Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said on Friday, the 60th anniversary of the construction of the Wall, that the Berlin Wall "literally cemented the division of the Cold War world".
At the central commemoration event on the occasion of the anniversary in Berlin, the Federal President said, “The fact that this division went through the middle of a lively city, that it arbitrarily divided streets and paths, squares and railway lines, rivers and cemeteries, everyone could see how violent and this division was inhuman ”.
Eckart Lohse
Head of the parliamentary editorial office in Berlin.
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The Berlin Wall, the construction of which was supposed to appear as a sovereign act by a state that was not more interested in anything than its international recognition, was in reality an admission "that not even its own citizens really recognized this state", said Steinmeier.
The construction of the wall "however much it was able to stabilize the status quo, as they said at the time, for 28 years", was the "testimony to a hopeless failure".
The Federal President said that the wall was the "obvious sign of an injustice state" which, in the eyes of its own citizens, was neither sovereign nor legitimate.
The memory of the Berlin Wall shouldn't stop at looking back. "It is a permanent challenge for us - for today and for tomorrow." Freedom and democracy are never given by nature, never achieved once and for all, said Steinmeier. They have to be fought for, but then also protected, defended and preserved. That starts with the participation in democratic elections, which the wall and what it stood for, for so long, denied so many. "Remember everyone if a new Bundestag is soon to be elected," warned Steinmeier.
Berlin's governing mayor Michael Müller (SPD) said at the memorial event: "Nowhere else has the inhuman character of the SED dictatorship been so evident as at the Wall." The limit to a “structure of almost insurmountable monstrosity” has been perfected. Nevertheless, many people tried to overcome the wall, many would have paid for it with their lives.
Müller described the wall as a brutal barrier that separated the free from the unfree world. “Berlin remained a torn city for more than 28 years.” Today, Berlin has grown together anew. "The fact that the reunification of Berlin at the interface between East and West was so wonderful is a great triumph over decades of division," said Müller. SPD Chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz paid tribute to the GDR citizens' achievement in overcoming the division of Germany. "That was achieved by the citizens - they tore down the wall," he said at a memorial event in Potsdam. "It was the citizens of eastern Germany who made it possible for us to come together as a country."