Wednesday, 11 November 2009The year 1945: After the Second World War, the leading countries of the world – the Soviet Union, USA, UK, and France – divided Germany into 4 occupied zones, which resulted in the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany in the Western occupied zones and the German Democratic Republic in the Eastern part under the Soviet occupation in 1949. Sixty-four years later the leaders of those countries, Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of Britain, President of France Nicolas Sarkozy, President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia, and the representative of United States of America, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met in Berlin on 9 November 2009. But the reason was totally different than in 1949; 20 years ago, a series of peaceful revolutions broke down the massive wall that for nearly three decades divided Berlin, Germany and Europe with an Iron Curtain, and on 9 November 2009, the capital of Unifed Germany commerated the 20th anniversary of the fall of Berlin Wall in 1989.
The ceremony began with fantastic music from Berlin's State Opera, followed by speeches from the world leaders and fireworks, and finally the fall of the symbolic wall, a chain of brightly painted dominos that ran along the area where the Berlin Wall had once stood. It was a perfect show and reflected how the former Communist governments of Eastern Europe fell one after another. Hundreds of thousands of men and women from around the world came to participate in the anniversary.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel made a ceremonial procession with the political guests to the Brandenburg Gate. During her speech, she said that the fall of the Berlin Wall was the happiest day of her entire life. "We have every reason to celebrate today, to celebrate freedom, which is not given, we have to fight for it", she said. She also pointed out that the Nazi Pogrom against the Jewish population, which has a huge memorial in Berlin, and the Berlin Wall were reminders of history. At the end of her speech she thanked her Western allies for their tremendous assistance during the Cold War.
The "Hero" of the ceremony was Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Secretary General of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union. He was the first leader of Soviet Union who wanted to open the empire to the West and initiated the fall of the Berlin Wall. The former Polish President Lech Walesa and ex-Hungarian Prime Minister Miklos Nemeth also attended the ceremony.
The ceremony ended with the fall of the symbolic wall and the unification of the two sides of Germany.
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Wednesday, 11 November 2009
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