Millions to party like it’s 1989 to mark 25 years since the Berlin Wall’s fall

Germany has kicked off celebrations marking 25 years since the epochal fall of the Berlin Wall, set to culminate in rock stars and freedom icons joining millions at an open-air party. Chancellor Angela Merkel, who grew up in communist East Germany, is leading three days of commemorations for those killed trying to flee the repressive state, ahead of a giant festival Sunday marking the joyous breach of Europe’s Cold War division on November 9, 1989. The festivities under the banner “Courage for Freedom” recall the peaceful revolution that led communist authorities to finally open the border after 28 years in which Easterners were prisoners of their own government.

I think you never forget how you felt that day – at least I will never forget it. I had to wait 35 years for that feeling of liberty. It changed my life.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel

Merkel will on Saturday attend a memorial concert at Bertolt Brecht’s historic Berliner Ensemble theatre opposite the former “Palace of Tears”, where Easterners said goodbye to visitors returning to West Germany. And on Sunday she will open a major exhibition on Bernauer Strasse, a street divided by the Wall that saw harrowing scenes of families ripped apart overnight when the Wall went up in 1961. At least two million people are expected to gather at the Brandenburg Gate, the symbol of German unity. Berlin has set up an ambitious installation featuring nearly 7,000 white balloons pegged to the ground along a 15-kilometre stretch of the Wall’s former 155-kilometre path. The glowing orbs, which from above look like a string of pearls, are to be released Sunday and set to float into the night sky, to the stirring strains of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”.

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