Ancient history

The fall of the wall:The end of an era

23 years ago, an image took over the world's main television networks:hundreds of Germans, most of them young, collaborating with hammers and all kinds of blunt objects to demolish of the Berlin Wall, also called the "Wall of Shame". Climbing on the cement structure, a chain of jubilant men replaced the fearsome barbed wire that for almost three decades crowned this wall that separated the German people. The fall of the Soviet bloc accelerated this fact and the divided Germany began the difficult path to its reunification, consolidated a few years ago.

The fall of the Berlin Wall , which occurred on a day like today in 1989 is, without a doubt, one of the most important events of the 20th century. It was considered the end of an era dominated by uncertainty for a nation that, after World War II , was cut in two as a show of power by the armies that put an end to Nazi insanity. The reunification process, which began a year after the demolition, was long and complicated.

As we all remember, until before 1989 we talked about the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) , linked to the United States, and on the other hand, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) , which belonged to the bloc of countries located in Eastern Europe, with a marked socialist tendency, linked to the then Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

The story of how this barrier was raised, which separated entire families, is told in detail and in a didactic way at this link. Also, visit here an interesting photo gallery of the time, which illustrates the different moments of this momentous event in Universal History. Finally, Spill Magisterial shows you five films that speak, from different points of view, of what the Berlin Wall meant (click here).