The German Unity Day (German: Tag der Deutschen Einheit) is the National Day of Germany, celebrated on 3 October as a public holiday. It commemorates the anniversary of German reunification in 1990 when the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) were unified, so that for the first time since 1945 there existed a single German state. The German Unity Day on 3 October has been the German National Holiday since 1990, when the reunification was formally completed. An alternative choice to commemorate the reunification could have been the day the Berlin Wall came down: 9 November 1989, which coincided with the anniversary of the proclamation of the German Republic in 1918, and the defeat of Hitler’s first coup in 1923. However, 9 November was also the anniversary of the first large-scale Nazi-led pogroms against Jews in 1938 (Kristallnacht), so the day was considered inappropriate as a national holiday. (November 9 in German history.) Therefore, 3 October 1990, the day of the formal reunification, was chosen instead and replaced the “Day of German Unity” on 17 June, the national holiday of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1954. read more…
For 28 years, the Berlin Wall cemented the political division of Germany and Europe. It became a symbol of the Cold War, which split the world politically into an eastern and a western hemisphere. Over one hundred people died attempting to get past the heavily guarded Wall. In the end, the internal and external pressure on the GDR leadership increased so much that a chain of events was triggered that led to the Wall’s coming down. The website Chronicle of the Wall is the most comprehensive multi-media source of information on this topic available at the present time. It includes secondary literature, lists of links and films, original sound and reports from East and West, as well as a chronology of the history of the Wall and numerous text sources. read more…
