Corporate DispatchPro Cover Story
Germany turns 30 Futuristic architecture, a colourful subculture, eclectic cuisine, an intense party scene – Berlin is truly one of the open capitals of the world. Walking though the vibrant streets today is difficult to picture the high, concrete wall slicing through the city until just three decades ago.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 was a momentous event, not only for the German families that had been torn apart since the 1960s, but for the international community too. It took another year until East Germany officially joined the Federal Republic on October 3, 1990, giving birth to the new city-state of Berlin in the meantime. The reunification of Germany represented the fading out of the Cold War and generated a new optimism for multilateralism, which until that moment had been held back by the global polarisation of the Eastern Bloc and the Western Bloc. At the stroke of midnight of that historical day, the new Germany suddenly became the most populous nation in Europe and its biggest economy. Neighbouring Italy and France are reported to have raised concerns over this reallocation of power in the region while British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was strongly opposed to the whole idea of reunification. But an undivided Germany was, by then, an inevitable social and political process. The signing of the reunification treaty led to a long period of internal stability and prosperity, mostly driven by a grand coalition between the social democratic SPD and the Christian democratic CDU. Critics cropping up from the left and the right flanks, however, 3
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