Reagan’s 1987 speech is often credited with the fall of the Berlin Wall, but Thatcher opposed reunification, fearing it would undermine international stability. Pop culture also played a role, with Bowie and Springsteen performing in Berlin and Hasselhoff’s “Looking for Freedom” becoming popular after the wall fell.
Former US President Ronald Reagan is often credited with hastening the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, which led to the eventual restoration of a united Germany. Reagan is well known for his 1987 speech in which he urged Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.” But not all of Reagan’s Cold War allies wanted to see East and West Germany reunified. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher strongly opposed the whole idea. “We don’t want a united Germany,” Thatcher said in 1989, two years after Reagan’s speech but before the Berlin Wall fell. “This would lead to a change in post-war borders, and we cannot allow that because such a development would undermine the stability of the entire international situation and could endanger our security,” she explained.
Pop Culture and the Fall of the Wall:
Musician David Bowie performed “Heroes” in West Berlin in 1987, a song about two lovers, one from East Berlin and one from West Berlin. The East Germans, listening on the other side of the wall, soon began chanting: “The wall must go!”
In 1988, Bruce Springsteen performed in East Berlin, attracting the largest gathering of East Berliners before the fall of the wall. “I am neither for nor against any government,” he said in German. “I came here to play rock and roll for you.”
“Looking for Freedom,” David Hasselhoff’s cover of Marc Seaberg’s 1978 hit, was released in West Germany in 1989, but was banned in East Germany until after the Wall came down.
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