Berlin’s wall of light

By Andreas Kluth

What a beautiful concept: to mark the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9th with a temporary recreation of that wall, in the form of 8,000 lit helium balloons where it once stood. This “light border” went up last Friday, before the Sunday climax of the celebrations. All through the weekend, day and night, it drew Berliners and tourists. Many needed reminding where exactly the hated wall once stood, as it snaked improbably through streets, along the walls of buildings and over bridges. Now the balloons were like a promenade guiding young and old on a memory tour, aided in many places by video footage of the old wall’s horrors.

By Sunday evening, perhaps a million people had crowded into central Berlin to soak up the atmosphere. The throng was densest near the Brandenburg Gate, the symbolic centre of Berlin, Germany and the cold war. Many were moved to tears as Daniel Barenboim, an Israeli-Argentine conductor who staged a free celebratory concert with the Berlin Philharmonic in November 1989, led the Berlin State Orchestra through Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”. Then the balloons were unleashed, one by one, and the “wall” flew away into the misty night sky.