ATTENTION: THE BERLIN WALL HAS FALLEN
*THE FOLLOWING BLOG HAS BEEN CREATED TO INTERPRET A HISTORICAL EVENT IN THE EYES OF SOCIAL MEDIA. MAY RONIE REST IN PEACE*
WHILE POP CULTURE WAS FREAKING OUT ABOUT THE NEW SEVENTEEN MAGAZINE ABOUT THE “FRESHMEN 15…” EAST BERLIN IS FINALLY FREE!!!! WOOOOOHOOOOOO
Today has been a victory for freedom in the face of the Evil Empire. Ronald Reagan’s words to Mikhail Gorbachev on June 12, 1987 begging him to step on the side of freedom and, “tear down this wall” finally got to Gorbie.
Our journalists obtained a highly classified document leading to this very decision.
I remember the day I came to West Berlin. I walked around and saw all the modern architect and all the colors. It was lively, but it didn’t add up. The guards…the wall…the cage. A German lady I interviewed scoffed at me when I asked her if she even remembered life without the wall. The traditional, “life was better” remark didn’t sum up her anguish. She stared at me and told me that her lover was across the wall caged up in the lies of the Soviet Union and Communism. There he stayed forced to never leave. She told me she hadn’t heard from him since the last Twitter post he posted in ’61 when East Berliners were trying to escape to West Berlin. The described document is posted below.
His words were ill-advised, but understandable. I remembered her face, youthful but aged. I haven’t heard from her since that day. I don’t even know if Reinhardt von Erickson ever escaped to East Berlin. When I tried to obtain records on his whereabouts, I discovered his documents were gone.
The Berlin Wall was first just a barbed fence. It then turned into the Wall, August 13, 1961. A year later, the East German government added the “death strip” which was covered with tripwires and no form of protection from the Guards above who were allowed to shoot whenever. The Wall stayed up there, separating two drastically different ways of living. On the Western side, there was modern architect, colors, cars, supermarkets and people out and about. On the Eastern side, there were ugly Post-War Buildings, dreary colors, no cars and people barely out.
It was clear that change had to happen. That is why today, November 9, 1989 is so important. Of course today would not have happened if it wasn’t for the successful uprises in Hungary, Poland, Romania and Czechoslovakia. Honecker finally opened up some spots for East Berliners to cross over to West Berlin. Hundreds of East Berliners rushed over to escape the Iron Curtain.
Here were some of the posts from today…
WHAT THIS BLOG POST TAUGHT ME:
Enough pretending that my writing skills are actually entertaining enough to not put everyone to sleep.
I struggled with this assignment. I knew about the fall of the Berlin Wall, but actually writing from the perspective of someone going through the events as if it happened today, was really hard. I realized that while social media may help get the message across, you’re only so limited to what you say and how you express the current event. Furthermore, when it comes to such an important event, it was difficult to pick what to say and what not to. I didn’t want to express the events that happened Nov 9, 1961 in a way that didn’t highlight the significance of it, but I also wanted to be somewhat realistic in displaying what they knew during the time. I realized that there was a lot of confusion and disbelief. So I made the conscious decision that the journalist would be slightly vague at times, to emphasize how knowledge can sometimes either be withheld or how knowledge can be left blank. In reality, the Berlin Wall was suppose to happen the following day on the 10th, but Honecker didn’t make it clear to the Press Secretary when East Berliners would be allowed to cross over. This also shows misinformation and miscommunication was possible before social media. But as we talked in my DCI class, social media has the ability to amplify the spread of misinformation by blurring the lines between real news and #fakenews. Moreover, now we have trolls who get a kick out of spreading negativity.
What was also interesting for me to find out was how the iconic, “tear down this wall” line was almost taken out of the speech if it wasn’t for the speechwriter and Reagan. That just blew my mind, because that’s the line we associate with the collapse of the Berlin Wall. It showed me that with social media, catchphrases can be tossed around quickly and turned into hashtags. But before social media, coming up with a phrase that stuck to people required grit and hard work.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall
https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2007/summer/berlin.html
https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/2014-featured-story-archive/a-look-back-25-years-since-the-fall-of-the-berlin-wall.html
https://pop-culture.us/Annual/1989.html
