Prince of Asturias Awards 1981–2014. Speeches

3 P rince of A sturias A wards 1981-2014. S peeches Laureates. Excerpts This year Berlin commemorates the dramatic autumn events of 20 years ago. At first, only a few faced up to the dictatorship with courage and determination. Then they became many more. In the autumn of 1989, millions of people came out onto the streets of Berlin and other cities in the GDR to peacefully demonstrate for their democratic and human rights to freedom. On the 9th November 1989, they brought down the wall that had divided the city for three decades. The images of people dancing on the wall were seen worldwide and aroused great interest. It was the happiest moment in Berlin’s history. A year after the wall fell, Germany and Berlin celebrated reunification in peace and freedom. The peaceful revolution of the people of Berlin and other cities in the former GDR would have been unimaginable without the prior events in Poland, with Solidarność, Hungary, the Republic of Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. The reunification of our country would not have been possible without the support of many friends abroad, not least among these Spain and its prime minister, Felipe González. We remember all this in Germany with gratitude. Many people in Berlin gave their utmost in the weeks of the peaceful revolution. It is well known that faith in a better future is capable of moving mountains and it engendered a great deal of confidence that encouraged Berliners to overcome the problems of unification. The wall had severed Berlin’s life vein. The challenges in urban planning, infrastructure, economic and social policies were beyond compare. Hundreds of thousands of jobs were lost and it took time to create new ones. What’s more, reunification implied losses for many people. And in daily life it was also necessary for the people of the East and the West to meet up again. It is true that they spoke the same language, but they had grown up in very different systems. This new meeting and this coexistence were not easy to surmount. Klaus Wowereit, on behalf of the City of Berlin, on the 20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Wall — Prince of Asturias Award for Concord 2009 Klaus Wowereit was Mayor of Berlin from 2001 to 2014. — Excerpt from the speech given on the occasion of receiving the Prince of Asturias Award for Concord on 23/10/2009.