the divided continent, as it was the first
visit of a Pope to a Communist country.
The values that, so clearly were at the center of his
pontificate, were widely acknowledged as playing a pivotal part in sparking the
revolution that brought down the wall paving the way for German reunification,
and ultimately the demise of totalitarian regimes in Europe.
From the Archives of Vatican Radio, we bring you
a programme written and produced by Veronica Scarisbrick to
mark the historical event:
Berlin, a city once at the heart of twentieth century
geopolitics, as the stage of Nazi Germany and subsequent Cold War. One which
has moved beyond East West boundaries ever since the reunification of
Germany which took place on the 3rd of October 1990. A result of the
clamorous historical event which paved the way to that
reunification, the 'Fall of the Wall', that 162 kilometre barrier that
had divided Berlin in two for twenty eight long years.
The date to remember is the 9th November 1989. Twenty
years later, to mark that same date, a German author by the name of Victoria
Strachwitz set out to interview a cross section of twenty people from each side
of that Wall shining the spotlight on their personal witness in an effort
to put people into the picture. Let’s listen to what she discovered in this
series of interviews.
Among those Victoria Strachwitz interviewed were some
of the key players in this event. To mention a few, the Mayor of West Berlin at
the time, Walter Momper, the last Commander of the British sector in West
Berlin, Sir Robert Corbett and Gunter Schabowski who in a sense triggered the
opening of borders by raising popular expectations during a press conference.
She chose to give the book the title of , “Nothing
special occurred”, because these words were pronounced by some of the officials
in East Berlin at the time, with the intention of playing down the
historical significance of this event.
What Victoria Strachwitz discovered in the course of her
research was the high risk factor involved in the opening of the borders. One
she hadn’t previously taken into consideration, the fact that the loss of one
single person’s life on this occasion might have changed the outcome of the
event from peaceful to bloody.
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