Twenty five years have now passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Celebrations will be taking place, along with memorials to those who lost their lives trying to cross ‘Der Mauer’. What sticks in my memory is watching those joyous scenes of Berliners being able to cross into parts of their city which had been closed off to them since 1963.
Checkpoint Charlie!
Earlier this year I happened to visit the only other divided capital city, like Berlin at the time, on the edge of the European Union. Unlike Berlin, which was only capital to one of the two Germanys, Nicosia is capital to both the Greek and Turkish Cypriot republics. It was all too weird for my girlfriend, who had never had to use her passport to go through a border crossing in the middle of the same city. But not for me, I’d seen it all before. I visited Berlin in 1982 – at the height of the Cold War.
What made me want to see this city was the Sex Pistols song: Holidays in the Sun. One of my mates was in the Army and stationed in West Berlin. I paid him a visit and landed at Tegel Airport. This used to be France’s military airport, but was then used for civilian flights. British forces still used Gatow and America used Tempelhof airports. At Tegel, armed police, dogs and soldiers were everywhere and my bag was thoroughly searched, along with every other passenger’s baggage.
My Army mate arranged digs for me at one of his German friend’s flat and a great holiday followed. A lot of time was spent going for a beer with my mate and his Army colleagues. Two of them took me for a trip into the Eastern Sector one afternoon. They had to be in full uniform and made me refuse to hand over my passport to the East German border guards. Britain didn’t recognise the GDR, despite helping our GDP by supplying most of the materials for Der Mauer.
No doubt a lot of money was made by a lot of people from building the Wall and making it do its job. My impression of both Berlins at the time was of them being showpieces for two competing political systems, making it a very exciting place. It was obvious this scar on humanity wasn’t going to last forever though. But it was amazing how it all ended in 1989. Many politicians have taken credit for its demise. But some did more than others. President Kennedy’s famous visit in 1963 is probably the one most documented.
It wasn’t Kennedy, accidentally claiming to be a doughnut with his ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ speech, which brought the wall down. It was two other men who really made it happen. One was the former Soviet leader – Mikhail Gorbachov – who gave the order to allow people through. The other was a Polish trade union leader called Lech Walesa. His Solidarity trade union not only brought down the wall and the Soviet Bloc, they also saved the world from nuclear annihilation.
Unfortunately my contribution to its downfall was rather childish. In 1982 Westerners were encouraged to treat the Wall with disdain and being 22 metres inside East German territory, vandalism and graffiti was actually encouraged. And so after one drunken session with the squaddies, I spat on Der Mauer, relieved myself against it and wrote Blackburn Rovers on its surface. Now it is gone – Auf Wiedersehen Mauer.
