Highlighting Berlin's long and painful division, 8,000 illuminated balloons will light the course of the old East-West border to mark 25 years since the fall of the Wall, organisers said Monday.
The inflated balloons, fixed to the ground with ropes to resemble lamps, will mark a 15-kilometre (9.3-mile) stretch of the Wall's route for three nights leading up to November 9.
That day in 1989, when East Germans peacefully breached the detested concrete barrier, heralded the end of 28 years of the Cold War symbol that spliced through Berlin.
Berlin mayor Klaus Wowereit said at the project's presentation that the day the Wall fell had been special not only for Berlin, Germany and Europe but for the whole world.
On that day, he said, people across the globe had "their eyes fixed on Berlin to see how a peaceful revolution managed to tear down this wall".
Organisers of the 25th anniversary events said that today less than half of Berliners know exactly where the Wall once stood.
At 150-metre intervals, markers will recount "tragic, happy or surprising incidents" linked to the history of the divided city, with guided tours at historically significant spots.
After being lit up for three nights and two days, the battery-operated balloons will be untied from their two-metre long ropes on November 9 and symbolically set free into the night sky.
Frank Ebert, who was an activist against the communist East German regime, said the light installation would also bring to mind the candles that demonstrators had held in the run-up to the Wall's fall.
Nobel Peace Prize winners Mikhail Gorbachev, the last president of the Soviet Union, and Lech Walesa, who spearheaded Poland's democracy movement and became its first post-communist president, are due to take part in a parallel ceremony on November 9.
And Chancellor Angela Merkel is set to inaugurate on the same day a new permanent exhibition at the Berlin Wall Memorial.
Highlighting Berlin’s long and painful division, 8,000 illuminated balloons will light the course of the old East-West border to mark 25 years since the fall of the Wall, organisers said Monday.
The inflated balloons, fixed to the ground with ropes to resemble lamps, will mark a 15-kilometre (9.3-mile) stretch of the Wall’s route for three nights leading up to November 9.
That day in 1989, when East Germans peacefully breached the detested concrete barrier, heralded the end of 28 years of the Cold War symbol that spliced through Berlin.
Berlin mayor Klaus Wowereit said at the project’s presentation that the day the Wall fell had been special not only for Berlin, Germany and Europe but for the whole world.
On that day, he said, people across the globe had “their eyes fixed on Berlin to see how a peaceful revolution managed to tear down this wall”.
Organisers of the 25th anniversary events said that today less than half of Berliners know exactly where the Wall once stood.
At 150-metre intervals, markers will recount “tragic, happy or surprising incidents” linked to the history of the divided city, with guided tours at historically significant spots.
After being lit up for three nights and two days, the battery-operated balloons will be untied from their two-metre long ropes on November 9 and symbolically set free into the night sky.
Frank Ebert, who was an activist against the communist East German regime, said the light installation would also bring to mind the candles that demonstrators had held in the run-up to the Wall’s fall.
Nobel Peace Prize winners Mikhail Gorbachev, the last president of the Soviet Union, and Lech Walesa, who spearheaded Poland’s democracy movement and became its first post-communist president, are due to take part in a parallel ceremony on November 9.
And Chancellor Angela Merkel is set to inaugurate on the same day a new permanent exhibition at the Berlin Wall Memorial.
