Back to the Wall for heroes of yesterday

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev (left) German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former Polish President Lech Walesa. Photo / AP

It was the same sort of miserable November weather, grey and drizzling; the mass of humanity was large, chaotic and giddy as then; and there in the midst of it, three figures as solidly "eastern" as any of those who teemed across the Berlin Wall 20 years ago.

Lech Walesa, still every inch the Polish shop steward in his unionist's cap, Mikhail Gorbachev, still recognisably the Russian communist he was then, and Angela Merkel, who when the Wall fell was a humble scientist in East Berlin.

Together they linked arms and walked over the grey steel Bornholmer Bridge across which tens of thousands of East Germans, Merkel among them, first flooded into West Berlin on the night of November 9, 1989.

Carrying a small white rose and a large umbrella, the German Chancellor - whose life was changed beyond recognition by the Wall's collapse - paid tribute to her companions.

"What happened in Poland was incredibly important for us all," she said. And, turning to the former Soviet leader, she said: "We always knew that something had to happen there so that more could change here. You made this possible. You courageously let this happen, and that was much more than we could expect."

And the crowd pressing around them cried, "Bravo, bravo!" and "Gorby, Gorby!"

The return to the Wall was low key, but none the less emotional for that. Merkel said: "This is not just a day of celebration for Germany, it is a day of celebration for the whole of Europe."

Earlier, during a service at Berlin's Gesthemane church, she acknowledged that, despite the 20 years that have elapsed since the fall of the Wall, Germany still bears the scars of division, with the rate of unemployment in the east double that of the west.

"German unity is still incomplete - we must tackle this problem if we want to achieve quality of life on an equal basis," she said.

What happened at the Bornholmer Bridge crossing point in the Berlin Wall was arguably the single most critical moment in the events of 1989. East German border guards faced a 20,000-strong crowd of East Berliners chanting: "Open the gate!" After trying to contact his superior and getting no response, the officer in charge of the crossing point finally succumbed and ordered the barriers to be opened. A human tide of East Berliners flooded into West Berlin, and, within

the hour, all of Berlin's seven crossing points in the Wall were thrown open, heralding the collapse of communism throughout Europe.

Katrin Hattenhauer, who is now in her early 40s, joined the throng who headed for West Berlin across the Bornholmer Bridge that night. A dissident who had been jailed in Leipzig for protesting against the regime, she had just been released from prison and was banned from travelling to Berlin.

"I decided to go all the same. It is my birthday on 9 November and I met up with some friends in a bar in East Berlin. Suddenly we heard the borders were open," she recalled yesterday.

"The feeling was absolutely overwhelming. I went to the Bornholmer Bridge and then on into West Berlin. They were dancing on the Wall. It was over - the best birthday present I could ever have had," she recalled.

Hattenhauer was one of hundreds of thousands of Berliners and visitors from across Germany and overseas who joined celebrations in the reunited capital.

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