Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the face of unified Germany is starkly different from the parallel universe which saw Eastern and Western European values turn a nation into a philosophical front line for almost three decades.

The wall, which was once an iconic socialist fault line that represented isolation and death - more than 130 people were killed at the Cold War barrier - has now become a less threatening relic, plastered with graffiti in much of the German capital. It has even become a tourist souvenir, as a huge chunk was gifted to Jamaican sprint star Usain Bolt after his World Championships heroics in the city two months ago.

The landscape of East Berlin has been transformed as private firms and the government have pumped tons of cash into the less-developed region to stimulate economic development and spearhead a facelift of the city's ageing infrastructure.

historic buildings

But even in the midst of high-rises and other modern architectural masterpieces such as the Sony Centre, East Berlin still plays host to many historic buildings, now a rich mosaic of past and present. Though East Germany's development does lag behind that of the West, it is playing catch-up.

Elaine Wallace, a Jamaican who studied at Humboldt University in East Berlin, was in Germany at the time the Berlin Wall 'fell'. She remembers it like it was yesterday.

"The whole thing was very dramatic, although not totally unexpected. A movement had started in Central Europe with countries like Hungary allowing people to leave.

"There was a move to leave countries in that area, such as Czechoslovakia, Romania and Poland. Leaders against socialism started to emerge," Wallace, who was then pursuing doctoral studies in media policy, told The Gleaner Thursday.

The new pro-transparency political outlooks of Perestroika and Glasnost - bolstered by a more Western-leaning president of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev - meant destiny was knocking on the door. Loudly.

Wallace added: "But it was the drama and overwhelming nature of the experience, in that the socialist bloc seemed so stable" before its collapse.

"Most of us woke up one morning (November 10) to hear that the wall had opened up overnight."

By the time Erhard Krack, mayor of East Berlin, and his West Berlin counterpart, Walter Momper, made peace in a symbolic handshake on November 12, 1989, almost two million persons had exultantly crossed over into West Germany - a privilege many of them had not enjoyed since 1961 when the blockade was constructed.

Masses, drawn by the allure of the more liberal and commercialised West Germany, thronged transfer points such as Checkpoint Charlie and the Friedrichstrasse station. Later, the Brandenburg Gate was opened too.

"People just began to go in droves, thousands and thousands. I thought to myself, 'This is a moment in history that is once in a lifetime,'" Wallace recalled.

marginal influence

Although there were two radically different socio-political and cultural systems, the influence of the freer West had long begun to influence the East.

"There was a lot from the West that was present in the East," said Wallace adding that universities had crossborder partnerships which facilitated professors and students who needed to travel to do research.

Wallace, who credits the media as a platform which helped fuel the upheaval, said foreign students were not significantly affected by the spectre of secrecy and espionage coordinated by the East's spy agency, the Stasi. It was more palpable for native Germans - particularly the andersdenkenden, or more liberal thinkers.

The Stasi would have naturally been a greater threat to "people who wanted to live a less regimented or organised lifestyle," said Wallace, who currently coordinates the University of Technology's semesterisation project, which aims to give students greater timetable flexibility.

Modern-day Germany, led by recently re-elected Chancellor Angela Merkel, is the third-largest economy in the world and the biggest in Europe but forecasts which coincided with the wall's fall were not all optimistic.

Some commentators were almost apocalyptic in their warnings. Others, like former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing and then Portuguese President Mario Soares, believed it would have severe implications for the balance of rule.

"I would like East Germany to be welcomed in by a federated Europe, not West Germany alone," Giscard d'Estaing had said.

Soares had reservations about the developments, cautioning of the likelihood that European Community aid, partly funded by West Germany, that helped prop up the floundering economies of other Eastern European countries would be diverted to East Germany, thus sinking that bloc.

"The European Community must have West Germany's incomparable power in its midst and the southern countries should have their eyes open regarding the consequences of the latest developments," Soares was reported as saying in The Gleaner of November 12, 1989.

But such views diverged from the optimism of then United States Defence Secretary Dick Cheney and NATO Secretary General Manfred Woerner, who believed that a unified Germany would have positive effects, locally and internationally.

The downing of the wall hasn't quite been the silver bullet. Unemployment is still nearly twice as high in Eastern Germany as in its more opulent counterpart.

But the resumption of crossings between East and West was heralded by most Western politicians as a sign of impending reform, signalling that the move would reshape the economic landscape of the largely undeveloped Soviet-ruled East Germany. The paradigm shift was expected not only to stimulate the East's flagging commercial sector but was tapped to transform government from a highly militarised regime to one more attuned to civil administration.

Twenty years later, reunification has done just that.

andre.wright@gleanerjm.com