The action of the German government to designate the party AFD (Alternative for Germany) an extreme right-wing organization triggered a broad range of domestic and international responses. Officials from the US also chimed in. Our vice president JD Vance posted on X that day: “The West tore down the Berlin Wall together. And it has been rebuilt – not by the Soviets or the Russians, but by the German establishment”.
We lived in Germany when the wall was opened and later removed and witnessed the events leading up to it – here the demonstrations in Dresden and Leipzig and other places and the raising of the barriers at the border crossings in Berlin. In fact, we took our very first trip into the Western world during a special visit to Berlin, crossing the wall in Berlin-Schoeneweide.
You can get to the location of the former wall in Berlin in Germany from the US by traveling West. If you started in Portland, you would cross Russia, Poland and what used to be former East Germany. But if you sat on the wall that night on November 9th, 1989, the wall was opened by and from the East. An announcement by the secretary of the political committee, Guenther Schabowski, about new travel regulations that night triggered a flood of people exercising their new rights and ultimately led to the opening of the previously heavily guarded border crossings. Subsequent events led to a decision to tear down the wall and other fortifications which the East German Army and private contractors removed over the course of a year. On a side note – the wall was also built by the East German Army starting August 13th, 1961, after Walter Ulbricht the secretary of the political committee had obtained approval from the Soviet Union.