European leaders mark 20 years since fall of Berlin Wall (2nd Lead)

Nov 9, 2009, 17:54 GMT

   Berlin - With a walk through Berlin's iconic Brandenburg Gate, leaders including the presidents of Russia, France and Italy marked on Monday the sudden opening of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago, an event that ushered in the collapse of communism.

The despised concrete Wall once sealed shut the battered stone gate, an 18th-century triumphal arch in the heart of the city.

Chancellor Angela Merkel and her guests ceremonially walked under the now-restored, floodlit arch and a city orchestra played in the rainy night at the culmination of an emotional anniversary for Germans.

   The November 9, 1989 announcement by East German officials that the citizens of the communist country could travel abroad, and the decision by a border-guard commander half an hour before midnight to let thousands of people through a gate in the wall are marked as the wall's 'fall.'

   In the following week, people chiselled holes in the barrier, though it was not till 1990 that the solid concrete wall around the democratic enclave of Berlin was demolished by heavy excavators. By then, the communist system in Europe had shrivelled and gone.

Presidents Dmitry Medvedev of Russia, Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Silvio Berlusconi of Italy attended the Berlin ceremony, along with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton represented Washington.

In a combination of playful artistry and symbolism, central Berlin has been divided again by a row of foam-plastic dominoes, 2.5 metres in height and decorated by artists and school pupils from Germany and around the world.

   Lech Walesa, the former Polish president, had the privilege of giving the first push to topple them, representing the sequence of events which began in early 1989 in Poland, led to the fall of the wall and ended in the end of Soviet rule in eastern Europe.

   The Berlin orchestra of renowned conductor Daniel Barenboim played Beethoven to the state guests who sat on the dais in warm overcoats.

In a light-hearted touch, tenor Placido Domingo sang a music-hall number celebrating Berlin's atmosphere. The crowd yelled 'encore.'

   The evening of elation was set to end with a huge fireworks display, recalling the joyous scenes as people in the West partied the night away with the visitors from East Germany.

 Earlier, Merkel visited the Boese Bridge, the crossing point in the Berlin Wall where a guard commander shrugged and first allowed easterners through in their thousands to visit West Berlin, just before midnight 20 years ago.

In the week that followed, the rest of the border crossings, once sealed by lethal force, opened up as the world watched in amazement.

The chancellor said the events of 1989 were 'the result of a long history of repression and the fight against repression.' She recalled the many people who suffered under the East German regime.

   Merkel, who had been in the crowd surging through the Wall 20 years ago, was joined Monday evening at the bridge by dignitaries and civil rights activists, among them former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and Poland's former opposition leader Walesa.

Tourists came from round the world to see the spectacle.

   Kinami, 25, from Japan brought her mother, 61, with her. 'It was a big event twenty years ago, and she was very moved,' Kinami said.

Also on the street enjoying the celebrations was Helen Noble, who was working in the British embassy in Bonn in 1989.

'I remember that night because I went out to the streets to celebrate with everybody,' Noble said.

'Twenty years ago we would not have been able to stand on this side of the wall,' Noble told her 8-year-old daughter as they walked along the as-yet untoppled dominoes. 'It is fantastic to be able to experience the joy of the celebrations.'

The breaching of the Wall spelled the end of Europe's East-West divide. In the months that followed, the Soviet-controlled bloc in Eastern Europe collapsed and democratic elections were held, sweeping the communist parties from power.