Brandenburg Gate reopens with fireworks and a striptease
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Your support makes all the difference.The 12th anniversary of German reunification reached a heady climax last night with the unveiling of Berlin's renovated Brandenburg Gate in a fireworks and champagne extrava- ganza attended by hundreds of dignitaries and politicians including the Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, and Bill Clinton.
The spectacle, which brought 200,000 people into the city centre, aimed to demonstrate that Germany's most famous monument had been restored to glory after a two-year £2.5m facelift. Yet it looked more like a cross between striptease and an act from Billy Smart's Circus.
The show kicked off with the Munich fashion designer and stuntman Willy Bogner abseiling down a rope from a hot-air balloon to the top of the 211-year-old monument. There he undressed the Quadriga, a bare-breasted goddess of victory who straddles the top of the gate brandishing the German Iron Cross, in a chariot pulled by four horses. Silk drapes fell away, providing the signal to Messrs Schröder and Clinton to begin pulling open a giant zip holding up a huge plastic tarpaulin that covered the entire gate.
Mr Clinton, who in 1994 was the first US president to walk under the gate after the fall of the Berlin Wall said: "Today the gate is a symbol of unity, born out of a universal desire of people to be free." Repeating the sentences in German to huge applause, he added: "How fitting it is that from now on the strongest image of Germany in the world's eye is not a wall, but a gate that is open for all of us, for a more hopeful future."
What Mr Bogner had promised would be a "striptease in stone" finally revealed the perfectly renovated gate to a huge and cheering crowd, accompanied by a rock band and a huge fireworks display.
The festivities brought a thaw in relations between Germany and the US, strained by differences over Iraq, with a message from President George Bush applauding German reunification. The ceremony also masked the controversies that have raged over the Brandenburg Gate since the Cold War no-man's land that surrounded it from August 1961 disappeared with the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. Built in 1791, the gate was regarded as a potent symbol of German nationhood. Hitler's stormtroopers used it for Nazi torchlight parades.
After the fall of the wall, passing through the gatet by car, bus, bicycle or on foot gave Berliners a frisson of excitement. Yet in 1990 the city's then Red-Green government barred traffic because of fears that the structure would be damaged. After protests, the gate was reopened to vehicles. Two years ago, a consortium agreed to renovate the monument but was it was criticised by conservationists who claimed, wrongly, that the laser device used to clean its bullet-pocked surface would harm the structure.
PRESIDENTS AT THE GATE
MAY 2002
Brandenburg Gate sealed off as 10,000 police are drafted in to control anti-war protests triggered by the arrival of President George Bush. He is taken to a nearby restaurant.
JULY 1994
Bill Clinton becomes the first post-Cold War US president to walk through the gate, telling Berliners on the east side: "Amerika steht an ihrer seite, jetzt und für immer" ("America is on your side, now and for ever").
NOVEMBER 1989
The Berlin Wall falls. President George Bush Snr stays away and avoids any triumphant posturing so as not to provoke the Soviet Union, which has almost 400,000 troops in East Germany at the time.
JUNE 1987
President Ronald Reagan famously says: "Mr Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
JUNE 1982
President Reagan visits Berlin, amid massive rioting, at the height of anti-nuclear protests over the US build-up of missiles in western Europe.
JUNE 1963
President John F Kennedy offers hope to the beleaguered residents on the western side of the wall in his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech.
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