Berlin's moment of freedom that turned world history

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"Twenty eight years and 91 days!" said the elated east Berliner I met walking up the Friedrichstrasse soon after the wall was breached. On the day the Berlin Wall went up, 13 August 1961, his parents had wanted to go to the cinema in west Berlin, but he, then aged 11, had been too tired. Next morning, they awoke to the sound of tanks. In all his adult life, he had never been to the western half of his own city. He told me how moved he was by an improvised poster that read "only today is the war really over".

Remember, remember, the 9th of November: the night that ended the short 20th century. If I say "the fall of the wall", what image do you see in your mind's eye? An exultant crowd dancing atop a wall covered in colourful graffiti? But those were almost all westerners dancing on the wall, and they'd climbed up from the western side, which was the one covered in graffiti.

This night, in its essence, was not about them. It was about the men and women who for more than 28 years would have been mowed down before they got within graffiti-aerosol distance of the wall from the eastern side. (An East German had been shot dead while trying to escape to the west as late as February 1989. His name was Chris Gueffroy. The frontier guards who killed him got a medal and a reward of 150 East German marks.)

This night was about the East Germans who, by turning out in such numbers at the frontier crossings, transformed what was supposed to be a communist regime's planned, controlled opening of the frontier into a triumph of people-power and a festival of freedom.

So here is the image to remember: An east Berliner appears through the frontier crossing, amid the elated crowd. Pale-faced, wearing some kind of a padded jacket, his breath is visible as a frosty plume against the cold night sky. He has just got through. He has probably never set foot in the west in his life. Incredible. Unglaublich!

He sees the television camera, looks straight at it, and shouts just one word: Freiheit! Then he is gone. In that instant, the word "freedom", so much devalued and abused, recovers all its pristine, primal force.

That is the moment. That is the image. It's the late 20th century version of the prisoners' chorus from Beethoven's Fidelio; of Delacroix's painting of Liberté, her right breast boldly bared, leading the people in the French revolution.

The first frontier crossing to be opened was at Bornholmerstrasse, on a bridge that goes over the S-Bahn, the overground city railway. My friend Werner Krätschell, a pastor of the East German protestant church which did much to shelter the East German opposition, was among the early ones to come across. It was soon after 11pm. The frontier guards put a stamp in his ID card, across his photograph. He checked with them that he could come back.

No, they replied, that stamp means you are emigrating permanently. He had left two young children at home, so he tried to turn round his car, to go back. But just as he was trying to turn round, in the narrow frontier crossing leading on to the bridge, a frontier soldier came running up and shouted to his colleague: "Comrade, a new order! They can come back." So Werner drove on into the west. A few minutes later, about 11.30pm, the guards opened the barriers and just let everyone through.

The other day, Werner rummaged around in his cellar to find his old ID card, and showed me the stamp across the photo: 9.11.O>23 – that is, at or after 2300 hrs. If you had to point to a single place and moment when the Berlin Wall was truly breached, it would be Bornholmerstrasse shortly after 11pm. As Werner turned his steering wheel, world history turned. I will be celebrating with him in Berlin this evening.

Later that night, a young East German scientist called Angela Merkel walked across the same crossing. Now the chancellor of united Germany, she will do the same again this afternoon, accompanied by a group of East German opposition activists, Mikhail Gorbachev, Lech Walesa and doubtless a media scrum.

It's a well chosen cast, symbolising three forces without which this could never have happened: the green light and example of reform from above (Gorbachev), popular pressure from below (Walesa and the East German activists), and the West German media, which spread the message that the wall was open even before it really was – and thus helped to make it so.

Willy Brandt, one of Merkel's greatest predecessors as chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, once observed that for him 9 November meant more than 3 October — the day when, less than a year later, Germany was formally united. The day of freedom moved him more than the day of unity. But unification followed. As Brandt himself said, the day after the wall came down, in a piece of characteristic inspirational vagueness: "Now what belongs together is growing together."

In the heart of Berlin, the work of physical reconstruction is breathtaking. When I lived in both the eastern and western halves of the divided city, 30 years ago, I used to carry around with me a handsome, red 1923 pocket Baedeker. I have it before me as I write. Researching the history of Berlin, I wanted to know what used to be where. When I was searched at the Checkpoint Charlie crossing point, the East German guards examined it suspiciously, and looked at me as if I was slightly mad.

Today, I can walk around the city centre holding the beautifully printed 1923 map of the inner city, with its red outlines of individual buildings, and many of them are back where they used to be. There's the whole Pariser Platz around the Brandenburg Gate, for example, which you'll see on your television screen tomorrow night, with the French and American embassies, the Academy of Arts and the Hotel Adlon exactly where they were, though in modern dress. Psychological unification will take longer, but it is proceeding too.

This night opened the door not only to German but also to European unification. A few months earlier, in a rare fit of what he had dismissively called "the vision thing", US president George H W Bush had evoked a "Europe whole and free". Today, on 9 November 2009, we are closer to that goal than Europe has ever been in its whole long history. Ever.

Yet the key word for 9 November remains freedom. At the outset, in its essence, it was about the very personal liberation of men, women and children imprisoned behind the wall for those "28 years and 91 days".

As a symbol, it lives on above all as an image of peaceful liberation.

Someone who lives in Beijing recently emailed me the link to a "Berlin Twitter Wall" (www.berlintwitterwall.com). What's remarkable about it is the number of tweets in Chinese, and many of them, he tells me, call for China's leadership to bring down the internet firewall, also known as the great fire wall, or GFW. One helpfully provides an English translation. It reads: "Mr Hu please tear down the GFW and give back the freedom of speech to the people."

breached - obalony

breathtaking - zapierający dech w piersiach

dismissively - lekceważąco

elated - rozradowany, wniebowzięty

evoke - przypominać, przywoływać

exultant - rozradowany, triumfujący

Freiheit - (German) freedom

plume - pióro, pióropusz

predecessor - poprzednik

pristine - pierwotny, niezmienny

rummage around - szperać, przeszukiwać

scrum - przepychanka

unglaublich - (German) unbelievable

vagueness - niejasność

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