The ( wooden ) Wall Comes Tumbling Down

The fall - or rather dismantling - of the Berlin Wall exactly thirty years ago ce soir was momentous. But who predicted it ? Nobody. Fred visited Berlin in the summer of 1998 as a Second Year Architecture student at Edinburgh. In hindsight, it was part of a programme to indoctrinate his class to the ways of Modernism and what followed on, Post Modernism.

They toured West Berlin to see examples of Bauhaus influence and the best examples of recent butch block housing by architects lauded in industry press. On one day they had the opportunity to pass through Check Point Charlie, across no man’s land, to East Berlin. Back then, all visitors had to change a certain amount of money to East German marks. They found another world - like dropping back thirty years to a monotone past: Trabants whisking past in the streets; a bleak built environment; and a general feeling of severity at large.

The challenge was how to spend the money. The shops had little choice on the shelves of anything to buy. The canteen lunch was how he imagined prison food.

The Wall was built in 1961 by the Soviets desperate to fence in the Berliners after losing two million of them since 1952. It seemed that the whole political edifice would go on and on.

The reality was very different. East Germany was bankrupt. The leader of the Socialist Unity Party Egon Krenz borrowed M20,000,000. By November 1989 the Government was days from insolvency.

At a memorable press conference Gunther Schabowski announced a change in the law allowing citizens to cross the border. He was asked what was going to happen to the Wall ? Disgruntled and tired he gave no answer. Within hours people on both sides were taking the wall apart.

Would Herodotus suggest a visit to Delphi ? The wooden wall of the Eurozone looks very fragile to us and Macron’s current world tour and references to the currency trémblant seem to suggest La France will need her longtime sparring partner. See an excellent article by Philip Stephens in today’s FT.