WaybackWire

BERLIN, Saturday.—Birgit Kuehner was born in 1961, the year the Wall went up. On Friday the East Berlin dentist crossed at Checkpoint Charlie and saw West Berlin for the first time.

“I’ve lived in this town for 28 years,” she said. “This was my first time. I’d never seen West Berlin.” She went back after a three-hour stroll with her husband to visit friends in the West.

The crossing was a massive jam of pedestrians, baby carriages, bikes and cars on both sides of the Wall, United Press International reported. Tens of thousands strolled across to cheers, champagne, beer and flowers from a crowd of West Berliners.

Katya Scholz, a 53-year-old West Berlin teacher, had seen the 1948 blockade and the building of the Wall. “Since last night, I’ve cried every 10 minutes,” she said. “I didn’t think I’d see in my lifetime the wall come down.”

Steve Smith, an Irishman from County Cavan, had been cheering new arrivals on the west side for several hours. “I am witnessing the future of Europe,” he said.

On the East German side, border guards and police were friendly and helpful, processing the crowds with virtually no body searches. “It’s a big day,” said one East German policeman.

WEST BERLIN, Saturday.—Chancellor Helmut Kohl broke away from his visit to Poland on Friday and flew to West Berlin, where he told a rally of about 20,000 people that East and West Germans belonged together.

“We are and will remain one nation, and we belong together. . . . Step by step, we must find the way to our common future,” Kohl told the crowd at John F. Kennedy Square, outside Schoeneberg City Hall, The Washington Post reported. The Guardian quoted him as saying: “Long live a free German fatherland, a free united Europe.”

Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher sought to reassure Europeans wary of German reunification. “No danger has ever emanated from a free and democratic Germany,” he said.

Willy Brandt, the former chancellor who was mayor of West Berlin when the Wall went up, told the crowd: “Nothing will be the same again. The winds of change blowing through Europe have not avoided East Germany.” The Guardian reported him saying: “Berlin will live and the Berlin Wall will come down.”

EAST BERLIN, Saturday.—East German leader Egon Krenz told thousands of Communist Party members on Friday that the open border was part of a lesson the party will not forget.

Speaking at an open-air meeting in downtown East Berlin, Krenz said: “We were often told: If people can travel out, then they will stay here. We are practicing this now.”

The party’s task, he said, according to The Guardian, was “to carry through a revolution on German soil that will bring a socialism which is economically effective, politically democratic, and morally clean.”

The party’s Central Committee published an action programme for renewal, promising free elections. The Washington Post said the proposed reforms also included a free press, independent trade unions, freedom of association and assembly, economic changes and parliamentary control over the armed forces.

Four members and candidate members of the Politburo were sacked. The Volkskammer, the East German parliament, is to meet in emergency session on Monday to confirm Hans Modrow’s government.

EAST BERLIN, Saturday.—East Germany said on Friday that the open border is permanent, and began cutting new holes in the Wall.

Interior Minister Friedrich Dickel said: “The government of East Germany stands by its word.”

A bulldozer began punching a hole through the Wall at Eberswalder Strasse for one of the new crossings, The Washington Post reported.

United Press International said eight new crossing points were being opened along the Wall, and that Freedom Bridge opened at 5:40 p.m.

Dickel said a proposed new travel law will incorporate the open-border policy, which was announced on Thursday as a temporary measure. The Post noted, however, that travel was likely to become somewhat more restricted than in the first 24 hours.

WASHINGTON, Saturday.—German reunification faces barriers as formidable as the Berlin Wall itself, experts in Washington said on Friday, the Chicago Tribune reported. Some said reunification would reduce both Germanys to economic cripples, and the Soviet Union has said the Warsaw Pact will stay.

The gap between the two economies is wide. On the black market, the West German mark has 12 times the buying power of the East German currency.

“Over a decade, I can see greater and greater economic interaction. I wouldn’t call it unity,” said Richard Grant, a European specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

In Brussels, the European Community is trying to help Eastern Europe without a new Marshall Plan. It has coordinated about $650 million in aid from 24 Western nations, the Tribune reported.