Walls Come Tumbling Down.

Show

Morning Magazine,

Presenter

Travis Collins

Published

Monday 9th November

It was 20 years ago today that the wall came tumbling down.

An entire generation of people have grown up without knowing of its existence, or the reasons it separated a nation, literally and in many other ways.

It was the Berlin Wall, or the Iron Curtain, and it encircled West Berlin, cutting Germany’s capital off from East Germany for more than a quarter of a century.

In 1987 US President Ronald Reagan demanded that Mikhail Gorbachev ‘tear down this wall’ – and two years later East Germans celebrated as they both literally and symbolically achieved freedom they’d been denied for so long.

Centre for Independent Studies Economics Research Fellow Dr Oliver Marc Hartwich was there as an adolescent watching history unfold and told Travis Collins all about it.