TWENTY YEARS AFTER the “peaceful revolution” in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) iconic images of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the joyous crowds crossing the border from East to West were once again transmitted around the world. Thousands congregated at the “Festival of Freedom” (“Fest der Freiheit”) at the Brandenburg Gate on the night of 9 November 2009. State dignitaries from the former Eastern and Western blocs joined representatives from unified Germany in commemorating the victory of freedom and civic courage over dictatorship and repression and in highlighting the importance of the collapse of Communism for European unification and the global political order. The event was as much about media spectacle as it was about solemn speeches, concluding with the toppling of a line of giant dominos placed along part of the former border between East and West Berlin. The Festival of Freedom crowned a year of commemorative events, conferences, exhibitions, documentaries, and publications marking the fall of the Berlin Wall. These continued into 2010, the twentieth anniversary of the Unification Treaty.

The narrative presented by the official commemorations focused on the victory of democracy over Communism and on values inherent in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) since 1949. The government adopted the slogan “Freiheit, Einheit, Demokratie,” and the Interior Ministry’s website on the commemorations is titled “20 Jahre Einheit 2009–10: 60 Jahre Bundesrepublik.” Kornelia Lobmeier argues that media coverage of the events has tended to focus on the fall of the Berlin Wall, with the events of autumn 1989 elsewhere in the GDR somewhat sidelined. She suggests a number of reasons for the surprising lack of public focus on the “peaceful revolution.” On a practical level this has something to do with the familiarity of footage of Berlin on 9 November 1989; images of the demonstrations in smaller towns in the GDR are less readily available and perhaps make less of an impact. Moreover, from a western German perspective it was not until the fall of the wall that change in the GDR became a tangible reality. A further reason may be a divergence between official and private remembrance.