In Berlin this November, Germans are partying like it’s 1989. Well, almost. This time there are no sledgehammers, cranes, or bewildered communist soldiers. The only wall falling is a line of a thousand giant Styrofoam dominoes, painted by European school children.

Many Cold War notables were there as was the ever-popular Lech Walesa who led the Solidarity movement that unraveled the communist state in Poland. The list of attendees also included Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union’s last premier, whose glasnost reforms set the stage for the wall’s collapse.

On November 9th, 1989, an East German official decreed that civilians could “immediately” pass into West Germany and the Berlin Wall came crumbling down.
Joyous East Berliners and their compatriots in the west swept towards the wall.

Cameras rolled as hammers began knocking off concrete. The wall was already covered in anarchistic graffiti that lent the wall quixotic absurdity. The otherwise oppressive monument had become a piece of post-modernist art.

The shockwaves of the wall’s collapse were felt across the world. By then the wall had become emblematic of more than a long line of concrete and concerta wire. It was the ultimate symbol of communist repression. East Germany had become a literal prison, and its communist government required a physical wall to keep its citizens from escaping.

Oh, how times have changed. Berlin’s reunification was only one narrative in the revolutions of 1989, but the fall of the Berlin Wall twenty years ago joins Tiananmen Square as defining and world-changing moments in recent history. Who knows when the course of history will change next?

If and when Berlin-style manmade barriers in Korea or Cyprus fall too, they’ll be comparing it to the magic of Berlin. Hopefully, though, it won’t take another twenty years.