OK, I’m confused. Do we want the Berlin Wall or not?
For some 28 years, the Berlin Wall stood as a stark monument to the political and economic divisions that divided Europe at the end of World War II; a concrete embodiment of the Iron Curtain. On the western side of the wall – eventually – lay prosperity and an embracing of the new; in the East, communism and the ways of yesterday held strong.
On 9 November 1989, all that changed as the East German government relaxed its travel restrictions and allowed its citizens to visit West Berlin and West Germany. Within days, that trickle turned to a flood and the Berlin Wall was swept away as thousands of citizens on both sides chipped away at the edifice to secure souvenirs of the Wall’s divisive past.
So it seems very strange that, some 13 years since the Wall supposedly fell, there are now protests against the demolition of a portion of the remaining wall:
