Google on Saturday celebrated the 30th year of the fall of the Berlin Wall with a doodle that captured the essence of the breaking down of boundaries that separated many families.
The doodle created by Berlin-based guest artist Max Guther, shows a man and woman walk over the wall brought down. It was the moment that signalled the simultaneous end of the Cold War and the beginning of reunification of East and West Germany.
The couple embraces in the middle of a wall that has been pulled down in the middle. “Tor auf!” (Open the gate!) roared the crowds gathered at the Berlin Wall on this evening in 1989.
“During a government press conference, an official spokesman’s hasty statement gave reporters and TV viewers the mistaken impression that East Germany would be allowing free travel between East and West Berlin.
“Within hours, a massive crowd gathered at the wall, far outnumbering the border crossing guards. Sometime before midnight, the officer-in-charge of the Bornholmer Street checkpoint defied his superiors and gave the order to open the gate,” Google said.
Word spread quickly, and over the next few days, two million jubilant Germans crossed the border, some singing, dancing, and toasting the start of a new era while others began physically dismantling the wall.
Guther said he was honoured to have worked on the subject and drew inspiration for the artwork from stories and old photographs of his parents who were in Berlin 30 years ago and witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall, according to Google.
“I hope that people start fighting border walls all over the world, helping people living in divided or separated countries, and giving refuge to those fleeing their home countries because they have no choice,” Max Guther said.
The Berlin Wall came up on August 13, 1961. The barbed wire and concrete structure had divided East from West Berlin. Its demolition led to the reunion of the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic.
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