This house once stood in another country

Last night, I was pleased to attend the German Unity Day reception, and honored to be received by Consul General of the Federal Republic of Germany in New York, David Gill. German Unity Day has been marked as a national holiday for more than thirty years, celebrating the reunification of the German people.

Wim Wenders, the Oscar-nominated German filmmaker, was recently asked if Berlin of today is the same Berlin he portrayed in his film “Wings of Desire,” which was shot only two years before the Berlin Wall fell.

He told this remarkable story: There is a nice old building in my neighborhood, on Brunnenstrasse (former East Berlin), on which it is written, in huge letters:

“This house once stood in another country!”

Which is great, he went on to say, “because it reminds all of us that we now live in a new country, since East Germany does not exist anymore, and West Germany does not exist anymore either”.

While history records the reunification of East and West Germany, I believe, like Wenders, that when the Berlin Wall fell a little more than 30 years ago, a new country was born and a nation was reunified.

It has taken a long time for the German people to understand this, but they do now and we can all learn from their experience.

Einen schönen Tag der Deutschen Einheit!