Posted on 11/08/2014 3:01:00 AM PST by Berlin_Freeper
A quarter of a century after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the border between West and East has been lit up by 8,000 glowing balloons.
The bright orbs are part of the Lichtgrenze - or lightborder - art project, which has seen the balloons mark the dividing line that separated West and East Berlin for nearly 30 years.
An eight-mile stretch of the former border will be lit up until dusk on Sunday, when the orbs will be untethered and released into the sky.
The balloons pass landmarks such as Checkpoint Charlie, Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag as they zig-zag their way through Berlin.
Beethoven's Ode to Joy will ring out as the balls of light are released - a symbol of peace in Europe 25 years on from the Wall's demolition.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
In the East German city of Dresden, a 37-year-old KGB officer and his comrades began burning files, fearing that the irate protesters who targeted the Stasi secret-police headquarters in East Berlin would also come after them.8,000 Luminous Balloons.“I personally burned a huge amount of material,” the KGB officer recalled later. “We burned so much stuff that the furnace burst.” When he called the Soviet military base nearby asking for guidance, he was told: “We cannot do anything without orders from Moscow. And Moscow is silent.”
Looking back at the fall of the Berlin Wall, the KGB officer conceded that those events and what he termed the Soviet Union’s regrettable loss of power in the region was “inevitable” since “a position built on walls and divides cannot last.” Then he added: “But I wanted something different to rise in its place.”
The KGB officer’s name was Vladimir Putin .
99 red balloons go by ...
I spent 27 months inside that wall. I was a member of the 42nd Eng Co Berlin Brigade from Feb 1978 to May 1980.
I was glad when the wall came down.
Twenty-five years. I remember my mother waking me up early to watch a live newscast - Tom Brokaw was explaining what it meant, that Germany would be united again. Twenty-five years, and the boy on the couch eating grits is still overjoyed.
Love it except balloon debris can kill wildlife.
I was just in Berlin for the first time since 1976.
When I stepped across a marker in the pavement “ Berlin Mauer 1961-1990” I literally cried. God bless Ronald Reagan.
Too bad he didn’t set himself on fire.
Well, if his fruits are any indication, he’ll be on fire in another life.
Excellent symbolism and very appropriate music. Still, while this is a beautiful way to remember, it should not be forgot that the Berlin Wall and the Communist borders had automatic machine guns and other instruments of death as deterrence for the desire to be free! Perhaps they should have put some blood-red balloons where there were recorded deaths at the Wall.
FYI: I think it to be an interesting fact that the ‘conservative’ German Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) came out of the East German education and work system. At the fall of the Wall she was around 35 years old and a trained physicist before getting involved in the internal East German democracy movement.
I had the dstinct honor of going to Berlin in the early eighties. I saw the wall, the divided city, checkpoint charlie, etc. It struck a chord within me. It is one of the big reasons I am conservative. I saw first hand a country so evil and oppressive that it had to build walls to keep its people in.
CC
Next was the first Wall it was 12’ high with a round pipe on top, the pipe wasn't concreted down, it was designed to roll and possibly land on top of you.
If you got over that, you had several hundred feet to cross.
There were machine gun bunkers, guard towers, attack dogs, land mines, lights for nighttime attempts, barbed wire and steel, and then another wall just like the first one.
You're chances of making it were less than zero.
Not to mention if a guard shot an escapee, they were given a bonus.
The one good thing I can say is when Jimmy Carter visited Potsdamer Platz in the spring of 1980, the East Germans used a bucket truck to whitewash the West side of the wall. One of the painters jumped and ran. When his feet hit the ground, I guess he was picking then up and putting them down.
Neat but why release them? Nice symbol but 8,000 is a lot of trash. Oh well.
I wonder if each has a little chip and RF tag that releases the tether? Looks like a lot of public money spent but oh well.
I don't know if it is an actual picture of the balloons or an artists rendering. Either way it is stunning.
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