Just before midnight on October 2, 1990, a huge German flag was raised in front of the Reichstag building in Berlin. Crowds packed the streets, fireworks blazed, and bells rang. As the clock struck twelve and October 3 began, East Germany and West Germany officially became one country again. After forty-one years split into two, Germany was whole.
The split had started after World War II, when the winning Allies divided the defeated nation. The Soviet Union controlled the East, while the United States, Britain, and France oversaw the West. In 1961 East Germany built the Berlin Wall, slicing the capital in half with concrete and barbed wire to stop people from escaping to the freer West. For nearly thirty years the Wall stood - until the night of November 9, 1989, when crowds with hammers and bare hands started knocking it down. Less than a year later, leaders signed the papers that joined the two countries on October 3, 1990.
That date is now German Unity Day, the country's national holiday. Streets close, stages go up, and people celebrate something rare in history - a peaceful end to a division that everyone thought would last forever. The Brandenburg Gate, once stranded in the deadly strip beside the Wall, now stands in the middle of a single city, a single country, with crowds streaming through it freely on every side.
