DATE.....: Tuesday November 09, 1999
NUMBER...: 5-44728
TITLE....: BERLIN WALL ANNIVERSARY-REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK
TYPE.....: BACKGROUND REPORT
BYLINE...: GIL BUTLER
DATELINE.: BERLIN
KEY......: 794467
CONTENT..:
 
VOICED AT:
 
INTRO:  On November 9th, 1989, the Berlin Wall came
down leading to German unification.  It was a defining
event in a momentous time that saw the end of the Cold
War.  Germans celebrated unification with Beethoven's
great Choral symphony, but the end of the German
Democratic Republic has  not  been without problems.
(This week,) VOA's Gil Butler has been reporting on
Germany ten years after the fall of the Wall and (in
this final report) he shares some thoughts from his
reporter's notebook about his latest visit to Berlin.
 
      /// OPT. CHORAL ODE TO JOY UP AND OUT ///
 
TEXT:  Ten years ago, while the Wall was still here,
the few meters between Checkpoint Charley and East
Berlin's border amounted to a journey to another era -
- another world.  You left modern West Berlin behind
and entered a grim and somehow grimy world of state
control - the world of Erich Honecker and Communist
East Germany.  The main street - Unter Den Linden -
may have had the triumphal Brandenburg gate at one
end, but it had no shops to speak of, no brightly
lighted cafes.
 
There is still a transition going from west to east,
but it is more subtle.  While West Berlin has a
vibrant, late night street life, East Berlin seems an
early-to-bed governmental kind of place - which it is.
 
 
Since early this year, Berlin has resumed its status
as Germany's capital.  The center part of Berlin is a
huge construction site as the newly restored capital
tries to erase decades of division.
 
Potsdamer Platz is the center of the biggest building
project.  A bright red building on stilts called "the
Infobox" was set up to explain the project. It has
become one of Berlin's favorite tourist destinations -
- seven million visitors so far, most of them Germans.
They can even get married at the construction site for
about a hundred dollars.
 
Among the new fixtures of East Berlin is a system of
big pastel blue and pink pipes that snake over
sidewalks and beside old buildings.  They are designed
to equalize the water table under those buildings
while a new city center is constructed in the former
no-man's land.  If the water level was not controlled,
some of these buildings might collapse.
 
The last time I reported from here was the 40th
anniversary of the German Democratic Republic-East
Germany. As a foreign reporter I was assigned a hotel
room in the public-sector Metropole hotel just off
Unter Den Linden street.  It was a pretty good example
of a Communist state's idea of modern convenience.
 
The Metropole hotel is still here.  But now it is
really a modern hotel, part of the Maritim chain.  It
doesn't bear any resemblance to the old Metropole and
the only nod toward that era is the bar: it's called
the "Checkpoint" bar, after Checkpoint Charley the
entry point to East Berlin from the American Sector.
 
Nothing remains of the original Checkpoint Charley but
a sign -- "you are leaving the American sector" -- and
a museum which sells memorabilia and gives tours of
rooms with pictures and photographs of the way it was
when the Wall was up.
 
Another pre-1989 building is the German Democratic
Republic's governmental palace.  The Republican palace
is a communist era building that has survived just
because of the fear that tearing it down would
destabilize nearby structures. This building is an
important part of the story of the fall of the Wall.
Back in October 1989, Erich Honecker was greeting
visiting, mostly Communist, leaders at the entrance
while out back, state police were breaking up a huge
demonstration of young people calling for Mikhail
Gorbachev, the most prominent of the visitors, to save
them.
 
A short distance away is Alexander Platz, the big
square in the eastern part of Berlin.
 
      /// ACT. PERUVIAN PIPE MUSIC (UP/UNDER/OUT) ///
 
It's crowded today with shoppers; people having lunch;
listening to strolling musicians.
 
But ten years ago, on the fourth of November 1989,
500-thousand people gathered here demanding an end to
repression.  The Wall came down five days later.
 
In some ways, Germans are trying to forget the years
of division.  You have to look hard to see where the
wall was, and only a few sections have been left
standing with their art and graffiti.
 
In another sense, the Wall still remains.  East
Germans are different than West Germans and there's
resentment on both sides.  But of all the people I
talked to on this trip, not one longed for a return to
the totalitarian East German state that disappeared
when the Wall came down.
(Signed)
 
            /// OPT. MUSIC UP AND OUT ///
 
NEB/MGB/SP/KL
 
 
 
09-Nov-1999 14:09 PM EDT (09-Nov-1999 1909 UTC)
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