Berlin, 1989: New Year’s Eve at the Brandenburg Gate

The recent death of Mikhail Gorbachev, the man hailed as having the greatest influence on the last decades of the 20th century, reminded me of my time back in 1989 in Berlin. I had long been fascinated by this city of contrasts, divided so clumsily in two. The so-called German Democratic Republic was strongly in the Communist camp, ruled by the Party’s General Secretary, Erich Honecker with his undeniable iron fist. Of all the East European satellites it was economically the most advanced and politically the most backward.

Although some dark clouds were gathering on the horizon in the form of Gorbachev’s reforms (particularly glasnost), the Party leadership decided to have a General Election in May. As in the past they obtained the majority of the votes, to be precise, 98.95 percent. Emboldened by this result they were ready to hold lavish celebrations of the 40th anniversary of the formation of the GDR, due on the 7th October. They invited Mikhail Gorbachev to the celebrations. They had to. A 40-year anniversary celebration of a great Communist achievement could not have been held without the presence of the worldwide leader of the Communist cause. At the same time they knew that their hard-line stand was not appreciated by the reformists in the Soviet Union. Gorbachev had a few nice words for them: their economic achievements were examples to all the East European countries. But it was not all praise. He warned Honecker: “Don’t count on the Red Army.” We do not know exactly what happened behind closed doors during the celebrations but what we do know is that Honecker tendered his resignation ten days later.

His replacement, Egon Krenz, started in office by introducing a spate of liberal reforms. It was the typical Alexis de Tocqueville scenario: concessions leading only to more radical demands. Krenz’s contribution should not be underestimated but the immediate cause of collapse was a popular uprising which actually started before Honecker’s resignation. It began as early as 1962 in the innocent form of weekly peace prayers at the St. Nicolai Church in Leipzig. For years the peace prayers were indeed peace prayers but after Honecker’s resignation their character changed. Pretty drastically. People poured out onto the streets. (The last time this had happened was on the 17th June 1953, when the demonstration was stopped by Soviet tanks, leading to a dozen killed and hundreds wounded.) On the 4th September 1,500 people participated in the prayers. By the 2nd October the number had swollen to 25,000 and by the  beginning of November, half a million people were attending. This was mirrored in other East German cities.

The tide was unstoppable. It needed only a few more days and the writing was on the Wall. It came tumbling down. Well not literally: the Berlin Wall was built too solidly for that. But barbed wires were removed and gates opened. Very few people came to its defence. I remember seeing at the time a Stasi officer on television who held his hands up in a typical gesture of resignation, meaning that he had reached his limit, he had had enough, he was washing his hands of the whole thing, and wanted nothing to do with those bricks and concrete.

In parallel with these world-shattering events, but quite independently from them, I developed my professional contacts with the Technical University of West Berlin. We agreed that I would spend my next sabbatical (four months from the 1st January 1990) in Berlin. It was good for me professionally, and it was interesting to see how quickly and inexorably the East German regime faded away.

On the non-professional side our immediate concern, when we (my wife and I) arrived on the 30th December, was the venue of the famous German New Year’s Eve (Silvester) celebrations. We rented a flat in the Kreuzberg district in West Berlin and asked everyone in the building where to go. The Turks did not know. The few Germans who lived in the house did not know either. Trying our luck on the street we soon found a young local who gave us an ambiguous answer: “Walk to Brandenburg Gate,” he advised us. “It used to be the place of many celebrations in the past and if anything happens today it will happen there.”

We made our way there. We were clearly not the only ones wanting to see New Year’s Eve celebrations. There must have been a good ten thousand people there. The crowd was moving slowly and deliberately towards the Brandenburg Gate, the most famous landmark in Berlin, on the border between East and West Berlin. The monument had been standing there happily for a couple of centuries except for a decade or two when its quadriga (depicting the goddess of peace driving a chariot pulled by four horses) was borrowed by Napoleon.

As time went on, we were joined by more and more people, more in front of us, more behind us. Soon we were surrounded on all sides. We couldn’t move. Or rather the only direction we could move in was forwards, pushed by the crowd. I noticed with horror that we were being pushed towards a sturdy wooden gate manned by maybe half a dozen Stasi men. At their helm stood a tight-lipped Lieutenant, directing his men to put  their shoulders against the gate to stop it opening. An impossible task: the pressure of the crowd was overwhelming.  He held a gun. Was it loaded? Surely not. Those times had gone.

Suddenly, before anyone could have been trampled underfoot, the gate lock snapped.  The Stasi men were literally swept away and we too had been swept into East Berlin. Alas, to no avail. Clearly, against all expectations, there were no New Year’s Eve celebrations, not in the East, nor in the West. Disappointed, we headed for Alexanderplatz. We remembered it well from Alfred Döblin’s famous novel. It was dark and empty. Not a soul around. We had to admit defeat and walked back to the wooden gate. There was no sign of the Stasi men.

“What have we achieved?” we wondered. Well, we passed that gate in both directions without any papers whatsoever. Thus we could claim altogether (including the one to Austria in 1956) three illegal border crossings and we did not even receive a small medal for it. History is often ungenerous.

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