The Fall of the Wall
I was working at the American Embassy in Bonn on November 9, 1989 and my family and I watched German television spellbound that night. The unbelievable was happening. The Berlin Wall crumbled and we were glued to the screen by the thousands of delirious Ossies (Easterners) coming through the Wall. And I will never forget the equally delirious Wessies celebrating in Bonn’s town square. I’ve been trying to collect my memories of that incredible evening.
Berlin November 9, 1989
My ambassador in Bonn was General Vernon Walters, interpreter for generations of U.S. presidents. The Germans loved him, despite German being perhaps the worst of his fifteen or so languages. Walters had been saying for months in the embassy that the Wall would come down. Most of us thought the boss had gone round the bend. Reports have it that Washington thought so, too, and Jim Baker apparently considered recalling Walters. Dick Walters was vindicated wonderfully.
U.S. television should get some credit for bringing the Wall down. My own commercial office helped sell U.S.-made series to German television, and most of East Germany could watch “Dallas” and other shows portraying the luxurious lifestyles they thought all Westerners were living. Ossies wanted a piece of that action and some risked their lives to come across and get it. I remember later speaking with a woman in Prague, who asked “We’ve been part of the West for a year now, so how come we aren’t all rich yet?”
West Berliners offered their eastern neighbors champagne or sekt when they came through the Wall, but the more enduring image was bananas. Easterners could rarely find bananas and went, well, “bananas” for them. Less evident on the TV screen, but just as attractive as the bananas, were the huge numbers of Easterners, male and female, who dove into the first Western sex shops they could find. Freedom.
Some seized business opportunities. That same evening as the Ossies were coming across, western Avon ladies were headed the other way! Among the first U.S. exports to benefit from the Fall of the Wall was a custom builder in Florida who produced vans built with satellite dishes and office equipment so that western companies could operate quickly in the East. West Germany was so desperate to augment the meager phone lines to the East that they actually broke the French monopoly on European satellite launches to hire McDonnell Douglas to put up a new communications satellite quickly. Some of the commercial response rankles. Pieces of the Wall went on sale to tourists almost immediately. Many of those sold at the Brandenburg Gate or Checkpoint Charlie proved to be pieces of “a Berlin wall”. Pick up a chunk of concrete, spray paint one side randomly, sell it to a tourist. I have a piece in my office, but wonder if it is the real thing.
