Joachim Sauer Quotes

I remember when the Berlin Wall fell and suddenly intractable problems get solved.

The Berlin Wall go down, that was the most wonderful thing that could happen, absolutely. I celebrated with everybody in Berlin that day when the Wall was down.

I was in Germany when the wall came down.

My life changed completely in 1989 with the fall of the wall.

The Cold War was over long before it was officially declared dead.

Before the Berlin Wall came down, we played behind the Iron Curtain and sang, 'Born in the U.S.A.,' and I thought, 'We're all going to die. The man is going to get us all killed.' But then you saw all these kids with the American flag and German flags together and singing the song, and it was, wow, like 'We Shall Overcome.'

1989 was such a very, very important year in Europe. The wall fell, the Soviet Union was crumbling, and so many things happened - in 15 minutes, the world changed.

The fall of the Berlin Wall is very much a sequel, a continuation of the story about Eastern Europe emerging from war and Communism. The notion of presenting history as a story also appealed to me very much, since that is the way I look at the events I cover as a reporter.

After the Berlin Wall came down I visited that city and I will never forget it. The abandoned checkpoints. The sense of excitement about the future. The knowledge that a great continent was coming together. Healing those wounds of our history is the central story of the European Union.

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

My own kids were with me in Berlin when Germany was reunited, and they were with me in Moscow when the Soviet Union collapsed. We talked about these things at the dinner table, at their schools, with their friends.

I spent a little time in Germany as a schoolboy learning German, and it's a country I knew very well, spent a lot of time in. I knew the history very well. I've always wanted to do a piece of work about the post-war period, of one sort or another.

Naturally enough, I couldn't have foreseen the vast sea change which has come upon that scene as a result of German reunification and associated events.

The fall of the Berlin Wall makes for nice pictures. But it all started in the shipyards.

For me, the fall of the Wall came at the exact right time because, I mean, I was 17, basically I hadn't missed anything, unlike the generation of my parents, who were deprived of a lot of things. They couldn't travel, and they couldn't really get ahead in their professional careers. So for me, it was perfect timing.

America must never accept as a final fact the division between East and West …

The Cold War is Over

What are we going to do when the Wall comes down?

The Soviet Union collapsed without a lot of people thinking it should or would, whereas for Estonia, it was something we'd been praying for for 60 years.

For hundreds of millions of people, the fall of the Berlin Wall was a great triumph: The moment marked the end of hated dictatorships and the beginning of a better era. But for the KGB officers stationed in Dresden, the political revolutions of 1989 marked the end of their empire and the beginning of an era of humiliation.

If the purpose of the wall was to destroy Berlin, Herr Ulbricht and his cohorts have erred sadly. Berlin is not only going to continue to exist - it's going to grow and grow and grow. Its ties to West Germany will not be severed.

I know when the Berlin wall went down and I walked into what was East Berlin and saw two big Nike banners - that gave me a chill.

When I was 16, I went to Berlin - West Berlin, since at that time a wall still divided the city - to live for three months with a family on an exchange program.

I was 6 when communism was finished.

Dad's astute knowledge of foreign policy impressed Gorbachev during the time of the Berlin Wall when Dad refused to gloat during the reunification of Germany.