Photo: November 10th, 1989: on the top of the Berlin Wall, Árpád von Klimó (standing, third from left), and next to him his friend Clemens Eichhorn, pulling a third friend up.
Árpád von Klimó Reflects upon Living Through
and not just Studying History
This past November 9th marked the 35th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Not long afterward there were memorable predictions that this signified the “end of history” – which, fortunately for historians, did not come to pass. But no one now doubts that the event was epochal.
Those who were there to experience it likewise were in no doubt that they were witnessing a tectonic moment. The next day (November 10th), Árpád von Klimó (then a second-year student at the Freie Universität Berlin (FU), now Ordinary Professor of History in our Department) joined friends of his to stand on the top of the wall and to savor the juncture. His indelible memories of that were further sparked recently when he received photos from that moment.
Árpád explains the background to all this: “I grew up in Heidelberg, in southwest Germany near the French border, an old university town with a large U.S. military base and headquarters. I went on to study at FU: the word “Free” in its name refers to the fact that it was founded in 1948 in the American Sector of West Berlin by faculty and students at the University of Berlin who did not want to continue their work and studies in an institution that was more and more subdued to the will of the East German Communist Party (the old university lay in the Soviet Sector of Berlin). So, the Cold War was everywhere.
“When I and a few friends watched the West German news shows on the evening of November 9th, in the not very clean kitchen of our dormitory not far from FU, we had a sense that this Cold War which had lasted all our young lives was coming to an abrupt, unforeseen, and wonderful end. One of the East German party leaders named Guenther Schabowski made a huge mistake when he was asked about new travel regulations for East German citizens. They had not been allowed to travel to the West, including West Berlin. And since August 1961, when an enormous wall was erected around East Berlin to prevent East Germans from escaping their country, hundreds of those who had tried to flee had been shot and killed.
“The mistake comrade Schabowski made was this: In principle, the new East German government had allowed East Germans to travel freely to the West, but they were hoping that they could make this somehow difficult by bureaucratic hurdles, such as visas. When a journalist asked Schabowski when the new policy would come into effect. Schabowski, who did not have clear instructions, responded with 'as far as I know, it’s effective immediately, unverzüglich.' When I heard this, I thought, 'I can’t believe it! The Berlin Wall is open!'
“And then I went to bed. So I missed one of the most exciting nights in world history! Why? I think it was the fact that, just like most people, I did not believe that thousands of East Berliners would go to the Berlin wall that night and create a situation so unbearable that one border guard commander, Colonel Harald Jaeger, who had waited in vain for an order from his superiors, just opened the wall. (A wonderful 2014 German movie, 'Bornholmer Strasse', brilliantly depicts Jaeger’s story: you can watch it with English subtitles here.)
“During that night, a three-day celebration began. Germans from East and West and many others who had come to Berlin or other places near the border between the two German states shared the joy that the wall which had separated millions was gone. Willy Brandt, the former West German chancellor and president of the Social-Democratic Party (SPD), phrased it like this: ‘We Germans are today the happiest people in the world.’ And that was true. I woke up the next morning and went with my friends to the wall to celebrate with hundreds of thousands of others. That is where these photos were taken. I missed the first hours but not the most exciting weekend in my whole life when I got an idea of how humans can make history when they lose their fear and do the right thing.
Photo: November 10th, 1989: A group of students from Freie Universität Berlin, with Árpád von Klimó (second from right) in front of the border crossing between eastern and western sectors at Invalidenstrasse. The sign behind the group says "You are now leaving the British Sector”.
“Today, 35 years later, I know so much more about the time when this all happened. I have studied the history of East Germany, the Soviet Union, Communism in general, but also how West Germany, the United States, and NATO, reacted to the events. We now know so much more about the circumstances, and that it was, to some extent, a coincidence that the West had a strong period while the Soviet Union and the communist countries suffered a severe crisis at the same time. All this knowledge does not change the feelings I had at that time. I would have felt exactly the same, maybe because they were extremely positive. It is a pity that many people in Germany have forgotten that moment and that they complain about many developments that happened after the unification of the two German states in 1990.
“I received these photos in October of this year (2024), when I discussed the fall of communism with my students in my class HIST 224 (Traveling in Time: Germany from the Present to the Past). While preparing for that class, old memories came back, so I emailed my old friend, Clemens Eichhorn, asking him about that day when we went to see the opened wall. He then sent me these photos, taken by another friend of ours. They are a bit blurry but, I hope, they still show the pure joy millions of people felt on that day, not just in Germany and Europe, but also in many other parts of the world.”