Who would have known a holiday trip to Germany in December 1989, would have offered an opportunity to be an eyewitness to, and participate in, the remaking of European history?
At the time, Eric, our oldest son, was serving as a chemical warfare officer with the U.S. Army’s Second Armored Brigade in northern Germany. His invitation to join him and his new Danish bride for the holidays, and a chance to meet her parents in Copenhagen, was too good to pass up.
Eric was a 1983 Hempfield High School and a 1987 Dickinson College chemistry and ROTC graduate. In 1989, he was serving his first year of his six-year military obligation.
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While serving in Germany, Eric met a fellow 2nd lieutenant in his unit named Kevin Wulfhorst. He was a Penn State history major graduate. Kevin had visited East Germany several times prior to our visit, and became a European history buff while on duty in Germany. He went on to be a retired major general in the Army.
Eric’s invitation included myself, my wife, Joan, and our younger children, Michael and Holly.
Cultural and political changes in Germany at that time included a major East German protest in Berlin in late 1989, in support of unifying East and West Berlin. Up to that time, a large part of East Germany was under the suppressive control of the German Democratic Republic, governed by the Soviet Union.
This was a result of a 1945 World War II peace agreement among the Allies — including the Soviet Union, which got the eastern zone of Germany, and Great Britain, France and the United States, which got the western zone.
Over years of strict Soviet governing, resentment steadily grew against the suppression of individual freedom and desire for the form of personal freedoms enjoyed in the western German zone. That quest for freedom included many East Germans risking death by escaping to the western zone, thus raising concern that a huge number of the people leaving would eventually have a major economic impact on the remaining population.
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To stem the flow, on Aug. 13, 1961, the German Democratic Republic began building a long and high wall at the border separating the east and west zones of Berlin — at the time, Germany’s largest city.
The heavily guarded wall became a symbol of the Iron Curtain, with Checkpoint Charlie the central portal for high-ranking government officials. The wall at that location was reinforced with steel and asbestos, and eventually made into a double-wide wall to prevent East Germans from attempting to escape by driving trucks and buses through to freedom in the west.
People caught in the middle were machine-gunned down, with many killed or captured and immediately imprisoned.
In this 1997 file photo, the Brandenburg Gate stands in what was formerly a city divided between east and west. The author’s family celebrated New Year’s Eve there in 1989, not long after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Fall of the wall
The highlight of our 1989 trip was a special side trip to Berlin to participate in the historical tearing down of the wall at Checkpoint Charlie and other places. While there, we celebrated New Year’s Eve in front of the famous Brandenburg Gate, and watched daring East German youths scale the tall, decorative concrete supports to rip down the East German flag at the very top and raise the West German flag. An estimated 500,000 East and West Germans hugged, cried and united with families for the first time in many years.
Our daughter, Holly, at the time was a Hempfield junior, and a student writer in the school newspaper, The Flash. Swept up with the excitement of the night, Holly spent time, she has never forgotten, mingling with young people, doing personal interviews and attempting to capture their emotions, joy and life-changing experiences.
Upon returning, Holly submitted her story of the historic New Year’s Eve night at the Brandenburg Gate, which got published in the February 1990 edition of the Hempfield Flash.
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New Year’s Day, our last day in Berlin, was spent following Eric’s friend, Kevin, to a location along the wall, where the concrete was easier to chisel into smaller pieces to bring back home.
With autumn of 2024 having been the 35th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin wall, all of us remember back to one incredible trip in 1989, and our eyewitness to history.
The author lives in East Hempfield Township. His son, Eric, is now a physical therapist for U.S. veterans and military personnel in Germany. To read the 1990 account of the family’s trip in Hempfield High’s The Flash newspaper, by the author’s daughter, novelist and writing coach (and former Lancaster Newspapers intern) Holly Payne, visit lanc.news/FlashBerlinWall1990.
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