'The euphoria of 1989 focused a generation of policymakers and sloganeers on the political aspects of freedom and democracy, but those aren’t the only ones that matter'
A Berliner holds up a hammer and a chisel early on November 15, 1989 in front of the Berlin Wall at the Brandebourg Gate. Photo: Gerard Malie/AFP via Getty Images Thirty years ago this weekend, Americans paused and watched — somewhere between humbled and gloating — as Germans surged across the Berlin Wall and rediscovered each other in what seemed like the world’s largest family reunion.
Alongside all of it was an immense and quiet confidence that something enormous had been won, and peacefully. Behind the slogans and the anger is a sense that something has been lost. After 1989, Eurocrats and urbanites imagined a wide-open Europe, every corner of which would be their home. “Find love across borders” even made it into an official E.U. tweet celebrating this weekend’s anniversary. East Germans and others imagined that their homes would be more like the rest of Europe — full of the bananas and Champagne and freedom — but still small, culturally familiar, and under their control.
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