Bitterness mars Wall anniversary
No big German celebrations, parades or fireworks
By CNN Correspondent Chris Burns
Tuesday, November 9, 2004 Posted: 10:37 AM EST (1537 GMT)
BERLIN,
Germany (CNN) -- Germany marked a subdued 15th anniversary of the fall
of the Berlin Wall, weighed down by bitterness over unification costs.
The
nation's leaders laid wreaths Tuesday at a memorial in the Berlin
Wall's former death strip, part of somber and subdued ceremonies
marking the 15th anniversary of the fallen wall.
To the toll of a
churchbell, the mayors of Berlin joined with leaders of Germany's major
parties along with about 150 others in a quiet morning ceremony
beginning with a church service.
"Today is a high point and a low
point of German history. We should not forget the victims," said
Manfred Fischer, pastor of the Reconciliation Church.
"The fall
of the Berlin Wall was a worldwide sign of hope. It was a spring day in
the middle of November for Berlin, for Germany, for Europe."
The
service was held inside a concrete chapel built in the death strip in
the years since the wall fell. It replaced a church once destroyed by
East German authorities.
Names of some of the more than 1,000 Berlin Wall victims, some of whom died after jumping out of nearby buildings, were read.
Few
members of the German public attended, however, as many remain
embittered by the process of unification, which remains a difficult
marriage for East and West Germany.
In former East Germany,
unemployment is at least 20 percent. Western Germans, meanwhile,
grumble about higher taxes, the proceeds from which finance
reconstruction in the east. That reconstruction has cost more than $1
trillion since 1990.
A recent poll indicated one in five Germans, including nearly one in four western Germans, would like to see the wall return.
German
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said in a statement that while much in the
country has been achieved since the wall fell, "we must not relent in
our efforts to complete German unification."
