Courage and
reconciliation
Tearing down of the Berlin Wall
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What are reasons for the fall of the Berlin Wall?
On 9 November 1989 the Berlin Wall fell. Already in 1980, protests in Gdańsk and the founding of Solidarność caused problems in the Communist system symbolized by the Berlin Wall. This was followed by the beginning of reforms in the Soviet Union after the election of Mikhail Gorbachev as Secretary General of the CPSU in 1985. Solidarność was recognized again as a legal organization in April 1989 which lead to the beginning of the end of the socialist system. Another milestone was the opening of the border between Hungary and Austria on 11 September 1989, which was connected with a mass exodus from GDR citizens through Hungary and later also Czechoslovakia to the West. The exodus as well as mass demonstrations in many cities of the GDR put pressure on the communist leadership in East Berlin, so the Central Committee drafted a new travel law for GDR citizens on 8 and 9 November 1989, which led, also because of GDR citizens pressuring the government, to the opening of the borders still on the same day.
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How was the German reunification seen in Poland?
„The German unification process has been observed in Poland with great benevolence and willingness to participate in the opening of the wall. In these weeks and months the German history became also our history - the history of people who wanted freedom and the end of the dictatorship.” (W. Bartoszewski, 2012)
Many Poles reacted to the fall of the Berlin Wall with spontaneous solidarity with the GDR citizens. The support for reunification was also great, because Poland hoped for a strong partner in the West with the reunited Germany, which is a member of the EU and NATO. However, the condition for the support was the final recognition of the Oder Neisse border by united Germany. In the beginning, there were some fears, but after signing the Two Plus Four Agreement and the German-Polish Border Treaty the issue was solved.
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The piece of the Berlin Wall in Kreisau
Fragments of the Berlin Wall can be found all over the world as memorabilia, art objects or symbols of freedom. On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the reconciliation mass on 11 December 2009, the Marshal of the Sejm Bronisław Komorowski and the President of the Bundestag Norbert Lammert revealed a piece of the wall in Kreisau. On this occasion, Norbert Lammert said that the Berlin Wall is "a special symbol of German-Polish history with a glance to a past lying behind us and a future we want to shape together.” Already in June 2009, the revealment of a piece of the wall of the Gdańsk shipyard, which Lech Wałęsa had climbed on 14 August 1980, took place near the Reichstag in Berlin.
The exchange of the two symbolic wall pieces illustrates that the two countries are connected by the common historical experience of a dictatorship and its overcoming.
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