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Time Travels with Truffle: Dateline November 9th,
1989 – Berlin, Germany
The night air over Berlin was cold on
November 9, 1989, but nobody seemed to notice.
People were pouring into the streets.
Cars sounded their horns. Strangers called to one another from sidewalks and
apartment windows. All across the divided city, rumors were spreading that
something impossible was happening.
And racing along between hundreds of
pairs of shoes was a very small reddish-orange Pomeranian named Truffle.
Truffle had no passport. Truffle had
no exit visa. And Truffle certainly had waited for this day for a long
time. She was a long foe of Communism,
but it’s collapse caught her, like everyone else, by surprise.
But Truffle knew one thing very
well, She knew excitement when she saw
it.
And tonight, Berlin was electric.
For twenty-eight years, the Berlin
Wall had divided the city. Families and friends had been separated by concrete
barriers, guarded crossings, and a political frontier that had become one of
the most recognizable symbols of the Cold War.
But throughout 1989, the communist
government of East Germany had been losing its grip. A peaceful revolution was
underway, and political change was sweeping across Eastern Europe.
Then, on the evening of November 9,
came the mistake that helped change history.
East German official Günter Schabowski
appeared at a televised press conference and announced new travel regulations.
When asked when the regulations would take effect, Günter Schabowski
gave an answer that created the impression that the new policy was effective
immediately.
The news spread rapidly.
East Berliners began heading toward
the border.
That was when Truffle noticed everyone
going in the same direction.
Naturally, Truffle followed.
The crowd grew larger with every
street. People arrived at the checkpoints expecting to be allowed through. The
border guards had received no clear instructions for handling the enormous
numbers gathering before them.
At Bornholmer Straße, the pressure
became overwhelming.
The barriers were finally raised at
about 10:30 that night, making Bornholmer Straße the first of Berlin's border
crossings to open.
Suddenly, the human tide surged
forward.
Truffle disappeared into a forest of
legs.
"Watch the dog!" someone
called.
A pair of hands reached down and
lifted the little Pomeranian above the crowd.
Truffle could suddenly see everything.
Thousands of people were moving across
a border that, hours earlier, had appeared immovable. The Berlin Wall
Foundation records that approximately 20,000 people crossed over the Bösebrücke
bridge without checks during the following hour.
Truffle's ears stood straight up.
Whatever was happening, this was
clearly bigger than an ordinary evening walk.
As the night continued, Berlin became
a gigantic celebration.
People embraced strangers. Cars jammed
the streets. Bottles were opened and passed around. Crowds gathered along the
Wall.
Eventually, Truffle arrived near the
great concrete barrier itself.
Someone had brought a hammer.
WHACK!
The hammer struck the concrete.
Dust flew.
Truffle jumped backward.
Another person began hammering farther
down.
WHACK! WHACK!
Small fragments of concrete broke
loose.
For nearly three decades, this
structure had divided a city.
Tonight people were climbing onto it.
Someone scrambled to the top and
reached downward.
"Give me the dog!"
Truffle was lifted from one pair of
hands to another.
Up Truffle went.
And suddenly, four tiny paws landed
upon one of the most infamous structures of the twentieth century.
Truffle stood on top of the Berlin
Wall.
Behind the little reddish-orange
Pomeranian rose the illuminated Brandenburg Gate. Below, people stretched their
hands upward. Hammers struck concrete on either side. Flags appeared among the
crowd.
Someone shouted something from below.
Truffle barked.
The crowd responded.
Truffle barked again.
Another cheer went up.
Within moments, it appeared that
Truffle had assumed command of the revolution.
A person beside Truffle swung a hammer
against the Wall.
Concrete crumbled away.
For decades, the message of the Wall
had been brutally simple: You cannot cross.
Yet now people from both sides were
standing together upon the very structure designed to keep them apart.
The Wall was still physically there.
But its power was disappearing before
Truffle's eyes.
That was what made the night
extraordinary.
Nobody had planned the scene unfolding
across Berlin. There had been no military assault on the Wall. No tanks had
smashed through it. Ordinary people had simply arrived at the border in such
numbers that the system could no longer contain them.
And once the gates opened, there was
no putting the night back together.
Somewhere in the crowd below, someone
produced perhaps the only thing capable of distracting Truffle from the
collapse of European communism.
Sausage.
Truffle immediately began looking for
a way down.
Before descending, however, Truffle
paused.
The little Pomeranian looked across
the crowd, across the Wall and toward the Brandenburg Gate.
The political story was not finished.
Germany itself would not reunify until the following year. And communism
certainly did not disappear from the entire world that night.
But the opening of the Berlin Wall
became one of the defining moments in the collapse of communist rule across
Eastern Europe. The Berlin Wall Foundation describes November 9 as the night
when the peaceful revolution in East Germany and political changes across
Eastern Europe succeeded in opening the Wall.
A barrier that had seemed permanent
suddenly wasn't.
A symbol of fear became a platform for
celebration.
And right in the middle of it all
stood a tiny reddish-orange Pomeranian.
Someone finally lifted Truffle down
from the Wall.
The little dog vanished into the
celebrating crowd, tail held high, while the sound of hammers continued through
the Berlin night.
WHACK.
Another piece of concrete fell.
WHACK.
Another disappeared into somebody's
pocket as a souvenir.
The Wall had taken years to build,
decades to defend and only one extraordinary night to lose its power.
History would remember the
politicians, the crowds, the border guards, and the people who had spent years
demanding freedom.
But Truffle would remember something
else.
Thousands of people had arrived
divided by a wall.
By morning, they were celebrating
together.
And somewhere among them wandered a
dusty little reddish-orange Pomeranian, looking for another piece of sausage
and wondering what all the fuss had been about.
And once again, History is gently guided by a tiny paw.
