Twenty years since the Berlin Wall fell

Twenty years ago on this day, the Berlin Wall was brought down, removing the division between Communist East Germany and Capitalist West Germany.

Shortly afterwards, the Communist regime in East Germany collapsed and German unity (Deutsche Einheit) took place.

Five thousand people attempted to escape from East to West Berlin via the Wall.

One hundred were killed doing so. They are being remembered today.

An article in Spiegal International on files kept on East Germans by the secret polic (Stasi) makes fascinating reading:

Herbert Ziehm, who now heads up the department of requests for the Birthler Authority -- which manages the Stasi files -- said that the East German spooks also took notes on details that smacked of bourgeoisie. Ziehm, an East German, told SPIEGEL ONLINE that a look into his own file revealed that "the Stasi were very intrigued as to why my wife could drive and had a car even though she was a housewife." He added: "They were also fascinated by the fact that we were teetotallers and non-smokers. While after 20 years you can still laugh at the absurdity of it all, you always have to remember that people were getting arrested for the tiniest things."

West Germany is by no means perfect, and the past twelve months have shown how flawed capitalism is, but it was a much better place to live in than repressive East Germany.

Any regime that bans George Orwell's Ninteen Eighty-Four is no friend of dissent.

A minority, such as Morning Star columnist Neil Clark and Bruni de la Motte, mourn the fall of the German Democratic Republic.

However, the majority of Germans still feel that the demise of the Soviet Union is a good thing.

Celebrations are currently taking place in Berlin, including a line of 1,000 foam dominoes set up along the wall to be pushed over by former Polish President Lech Walesa, representing the collapse of Communism.

Via Harry's Place, the moment that the Berlin Wall fell:



The Berlin Twitterwall has been set up to allow people to share their thoughts on the Berlin Wall via Twitter.

Mercedes Butnz writes about other digital media projects related to the fall of the Berlin Wall at the Guardian's PDA Digital Content blog.