— Transforming Organizations, Revitalizing Communities and Developing Human Potential

View of the Brandenburg Gate from East Berlin late 1960s - this is as close as you could get without getting shot.

Today is the 30-year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall: A decision made by members of the Politbüro on a smoke break around noon on November 9th, 1989 – is headed to the press secretary, who has no idea when the decision to allow east germans to travel west is supposed to take effect. It is another afternoon with hundreds of east germans fleeing west via Czechoslovakia on this Thursday in the fall of 89. Noone believes another fall is coming.

Günter Schabowski announces the bombshell new travel regulations at a live 6 pm press conference – about an hour into the remarks around 7 pm. An Italian journalist asks when this new regulation will take effect. Schabowski responds “Das tritt nach meiner Kenntnis… is das sofort. Unverzüglich.” [“That is, as far as I know… it is immediately. Forthwith.]

By 9 pm, thousands of Berlin citizens from east and west are at the border crossings with east germans demanding to be let across. At 11 pm a commander at Bornholmer Strasse decides he has no choice, the masses are overwhelming, and opens the gate. The rest is history.

Der Mauerfall. The Fall of the Berlin Wall.

When I watch the videos, I cry. I was born in East Berlin. I’m in my early forties. I remember looking at that wall – knowing I would never in my lifetime see the other side. I was convinced my children would not either. When my father told me, on the following Monday after school [remember there was no social media back then, we didn’t live in Berlin] “Die Mauer is weg!” – the wall is gone – I accused him of being cruel. I knew our phone was bugged, what if someone was listening? “That’s the dumbest joke you could be telling me – it’s not funny dad.” I didn’t believe him.

Fast forward three decades. A few months ago I was walking about 10 yards behind him talking to my brother. We were on a walk as a family. Dad was up ahead with my sister in law. With a start that made me stop in my tracks, I realized I had my hands crossed behind my back – exactly the way I could see his in front of me. WE WALK EXACTLY THE SAME! I had tried so hard not to be like my dad. Not because he was a bad guy but because I wanted to be me. Not “Oh, you must be Stefan’s son…”. Here I was three decades plus later – and I walk just like him!

I also just figured out a few days ago why I associate my dad with warmth [other than he LOVES fireplaces and a good whiskey]. It was freezing one morning last week in northwest Ohio, and we had not turned on the heat yet. For some reason, my dad was on my mind. I couldn’t figure out why. Then I suddenly remembered, for the first time in decades, that when I was little, the heat in the coal-fired tiled ovens [one per room] wouldn’t quite last the night. You always woke up cold. But I didn’t have to get up until my father had fired the stoves and it was warming up.

My sister is about a decade younger than me – she has no context for why I still cry at the Brandenburg Gate – we lived in the reunited germany when she grew up – no tiled stoves either. We had central heat. To her, east germany is history and to her connotations of our childhood and of dad are different - well, she is also his only daughter. . .

I am sitting here today and realize – sometimes, I just have to get back to basics:

To realizing that my assumptions are just that – my assumptions. Honed by my history and experiences, my trauma. Realizing that my normal is just as normal as anyone else’s – but different.

And to forgiveness. Those east german socialist leaders were just trying to figure things out based on their connotations and perceptions of reality.

And to gratitude. For fall, and for the Fall of the Berlin Wall, for heat and tiled stoves, my dad, my mom, and this 30-year anniversary of a day that changed so many lives forever!

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. . . thoughts on the Fall of the Berlin Wall

— Transforming Organizations, Revitalizing Communities and Developing Human Potential