20 years later, IU professors reflect on fall of Berlin Wall

The night of Nov. 9, 1989, saw the fusion of two worlds that were once rigidly divided, as hundreds of thousands of people from East and West Berlin poured through the newly opened wall.

The lives of many of those people were about to change dramatically, whether or not they fully comprehended it.

Living through it

“I was in a bar in West Berlin playing pool with a friend on the night of Nov. 9,” said Claudia Breger, associate professor of Germanic studies. “Suddenly there were rumors that the wall had come down. My friend and I just looked at each other, shrugged and continued playing.”

As part of a younger generation in West Berlin that worked on being largely unaffected by the events shaking Berlin during the late 1980s, Breger felt largely unmoved in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

What they didn’t know at the time was that they experienced what would be argued as the keystone event in defining the cohesive Europe of today.

“It was the moment when capitalism became totally global,” assistant professor of Germanic studies Ben Robinson said. “Europe unified, and globalization as we see it now could burst on to the scene.”

Europe spread across the whole continent instead of being divided in the middle, which occurred peacefully.

“The atmosphere was pretty euphoric,” history professor Padraic Kenney said. “Everyone expected that it would be forever, or that it would take a war, probably with millions of deaths, to get rid of that hated piece of concrete.”

This physical merger gave Europeans the opportunity to unify and become both an economic and political counterweight to the United States, Robinson said.

Living in East Berlin after the fall of the wall, Robinson witnessed firsthand how people felt and responded after the initial elation wore off.

“There was a sense of loss and disorientation that stems from the disappearance of institutions that oriented them,” Robinson said. “Jobs were lost, people were bitter and
Eastern people immediately felt themselves to be second-class citizens, to be laughed at.”

The Berlin Wall legacy

After 20 years, the legacies associated with the aftermath of the fall can still be seen and felt both in Germany and abroad. Because of this, the anniversary of the fall also cultivates painful memories, Kenney said.

“There are still huge economic disparities, and a lot of the old prejudices still exist,” Robinson said.

Though the transition was far from smooth, with the negatives also came lasting benefits.

“Of course, this was the symbolic end of the Cold War,” Breger said. “The post-war order had dissolved, and there was much excitement associated with finding out how the world works and developing a new world order.”

Professors said celebrating the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall is not only about recalling a historic moment in time, but about discovering how a moment is still relevant more than 20 years later.

“On the one hand, I wouldn’t simply celebrate 1989 as the end of dictatorship and the Cold War,” Robinson said, “but also as a celebration that there can be an alternative to the way profit and capital guide our decisions today.”

For some Germans who never felt satisfied with the adoption of capitalism, the past 20 years have been a learning experience. They are starting to re-evaluate the political structure of the country, Robinson said.

“As capitalism works, yes, a lot of people are struggling, but Berlin is also becoming a very interesting, glamorous place because of it,” Breger said. “It’s an actual world capital now, which it wasn’t before.”