From revolution to spectacle - Berlin remembers 1989 (News Feature)

By Jeff Black Nov 9, 2009, 20:54 GMT

Berlin - It threatened to be a complete wash-out, a testament to the fact that you cannot live the same revolution twice.

But in the end, Berlin celebrated 20 years since the fall of the wall on Monday - amid freezing drizzle and under a sea of umbrellas - in its characteristic hardy spirit, with moments that brought many to tears.

The Festival of Freedom started with the heads of state or government from every European Union state, the United States and Russia in attendance, and ended with a fireworks display over the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin's symbol in good times and bad.

The proceedings began with a whimper rather than a bang. A classical concert, despite being conducted by the beloved Daniel Barenboim, failed to warm up an already soggy crowd.

The Israeli-Argentinian conductor led a programme that began honourably with a serious tribute to the wealth of German musical and poetic culture: A prelude from Wagner's opera Lohengrin. But it wasn't exactly a singalong moment, and the crowd's mood dampened further when A Survivor From Warsaw by Arnold Schoenberg followed.

The piece is a sung narration of the horrors of the Holocaust, in which Nazi Germany murdered millions of Jews during World War II.

'This just doesn't fit,' complained one woman in the audience. 'This should have been a day when we as Germans could celebrate for once without a bad conscience!'

Others couldn't understand why a supposedly popular event was dominated by classical music - and some pretty serious music at that.

But the mood began to improve, helped along by images on the big screens set up on both sides of the Brandenburg Gate, which at one point displayed US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton nodding along to the exuberant strains of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony.

The frantic finale to the symphony was written in 1812, as Europe was being bludgeoned by the Napoleonic wars. Beethoven himself was wracked by unrequited love, and was nearing total deafness. And yet, joy came out of adversity - a fitting thought to remember the end of Germany's awful 20th century by.

'The fall of the wall really was the best thing that could have happened to us. It's a great event tonight,' said Elvira Fleischer, a former East Berliner, as archive footage from the momentous events of 1989 was shown on the screens.

As Berliners - normally a sardonic lot - engaged with these memories, few were left unmoved.

Footage of Hans Dietrich Genscher was shown, a former foreign minister of West Germany, as he made his famous speech on the balcony of the German embassy in Prague announcing that East Germans were to be allowed to travel to the West.

That moment symbolizes the release of all that had been kept shut in by the former Communist dictatorship, perhaps as much as the images of young men in jeans and denim jackets clambering over the Wall itself on the night of November 9.

And then, Polish people's warrior Lech Walesa and former Hungarian prime minister Miklos Nemeth, catalysts in the transformation of eastern Europe, stepped up to push over the first of the thousand huge dominoes that represented the end of the old Soviet order.

For those too young to remember the event itself, this domino run was a spectacle in place of a revolution. But it worked.

And for those with their own memories of that time, it brought it all back.

A visibly moved Martin Lueck, a man in his 70s who lived through decades of a divided Germany, was choking back the tears as the dominoes fell.

'It is really earth moving. Not just for Germany, but for the world. It is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, to be in a peaceful revolution.'