Remembering the day the wall fell
Twenty years, just about a generation, since Europe changed beyond all recognition.
I was there in November 1989, anchoring Channel 4 News. Our then diplomatic correspondent, Nik Gowing, was on the other side of the wall.
We had some new-fangled kit which meant that for the first time you could bounce a signal from a thing that looked like a trumpet on the end of a stick and pick it up 100 yards away.
Something went wrong in the transmission, and Nic Gowing hit the airwaves upside down and had to be dropped.
Those were merely technicalities. The practicality was altogether more euphoric – so spontaneous, so unexpected.
On the morning the wall came down, I was walking up the Unter den Linden that leads to the Brandenburg Gate from the eastern side, and I turned to my cameraman and said: “Do you realise, within 10 years these two countries (East and West Germany) will be one?” Six weeks later, they were!
The breakdown of the wall delivered the Europe Mrs Thatcher, who was then prime minister, dreamt of. Not a deeper union but a wider one, bringing in a whole slew of eastern European states. Today that EU is the very one her successors seem to fear.
I feel blessed to have been at the wall.
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You were blessed but it has to be due to your skills as a journalist Jon.
I too remember the wall fall. I was seventeen at the time but knew that it was something unprecedented and would be extremely significant.
Music has always been a big part of my life and when Sting released Russians, it really hit home. The other song to send me in a direction I will pursue for the rest of my days, was Sign of the Times by an artist who will always be known to me as Prince.
Michael Jackson was also a strong advocate of world peace, racial equality and environmental awareness.
Music is a religion.
adzmundo CND
Did you get a chunk of the wall ?
Yes ADZ music is in itself an element which unites. It elevates us to something other than the physical and for me there is little other that can achieve this.
I am not a particular lover of the Brandeburgh Concerto , but it is still feet above any wall that was ever there .
Margaret: you’re talking nonsense, as usual.
Dear Jon
On the day we commemorate the fall of the Berlin wall we should remember another wall that separates people in Israel/Palestine and that the world has elected to ignore. We should look forward to that wall too being torn down, indeed condemn it with the same vigour as we did the Berlin wall and look forward to celebrating its disappearance.
A couple of years ago I was appalled to hear on BBC news that Thatcher and Reagan had ended the Cold War. They were just lucky enough to be in authority when Gorbachev paved the way. However, whenever I hear about the fall of the Berlin Wall (which stands out in people’s minds as it’s so iconic) I’m also disappointed that there’s never any mention of the first manifest falling domino which began the knock-on effect which liberated all of Eastern Europe: the revolution in Romania. Without that revolution there would never have been a domino effect. The actions of the Romanian people created the critical mass.
Further, what went wrong in Yugoslavia? I answer that with another question: What’s a good way of stopping the domino effect? Answer: Interfere with it and try to make it move faster. And that’s exactly what the German, French and British governments did. They prematurely recognised the independence of former Yugoslavian states – and both Lords Carrington and Owen said as much at the time. Speaking as someone who is Romanian, Serb and Turkic on my father’s side I remain convinced that had the West left well alone, there wouldn’t have been the chaos that ensued.
It’s irony bordering on absurdity that on one hand we look at the fall of the wall as beginning of the end to an eastern European-wide dicatorship run empire simply so western Europe could impose what is gradually amounting to a non democratic pan European dictatorship. Only this is one where capitalism not communism will rule and unelected officials make laws that former soverign state must obey.
Is this what the former Warsaw Pact nations had expected of democracy?
Oh, and making a comparison between the Berlin Wall and the Israeli Wall is an equal absurdity. The Berlim Wall was designed to keep people in, the Israeli Wall is intended to keep terrorists out. And, guess what? It seema to be working.
The elephant in the room on this occasion appears to be the wall Israel has constructed through occupied Palestinian territory. Have any of the world leaders used this celebration to decry it’s existence?
Wall or no wall.Are people happier and safer without it ?That is the question.Is the world a safer place? It doesn’t feel safer.It bought Europe closer,into a political union which is a bad thing. Would the destruction of the Israeli wall make people safer and more united?Not until the Palestinians can genuinely renounce violence
reasonable point. People interviewd 20 years later were positive about it.
I’m sorry,but if it takes a Sting ditty to highlight a moment in history you really should get about more.Of course the David Hasselhoff moment was one of seering perspective ! God give me strentgh !!
Jon Snow – they really must have been remarkable times(gosh! the stories you could tell),
The Fall Of The Wall.Freedom,freedom!
Yeh, right: freedom. From what, exactly?
Dear Mr Dicks,
To say that Margaret wrote nonsense in response to music being a religion means you haven’t felt the power of people being uplifted and consequently united. I suggest you try the experience one day.
adzmundo CND
It is an interesting excercise in itself to look at the innately verbally violent and offensive response to written articles.
Much of many generations anger is projected into how they daily handle aspects of communication.
It is unchecked ,aggressive attitudes which actually cause wars and for that realisation I am grateful to the sensible and kind.
I