Berlin wall: 20 years after the fall
Updated on 09 November 2009
Communism fell in eastern Europe 20 years ago. But did unification and European expansion come too fast? And has Europe lived up to the promise offered by the Berlin wall's toppling on 9 November 1989?
It was sudden, and with hindsight perhaps inevitable. Communism fell in eastern Europe just twenty years ago - terminating a European division that many feared would stand for all time.
Twenty years since the world changed for ever: 20 years since millions got their first taste of freedom: twenty years since the Berlin wall came tumbling down.
World leaders joined thousands of people at the city's Brandenburg gate to remember the events that finally brought an end to the cold war. Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel described it as "the fulfilment of a dream".
The celebrations culminated in a massive concert and fireworks display, with 1,000 dominoes toppling along the site where the wall once stood.
Jens Reich, one of East Germany's main opposition leaders in 1989, told Channel 4 News it was a "happy day".
He said he was not surprised that an east German was now chancellor of Germany, saying: "It went out better than we even anticipated at the time."
"The mentality is still, there is a big rift between eastern and western and I think this will take another 10 or 20 years to come together so that we can feel as a really fully united nation."
East German journalist Hardy Graupner was working the night shift for the state broadcaster when the wall came down. He did not cross over the border for a couple of days - partly through nervousness as he had never been to the west.
He told Jon Snow he was disappointed when he first crossed the border and entered district that "is not among the poshest in Berlin".
"I saw all these houses in a bad state," he said. "I saw the litter in the street, and by comparison east Berlin was much, much cleaner at the time. Now it is all the same."
"We had heard a lot of propaganda words, I had experienced that for so many years in East Germany. So I was not very keen on starting conversations with others right away.
"They felt immediately this thing of uncertainty around me, so that I must be from the east, because I was very unsure how to move and who to talk to, and whether to talk to people at all.
"It was a very difficult and strange experience."
"There are lots of things that I enjoy now, but if you explicitly want to know what I miss, it is probably this feeling of togetherness. After all we had very close ties in the teams at work, and also with your friends in you housing estate, for instance.
"That's all gone now, everyone is caring about his own thing, minding his own business and not caring about others any more."
He said the "number one" thing he enjoyed was that he can travel now.
A former East German border guard, Harold Jaeger, who, suddenly faced with a crowd wanting to cross the Bornholmer bridge, did not open fire but let them pass. He said: "I had the most beautiful and the most terrible night at the same time.
"It was terrible because I had to recognise that the party and the authorities had let me down, and that my own colleagues did not stand behind me.
"In particular, my ideology completely fell apart."
