Standing at the Brandenburg Gate

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Tara Walker Standing at the Brandenburg Gate: This Wall Will Fall Walls and fences are erected to keep unwanted perpetrators from getting in. However, the Berlin Wall “[was] an awkward thing, outlandish and unloved, a numbing fact of life, a fortification thrown up in panic to keep people in rather than out” (Gelb 3). During the 1960s and 70s the Iron Curtain was still lowered, and the Berlin Wall stood grim and foreboding. Many countries were under Communist rule and silently suffered oppression. In Margaret Thatcher’s eulogy for United States’ President Ronald Reagan, she declared his mission was “to mend America’s wounded spirit, to restore the strength of the free world, and to free the slaves of communism” (Thatcher). Reagan actively sought to bring freedom to all people of the world, particularly those in Eastern Europe. President Reagan’s speech at the Brandenburg Gate profoundly articulates that “the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace,” and is effectively done so through his knowledge of historical background, his use of the German discourse community, and his implementation of ethos, pathos and logos (Reagan). President Reagan makes numerous historical references to Germany’s political past. Following World War II, the victorious countries split Germany into sectors. France, Britain and the United States controlled the Western part of the country, as well as West Berlin, while the Soviets took power of Eastern Berlin and the remainder of Germany. At this time period, citizens of both East and West Berlin were allowed access to the other half of the capital, and many crossed back and forth daily. This freedom, despite the lowering of the Iron Curtain, offered hundreds of thousands of East Germans an opportunity to flee Communist rule. “So great was the flight that the continued existence of the Communist East German state was threatened” (Gelb 6). Consequently, a little after 1:00 a.m. on August 13, 1961, East German troops and armed police began installing a “physical barrier” of barbed wire and cement posts along the line that separated East Germany from the West. By morning, the crude framework stood erected and the Berlin Wall’s existence began.


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