What a Difference 20 Years Makes
I vividly recall the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago, this year. Dumfounded tears of joy streamed down my cold face as I wandered my Vermont college campus with friends in search of a television for news in a pre-internet era. Catching sight of the masses of East and West Germans standing on the wall and tearing it down played out like a movie to me. In the years before college I had lived and studied in Germany for a year, returning several more times to travel throughout the country and reunite with my new friends. In those years, the stalemate of the Cold War which left Germany divided seemed as pervertedly innate and permanent as the German love for beer or their stoic work ethic. Watching the impossible suddenly do a 180, was otherworldly. Now, 20 years later, Berlin is set to watch the wall come down one more time. This time in a more orderly and cultural fashion.
This November, one thousand giant dominoes will line the former location of the Berlin Wall. When cued, the eight-foot high Styrofoam dominoes will fall, taking around half an hour to symbolise the 1989 Berlin Wall’s destruction. You can learn more about this project and other year-long celebrations by visiting Kulturprojekte online. The Domino Project aims to “encourage young people to reflect on what the fall of the Wall meant,” explains Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit. Each of the dominoes will be decorated by young local residents, with twenty of the slabs embellished overseas in countries where “aggressive divisions and separating walls have left an impact”. One of the sponsors, the Goethe Institut, said the ceremony was planned to tell the world about how Germans overcame the division peacefully. ”We want to take the dominoes to many countries, especially to those where there is still a division today, such as Korea, Yemen or Cyprus,” said head of the Goethe Institut, Hans-Georg Knopp.
- JVS
