Posted on 06/06/2004 10:53:53 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
BERLIN (AP) -
Former Chancellor Helmut Kohl praised Ronald Reagan on Sunday as "a great friend of the Germans" for his role in bringing down communism and ending Europe's Cold War division.
Kohl said he would never forget standing next to the U.S. president in 1987 when Reagan challenged Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall," the last high point of Cold War rhetoric in West Berlin.
"Ronald Reagan was a man who achieved great things for his country," Kohl said in a statement. "He was a stroke of luck for the world, especially for Europe."
Reagan stood before the wall's concrete and barbed wire on June 12, 1987, and delivered a speech at the Brandenburg Gate that dared the reform-minded Gorbachev to pressure East Germany's Stalinist regime.
By the summer of 1989, communism was crumbling in eastern Europe and East Germans started fleeing to the West via other Soviet bloc countries.
On Nov. 9, East Germany threw open the wall under pressure from massive pro-democracy protests, allowing people to go west once again without fear of being shot at the border. On Oct. 3, 1990, Germany - and with it, Berlin - reunited, the communist east merging with the capitalist west.
"His determined support for freedom contributed decisively to overcoming the division of Europe and of Germany," Kohl said. "We Germans have a lot to thank Ronald Reagan for."
The two leaders' 1985 visit to a German war cemetery in Bitburg - highly controversial at the time because SS soldiers are buried there - was a "great gesture of friendship" and reconciliation 40 years after the end of World War II, Kohl said.
Reagan was "a dependable, straightforward and loyal friend," he said.
German President Johannes Rau expressed "respect and gratitude" for Reagan's part in ending the division of Europe and Germany, saying his death would sadden many Germans.
"With Ronald Reagan departs a man who was a loyal friend and ally to Germany in difficult times," Rau, whose post is largely ceremonial, said in a statement.
"In a divided world he always upheld our common vision of a united and peaceful Europe."
In 1987, the wall erected by East Germany to keep its citizens from fleeing to the West had been in place for 26 years, stretching 160 kilometers (100 miles) around West Berlin, its barriers reinforced by electric fences, dog runs and watchtowers.
West Berlin was a capitalist island encircled by Soviet-backed East Germany and its capital, East Berlin.
Reagan, like John F. Kennedy more than two decades before, made his critical point in German in his 1987 speech, expressing "this unalterable belief: 'Es gibt nur ein Berlin' - There is only one Berlin."
"General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate," Reagan said.
"Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate.
"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."
Rau said Reagan provided active proof of the U.S. commitment to Berlin.
"We will not forget that," Rau said.
Few traces of the Berlin Wall remain today, though a museum at the famed Checkpoint Charlie, the former border crossing from West Berlin's American sector into East Berlin, reminds visitors of daring and desperate escape attempts by East Germans between 1961 and 1989.
What happened to the Kohls (Kohle?).
I've spent time in Germany. A lot of time. The German youth doesn't know Reagan from Van Buren. It's sad. The man should be in the European history books as one of the best things to happen to Europe in the past century.
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