1989 and No End of It – But It’s Impossible to Exaggerate
Celebrating Freedom
Berliner Morgenpost, October 14, 2009
Trumpets sound in the atrium space of the Federal Ministry of Internal Affairs. The guests who have gathered for the celebration listen to the wind section that plays an aria written by J.S. Bach for soprano and recorder flutes – a lavish-sweet sound of thirds fills the air.
The guests, however, had not only convened to praise the federal politics on security issues but to commemorate that moment in German history when protests against illegitimate ruling power came to restore the true and just order of things and thereby led to a happy recovery of freedom. Recollections of the fall 1989, and there is no end of it – but so what? There are only few moments in history to which Germans can look back with pride and joy, without any restraint, and it is impossible to overdo celebrating these rare moments. Because one cannot overcome the hard times in life if the heart is heavy.
A long time ago, the Huguenots settled along the River Spree in Moabit, having fled to Prussia in search of religious freedom. Now, on this spot, on the “Road of Recollection” a monument honouring the freedom movement of 1989 has been unveiled. I have described the monument in an earlier “diary note” after I had come back from a visit in the studio of sculptor Rolf Biebl: A naked man jumps through a wall which opens up as if by magic. Of course, that is physically impossible yet plausible: an allegory of the miracle of autumn 1989. Back then, the first who had to give way where the adversaries carrying arms, and in the end it was the formerly insuperable wall, the “wall of shame”, that had to come down.
One of the former activists and spokesmen of 1989, Joachim Gauck, gave a moving speech: “We are the people! Four words. You may search German political history very hard and not find a sentence that is more beautiful. Because that phrase is so forceful and full of dignity. Because it was invented by people who had been used to obey, for 56 years”.
Then the assembly walked to the banks of the Spree, and for a brief moment, the sun shone brightly before it started raining again. The cover of the monument fell, the wing section played the national anthem, and the guests sang as heartily as if they had rehearsed it.
“E flat major! That’s all you need!”, replied the horn blower when I asked him for the secret of successful patriotic choral singing.
