The stage show at the Brandenburg Gate on the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall began with a classic of East German rock music. Singer Dirk Michaelis presented on Saturday evening in front of tens of thousands of listeners around the Berlin landmark his rock ballad "When I left". The singer, born in Chemnitz in the year of the Wall, and former frontman of the rock band Karussell, had composed the song as a teenager and published it in 1987.
In the last few months of the GDR, the line "Nothing is infinite, you can see it," many on the political developments in the country and the thousands of GDR citizens who turned their backs and went to the West. Since then the song has been considered a "turning hymn".
Numerous other artists will be on the program of the stage show in the evening, including the singer Anna Loos, the dancehall act Trettmann and the hiphop group Zugezogen Masculin. The Staatskapelle Berlin under the baton of Daniel Barenboim is to play Ludwig van Beethoven's "Fate Symphony".
The evening's first speech was held by Berlin's Mayor Michael Müller (SPD). "Populists, who spread hate and hate, attack our living together quite calculated (...)," said Müller. "We can not allow them to be granted, but must firmly stand up for our values." There is "the invaluable luck" of living in a free and democratic country.
Memory of the Reichsprogromnacht
Following spoke Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD). Steinmeier emphasized that the wall had not been easy - the peaceful revolutionaries had torn it down. The "brave in the GDR" would have made history, but the Germans could not be "thankful enough" for them even 30 years later. He hopes that "we can bring some of the courage, confidence and self-confidence of those days of the fall of the Berlin Wall into our time today".
In recent years, according to Steinmeier, new walls have sprung up across the country: "Walls of frustration, walls of anger and hatred, walls of speechlessness and alienation," said Steinmeier in front of the Brandenburg Gate. "Let's break those walls!" Everyone can do something for cohesion in the country, appealed the Federal President.
In his speech, he also commemorated the Reichsprogromnacht on November 9, 1938. "At the latest, at the latest after the Halle attack," hopefully everyone in this country would have realized that the fight against racial hatred and anti-Semitism would not pass, Steinmeier warned.
The number of guests was limited according to organizers for security reasons to 100,000. The evening will be followed by an aftershow party with DJ Westbam and a big fireworks display.
