Remaking Our World:  A View Through The Berlin Wall   

It's a blessing the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall came on a Sunday, giving time to reflect on the momentous occasion.

After all, the collapse of The Wall made it possible to actually visualize the end of the Cold War.

In Berlin itself, the authorities put together what can only be described as an astounding observance.

To drive home how Berlin was divided, some eight-thousand lighted balloons were used to line nearly 10 miles of the city, tracing part of The Wall's path. You can see them here at the East Side Gallery, one of the few places in Berlin where there are sections still standing:

"It's really good to be reminded of where the wall was and what it once meant," said Berlin resident Alex Schaller, commenting to the Los Angeles Times which has made the story front-page news. Los Angeles, after all, is Berlin's Sister City.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel reopened the Berlin Wall memorial at Bernauer Strasse, a key landmark, after a nearly yearlong renovation, visiting it ahead of the festivities at the iconic Brandenburg Gate:

This is the portion of the Bernauer Straße memorial to The Wall where Merkel and Berlin's Mayor joined other dignitaries in putting flowers in its cracks.  Note the guard tower, one where East German soldiers could shoot at anyone trying to escape.  Officially, more than one hundred died, but the number is probably much higher.

25 years on, remnants of the Berlin Wall are largely hard to come by. There are fitting memorials like those you see here, but Germany has made sure not to let its memory get in the way of progress. 

Checkpoint Charlie, where I first crossed into East Berlin in 1981, has been completely remade and the area around it is now fully developed.

This is what now remains of the checkpoint, set up by the United States in what was the American Sector, one of four specific areas administered by each of the Allies who defeated Nazi Germany in World War II.

Those wanting to trace the path of The Wall can still do so.  It's marked in the street by cobblestone with embedded metal plagues letting you know this is where it actually stood:

 

I've tried with only limited success to put together a montage of before and after pictures from my time in Berlin, showing what was once East and West Berlin and what is now.  My efforts have been eclipsed by The Guardian.  Click on the pictures here and they dissolve to what once was:

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/ng-interactive/2014/nov/03/the-berlin-wall-in-the-cold-war-and-now-interactive

So, the Wall in the physical sense may be gone, but I've learned that it still lives on in the minds of those, not only from Berlin and in large part to those in Germany, but also with those who were there.  

I would argue that the current dispute between Russia, the United States and the European Union over Ukraine stems in large part from how the Fall of the Wall is viewed in each person's respective country.

As the Los Angeles Times put it, "Russia's natural-resource wealth has enriched and emboldened the former superpower, encouraging the Kremlin to grasp for the strategic clout it once wielded as capital of the communist empire. President Vladimir Putin's incursions into Ukraine have raised the uncomfortable memory of Stalin-era land grabs, instilling fear in many former Warsaw Pact allies. Those jitters have been exacerbated by Moscow's chokehold on energy supplies for much of Europe."

It might be good to mention here that Putin was stationed in East Berlin when he was a KGB agent, a member of the Soviet Union's secret police.

Now to the hard part, the part it may be hard for Americans to fathom.  

The Fall of The Berlin Wall is viewed quite differently depending on which side of the Atlantic you are on.  

The Russian President, for example, has called the Fall of The Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union disastrous for Russia.  The thought is now that Putin is trying to reassemble parts of the old Soviet Union.  Putin largely views western promises as worthless. Russia, he has made clear, is only respected when feared. 

Putin is now using other tools at his disposal to take on The West, including energy resources, cyber hacking and a United Nations Security Council veto.  His popularity has surged domestically as he promises to take on The West militarily, moving into Ukraine and even confronting NATO forces with an increase in bomber flights around Europe and around the Aleutian Islands and Alaska.

As for Europe, the prevailing explanation for communism's collapse is not to American resolve and ideals, but instead to their leaders own continental style. America's threat of force had not destroyed communism. Instead, its absence made Eastern Europe's velvet revolutions possible. By avoiding war for more than two generations, European strategists gave communists time to come to their senses.

And in Germany itself, the old communists are doing their best to make a comeback.  The Left party, or Die Linke as it's called in Germany, has even gained enough votes to put it in the governing coalition of the state of Thuringia.  True, The Left party hardly has the votes nationally to pose a real threat to what has become the status quo in Germany.  But it does show that The Berlin Wall still does live on in the minds of people throughout the region.

No, The Berlin Wall may be gone in the physical sense, but it's still there in the minds of many.  My view is that it may be generations more before it truly falls into the dustbin of history.

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About the Author:  Henry Mulak is an Emmy Award-winning journalist who has covered politics, economics and law for more than 30 years.  His made his first visit to East and West Berlin in 1981 as a student.  He obtained his Journalism Degree from Humboldt State University where he also minored in German.  In 1999, he obtained a RIAS Fellowship in which he studied European Union politics in Berlin, Brussels and Cologne.  Most recently Henry reported for the CBS News, Radio Network while living in Berlin starting in June of 2010 and returning to the U.S. in 2013.  Henry is also certified to test for intercultural competence in English and holds a CTESOL, allowing him to teach at colleges worldwide.  He now lives in Los Angeles.  Thank you to Berlin resident, Dr. Dietrich Rein for providing some of the pictures seen here in this posting.