I kinda wish I was in Germany this
week.
To be a little more specific, I kinda
wish I was in two of my favorite places in Germany this week, Leipzig
and Berlin. Why, you ask? Well, I answer, because Saturday is the
30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which
means that protests that started earlier that year in this Leipzig
church courtyard--
Eventually led to this--
If you were following along with the blogs I wrote while in Leipzig earlier this year you may recall
the fascination I seem to have developed with both of the fall of the
Wall and how the protests that led to it started in another city 150
miles away. Not only is it an amazing piece of recent history, but
it's also a story of authoritarian tyrants and their desperate
attempts to cling to power through lies, deceit, & force, and how
the sheer human need to be free brought them down.
It's a story that's as vital and
important today as it was back then.
Berlin, especially, is going whole hog
on the celebration, with history walks & lectures, and an amazing
light show throughout the city where they light up the sides of
building with projections of scenes of those fateful few days. I
would love to just wander around and soak it all in. Leipzig
actually had their big annual “Light Fest” a few weeks ago, where
city residents gather in the plaza where 400,000 of them protested a
few days before the Wall fell for a candlelight commemoration of
those heady days--
(That's obviously not my picture, by the way, but I sure wish I could've been there to take it).
I think this is just a coincidence,
too, but the soccer teams of those two cities—RB Leipzig and Hertha
Berlin—meet at Berlin's Olympic Stadium Saturday afternoon. I
don't know if that's something the Bundesliga actually considered or
it they just got lucky on, but it would be another great reason to be
over there this week.
If you're interested in any of this
history, there are a couple of phone apps I might recommend.
“Leipzig 89” tells all about what happened in the city in the six
months before the Wall came down (including the arrest of street
musicians who defied a ban on actually playing music in the streets,
believe it or not), while one called “Berlin Wall” talks about
the building and history of the structure, how it came down, and the
story of those who died trying to escape the fascist regime ruling
over them.
They're both available from Apple and
Google; like I said, I highly recommend them, especially this
week...a week that would be great for anyone either of those really
cool places.
Okay...that's enough German history for
today. Tomorrow, a tale from local history!
No comments:
Post a Comment