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'The Official Ceremonies Simplify History'

The celebrations are over, the speeches have been given and the symbolic Berlin Wall -- built out of Styrofoam dominoes-- has fallen. But local media commentators say that, despite all the partying, Germans must not dismiss the historical facts and that the work that began with the reunification still goes on.

Each of the leaders who gave speeches during Monday night's celebrations to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall on the same date 20 years ago had a slightly different point to make.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown spoke about the power of a united Europe to "advance prosperity not just for some but for all." He also talked about how the example of German reunification was one that could inspire hope when it came to the resolution of other global problems.

While US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged Europeans "to continue to promote democracy and human rights beyond freedom's current frontiers, so that citizens everywhere are afforded the opportunity to pursue their dreams and live up to their own God-given potential," President Barack Obama was more philosophical in a video address. "Few would have foreseen ... that a united Germany would be led by a woman from Brandenburg or that their American ally would be led by a man of African descent," he said during a speech broadcast onto screens all around the Brandenburg, where festivities were held. "But human destiny is what human beings make of it."

Meanwhile both Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and French President Nicolas Sarkozy emphasized European unity. German Chancellor Angela Merkel emphasized that German responsibilities after reunification continue.

And by and large, local commentators felt the same way, advocating a realistic and honest approach to the historical event. Various editorialists addressed different issues that the celebrations had brought up -- everything from political freedoms to the economic reality of reunification to the symbolism that was used during the ceremonies.

The left-leaning Die Tageszeitung writes about the childish symbolism involved in the commemoration ceremonies.

"The official ceremony appeared a little awkward. Then again, that is the nature of such things. It was necessary to find some simple symbols that the citizenry could focus their celebrations around. Just like the giant puppets that came to Berlin to celebrate the day of German reunification, the symbolism was childlike and often ambiguous. For example, the thousand colorful domino stones, 2.5 meters high and made out of Styrofoam, which fell last night during ceremonies at the Brandenburg Gate."

"In Leipzig the event was celebrated earlier, on Oct. 9. There was a festival of lights attended by 10,000 people in memory of the twentieth anniversary of the 'Peaceful Revolution' there in 1989, when tens of thousands of East Germans demonstrated on the streets after prayer meetings evolved into political demonstrations. The idea for the festival actually came from Leipzig Tourism and Marketing -- and the tidy pictures advertising the event were supposed to fill a gap: (The demonstrations in Leipzig were largely overlooked by the world media and) the only actual pictures of the events are those taken by amateurs."

"So the official ceremonies simplify history. In fact, the best place to see the real story of 1989 is in the films of the documentary makers of the former GDR -- the likes of Volker Koepp, Thomas Heise, Andreas Voigt and Gerd Kroske. And these can only be seen at such events as the annual Cottbus Film Festival, which focuses on films from eastern Europe and which started on Nov. 10."

The conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung points out that not all the European leaders who were on hand to celebrate the fall of the Berlin wall were with the Germans, unreservedly and all the way.

"Twenty years later it is easy to celebrate an event that many of the powerful in the countries friendly to Germany thought unlikely ever to happen, and that some even tried to delay. Paris, London, Rome and even Sofia -- they are all celebrating. And it's become almost trendy to compete over who was the most supportive of German reunification."

"But history tells us there were not that many who wanted to extend the impulse for freedom that the Polish people initiated to the East Germans. The only nation that approached the issue without any ifs or buts was the US -- and maybe two or three European nations. These were the only ones to trust the Germans to manage their own reunification successfully and to bring about a good end."

"The effect of those events twenty years ago was seen in Berlin on Monday as the leaders of the 26 other states of the European Union paid their respects to the Germans. Who could have imagined, all those years ago, that this union of Europeans would grow so big and that Germany would be seen as an anchor for it?"

The Financial Times Deutschland looks at the "economic experiment" and estimates that, economically speaking at least, the country has yet to be reunited.

"The fall of the Berlin Wall saw the start of a unique economic experiment, the likes of which economists had not really had the chance to observe before. One of the biggest questions in international economics is the role that political barriers play when it comes to international trade relations in an era of globalization. Early research concludes that -- free trade areas and modern communications and logistics aside -- political barriers have a seriously distorting effect."

"The results of current research show that the economic effects of the Iron Curtain have in no way disappeared overnight. In fact, it shows that it has taken a long time for those effects to be ameliorated. Indeed if we look at current research carefully, it would appear that the effects of the former German interior border will take around 33 to 40 years, or one whole generation of Germans, to disappear completely. That means we won't be able to talk about a unified German economy until the year 2022, or even 2030."

"There are also underlying factors. It actually takes a fairly long time before political integration evolves into economic integration -- networks must grow back together. Recognizing that this process takes time is important; Such recognition is also particularly meaningful for European integration. So we should not just be looking for impediments to globalization -- and European integration -- in technological or political factors. Impediments are also found in far simpler factors. Borders can be brought down. The infrastructure can be altered. But it will take at least a generation before the borders in the minds of the German people can be removed."

The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung discusses those mental borders in more detail.

"After 1989/90, nobody could doubt for a minute that the east needed urgent help from the west -- and that this would have to be long-term help. The transport system -- the streets and railways -- and the communication networks were all badly in need of repair."

"So in the meantime, that infrastructure problem has been solved and the biggest, most obvious problems left over from World War II and the division of the country have been overcome. But there are some goals that have not been achieved. The economy of the east should be able to stand upon its own two feet by now -- but it still depends upon subsidies."

"The headquarters of companies are still, as they were before, mainly located in the west. Productivity in the east is two thirds lower than in the west. And unemployment in the east is still twice as high as it is in the west, despite constant migration toward the west. This continues to separate the two halves of the country."

"However what the two halves do have in common is their experience of 'de-industrialization.' To combat this in the east there is the initiative called 'East German Future' which unites a group of small creative projects. For some time now this initiative has been supporting small local businesses financially. And this is something that could be good for all the regions of Germany. Everyone could learn from it."

"But there has not been enough focus on this. And that is what is so annoying. What would be useful would be aid programs for all of the de-industralized German regions and for those where growth is shrinking as well as for the booming ones."

"As a result all kinds of interesting coalitions could arise. Perhaps we would discover that Dessau (in what was East Germany) has more in common with Gelsenkirchen (in what was formerly West Germany) than Gelsenkirchen does with the nearby city of Gütersloh. Today we must re-negotiate what we mean when we make comparisons between the two former halves of Germany as well as re-define how we compare living conditions."

Business daily Handelsblatt asks what comes next for the current world order and speculates on who the new, worthy opponents for democracy and capitalism might be.

"Behind all of this celebration lies a latent danger: that we forget the historical context. That is, that the German revolution was part of a much larger movement against Communism and lack of political freedoms. Without the breakdown of the Communist world order which led to the de-legitimization of the political ideology behind it and the bankruptcy of those economies, Nov. 9 would never have been possible. Without the Polish Solidarity movement, perestroika in the Soviet Union or the opening of the Iron Curtain in Hungary, Germany would never have been reunited. And what all of those movements had in common was the fact that all those involved wanted a different sort of society."

"But the end of Communism also meant the end of the opposition -- and an alternative to western-style democracy and the market economy. So what about China? And what about Islam?"

"Recent events in Iran demonstrate that the rule of the Mullahs doesn't really provide any long-term alternative to western ways. So there only remains "Leninist capitalism" as practiced in China. This is a system which combines capitalism with state guidance and leadership. But this system can only win approval through its economic successes, It doesn't count as a true political alternative for those in the free world. In order to stabilize their rule, the Chinese are building small capitalist freedoms into their system. But their true Communist credentials are missing. In China, 1989 marks a different date: the Tiananmen Square massacres."

The conservative Die Welt newspaper publishes a translated editorial by a senior advisor at the the French Institute for International Relations. In it, the author Dominique Moïsi asks why it happened in Berlin and why it has not happened elsewhere.

"The miracle of today's reunified Berlin is a challenge - even a provocation - to all walls. But the reality is complex: Walls are part of a multi-dimensional reality and we neglect historical facts at our own risk. Why is there such a difference between the fate of Berlin - now a capital city where the progress of the present is slowly covering the many scars of the past -- (and other divided cities)?"

"Nicosia, the divided capital of Cyprus, is the perfect antithesis to Berlin. East Germans wanted to unify the German state for the sake of the unity of their nation: "We are one people" was their motto. (But) are Greek Cypriots seriously interested in reunifying their island? In any case, the two sides have wasted so many opportunities in the past decades … that it is difficult to see a miracle in the horizon. Israel is closer to Nicosia than to Berlin, not only in geographic but also in political terms, because successive Israeli and Palestinian leaders have likewise failed to demonstrate qualities of vision and imagination. Israel's wall constitutes a sad but probably inevitable component of its security."

"Ultimately, "walls" represent the realities that lay behind their construction - realities that, unfortunately, later generations may be unable or unwilling to change."

Catherine Schaer