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25th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall Scott 1574-1575 (2014) On the night of November 9 and 10, 1989, the dismantling of the Berlin Wall began, marking the end of the separation and segmentation of the former German capital of Berlin. In 2014, Vatican City issued a stamp and souvenir sheet to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall. The partitioning of Germany and Berlin following the end of World War II had been determined at the Allied conferences at Yalta and Potsdam. The Allies split the defeated nation into four “occupation zones”: the eastern part of the country went to the Soviet Union, while the western part was divided between the United States, Great Britain and (eventually) France. Berlin, while located entirely within the Soviet zone, was also divided into four sectors. The four-way occupation of Berlin began in June of 1945. From the beginning, the presence of a capitalist West Berlin within communist East Germany created tension (in the words of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, it “stuck like a bone in the Soviet throat”). In 1948, a Soviet blockade of West Berlin attempted to starve the western Allies out of the city. This was thwarted by the Berlin Airlift. In the thirteen years after the lifting of the blockade, an estimated three million East Germans (many of them young skilled workers) fled the country through Berlin. In August of 1961, a flood of East Germans crossing the border prompted Khrushchev to give the East German government permission to stem the exodus of refugees and led to the construction of the Berlin Wall. For over 25 years, the Berlin Wall stood as a symbol of the Cold War and Communist repression. Two United States presidents, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, gave memorable speeches in West Berlin in support of the German people and urged the dismantling of the Wall. In the late 1980's, Communist regimes across Europe fell. East Germany was no different, and on November 9, 1989 the East Berlin Communist Party announced that its citizens were free to cross the country’s borders. At midnight, they began to cross through checkpoints into West Berlin: more than 2 million people from East Berlin visited West Berlin that weekend. The Wall started to come down as well, as common citizens used picks and hammers to knock away chunks of the wall (they came to be known as the “mauerspechte,” or “wall woodpeckers”). Bulldozers and cranes finished the job. With the Wall down, the city of Berlin was unified. And, with the fall of communist East Germany, on October 3, 1990, the official reunification of Germany was complete. Click on today's Page 2 tab to view a detailed description of the stamps issued by Vatican City to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. REFERENCES: |
