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REMEMBER, REMEMBER THE 9th OF NOVEMBER! “25 Years Fall of the Wall in BERLIN“
WALL STORIES – LICHTGRENZE – BALLOON ACTION
It was people that took to the streets en masse and courageously resisted a dictatorship, enabling both the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the Peaceful Revolution. The 25th anniversary of the Fall of the Wall should also mobilise as many as people as possible, both intellectually and physically. Citizens of Berlin, eyewitnesses to that time and new Berliners are invited to actively participate in the anniversary celebrations as balloon patrons and to tell their personal stories about the Wall.
This autumn, schools, churches, initiatives, associations, and companies are all addressing the historic date in various ways. At the same time, a look back at the events of 1989 will always be tied to the present. The stories, memories, and wishes expressed by balloon patrons for a peaceful world without walls are being collected at www.fallofthewall25.com.
The result is a unique online gallery that commemorates and reflects on the Berlin Wall from today’s perspective. People around the world who have been touched by the Fall of the Wall and its symbolic power for the present can make their voices heard using the online portal, and to become a balloon patron.
-> WALL STORIES
From the 7th to the 9th of November 2014, inner-city Berlin will be temporarily divided from Bornholmer Strasse to Mauerpark and the Berlin Wall Memorial on Bernauer Strasse to the Reichstag, past the Brandenburg Gate and Checkpoint Charlie to the East Side Gallery: 8,000 luminous, white balloons mark the former course of the Wall. The emotional and visual power of this light installation also recalls the brutality of the Wall.
The installation is based on an idea by Christopher Bauder and Marc Bauder.
-> LICHTGRENZE
The highlight of the anniversary is a spectacular community event that will send all of the balloons soaring into the sky. At the Brandenburg Gate, the Staatskapelle Berlin will play the final movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony with “Ode an die Freude” under the baton of Daniel Barenboim.
ARD and rbb will be airing a live television broadcast of the balloon action.
-> BALLOON ACTION
The anniversary project will be realised by the non-profit organisation Kulturprojekte GmbH in cooperation with the Robert Havemann Society and the Berlin Wall Foundation, at the initiative of the Federal State of Berlin.
The entire project was conceived by Moritz van Dülmen, Simone Leimbach, Tom Sello, Frank Ebert, Hans Reitz. The light installation is based on an idea by Christopher Bauder and Marc Bauder.
Wall Stories
For 28 years, the Berlin Wall divided the city in two. It was built to prevent East Germans from fleeing to the West and became a symbol of communist dictators’ claim to power. 25 years ago, in autumn 1989, hundreds of thousands of East Germans protested the SED dictatorship in the GDR and ultimately toppled the Wall. Having forced open the border on 9th November 1989, Berliners joined together to celebrate their newly-regained freedom and the end of their city’s division.
The LICHTGRENZE installation is a 15-kilmetre stretch tracing the course of the Berlin Wall through the centre of Berlin. Thousands of glowing balloons between Bornholmer Strasse and Oberbaumbrücke will visually remind the public of how drastic and intrusive the division was for the people.
The light installation is accompanied by the open-air exhibition ‘100 Wall Stories’ (‘100 Mauergeschichten’). The presentation uses one hundred informative panels to tell moving stories from the divided city. The Berlin Wall stories tell of escape attempts, political propaganda and artistic interventions, of forbidden Wall photos and abandoned tube stations. The horrors of the division and victims of the Wall feature prominently in the exhibition, but also niches and open spaces found primarily on the West side in the shadow of the Wall.
Every 150 metres, visitors will find a commemorative panel describing notable events near the border where many of these events took place. Moving texts and historical photos shed light on a German-German past and invite viewers on a journey through divided Berlin. Embedded in the pulsing backdrop of the capital city, the exhibition also shows how drastically the city’s face has changed since the crumbling of the Wall.
On the evening of 9th November, 8,000 patrons will release the light balloons into the air, an act commemorating the joyful outcome of the 1989 Revolution: the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Discover 50 Wall Stories:
www.fallofthewall25.com/mauergeschichten
Source: anniversary project will be realised by the non-profit organisation Kulturprojekte
