On Berlin Wall anniversary, Merkel urges Europe to defend ‘democracy, freedom’

BERLIN — Europe “must stand up for democracy and freedom, for human rights and tolerance,” Chancellor Angela Merkel said Saturday as Germany commemorated the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Such values “must always be lived out and defended anew,” Merkel told political leaders and European guests at a ceremony, warning that these freedoms cannot be taken for granted.

Speaking in the Reconciliation Chapel on the former “death strip” that ran alongside the wall, the chancellor said that the barrier that divided communist East from democratic West was “history.”

Merkel herself grew up in East Germany and was a scientist working in Berlin on November 9, 1989.

Spectators holding roses attend the central commemoration ceremony for the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, on November 9, 2019 at the Berlin Wall Memorial at Bernauer Strasse in Berlin (Tobias SCHWARZ / AFP)

That communist authorities finally opened border crossings that day “teaches us that no wall that shuts people out and limits freedom is so tall or broad that it cannot be broken through,” Merkel said.

The chancellor and guests including the presidents of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia had earlier been invited to stick roses through holes in a section of wall still standing at the Bernauer Strasse memorial, just north of central Berlin.

People stuck flowers in remains of the Berlin Wall during a commemoration ceremony to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall at the Wall memorial site at Bernauer Strasse in Berlin, November 9, 2019. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

Groups of schoolchildren from around Europe, including war-torn Ukraine, also spoke in their native languages to the leaders about the emotions the anniversary wakens for them.