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The landmark Brandenburg Gate, a centuries-old symbol of Berlin, lights up on New Year's Eve. The mural image was digitally enhanced by artist Christ Clor to produce this 31 foot by 36 foot enlargement from a 35 mm slide.
"Free, for the first time in my life":
At 7pm, on Nov 9 1989, Politburo member Gunther Schabowski shocked Germany and the world. Starting at midnight, he said, East Germans would be free to leave the country and travel to the West. They could stay for a few hours, or forever.
Within minutes, the news spread to people on both sides of the Berlin Wall.
After a generation of being locked up in their own country, East Germans were reunited with their western neighbors. Crowds flowed through the wall near the Brandenburg Gate. Champagne flowed, too. Easterners crowded onto the Kurfurstendamm, Berlin's man shopping and dining street.
Jubilant Germans literally chipped away at one of the world's largest symbols of tyranny. Within a week, the wall and the German Democratic Republic had crumbled.
"When we came home at dawn," said Kristina Matschat, an East German homemaker and former chemist, "I felt free, for the first time in my life." |