Angela Merkel, a woman in no man's land, waded through a cheering crowd yesterday to make the journey across Berlin's former East-West border -- and into her own past.

The German Chancellor's walk over the steel Boesebruecke -- the first frontier checkpoint to open its gates 20 years ago -- was almost a family affair, an afternoon stroll. The low-key tone was deliberate.

Ms Merkel has personalised the festivities marking the fall of the Berlin Wall, shifting the focus away from the 31 leaders in the city, the Nobel prize laureates and the rock stars, and into a celebration of the East German people, cowed by a police state for four decades, who discovered their courage in 1989. Ms Merkel, no dissident or heroine, was one of them.

Accompanied by Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, and Lech Walesa, the former leader of the Polish Solidarity movement, the German leader was careful to point out that the Berlin Wall came down because of their help.

"We weren't the first," she said. "Solidarity in Poland was important because it came from the heart of the working class. It showed us what was possible in a supposedly workers' and peasants' state.

"As for Mikhail Gorbachev," she said, pointing to the former Soviet leader, "You made it possible." The crowd shouted "Bravo!" and "Gorby, Gorby!", just as they had in October 1989 when he visited the former East German regime and gave it the kiss of death with criticism of Erich Honecker, the Communist chief.

The largely peaceful revolutions of 1989 had many fathers, Ms Merkel made plain, but in essence they came down to one key factor: the citizens of Eastern Europe losing, or at least overcoming, their fear.

She seemed more at ease with the former East German dissidents on the bleak bridge linking the eastern Berlin district of Prenzlauer Berg with the western district of Wedding than with the gathering of foreign leaders. They were in Berlin because it was a must-do event, a public commitment to freedom that was guaranteed a television audience of millions. Only Helmut Kohl, too infirm to attend, and US President Barack Obama seemed to be absent from the top table.

On the bridge there were many who had been persecuted, such as the Pastor Joachim Gauck, who went on to become the chief investigator and archivist of the crimes of the Stasi secret police.

"The regime opened up the border because it thought it would let off some of the steam of protest and save itself," Mr Gauck said. "In the end they only succeeded in wiping themselves out and with them a whole empire."

People

The bulk of the crowd was made up of ordinary people who crossed into the former western area on November 9, 1989.

"We come back every year," said Herbert Mueller (71), a retired cook. "My wife had made me goulash and dumplings, and then the West German news came on and I almost fell off my chair -- the wall was open," he said, remembering the day.

They climbed into their Trabants and headed for the bridge. "There was a massive traffic jam and it took us three hours to get through -- it was just a dream to drive through that monster of a bridge."

Ms Merkel, at the time a 35-year-old research chemist, had heard a bulletin about the opening of the border but stuck to her routine of going to the sauna with a friend. Afterwards the two women drank a beer and Ms Merkel crossed into the former West Germany. She found herself in Wedding, an old working-class district, and was invited to tea by a family of strangers. She headed home soon after because she had to be at work in the Academy of Sciences by 7am the next day.

Hostile

It was a banal excursion and yet momentous -- to walk between two hostile systems, have a cup of tea, and return of one's own free will.

As she has gained confidence over the years Ms Merkel has become increasingly open about her eastern German background. In a well-received speech to the US Congress she talked of her mother's problems getting a job as a teacher in the Communist system.

In an interview yesterday she talked at length about her childhood: "I dreamt of The Beatles and of the outside world with all of its possibilities," she said. (© The Times, London)

- Roger Boyes in Berlin

Irish Independent