The Foreign Service Journal, November 2019

52 NOVEMBER 2019 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL “That Is the End” John W. “Jack” Bligh Jr. Koenigswinter, Federal Republic of Germany m y wife and I were watching West German TV at our home in Koenigswinter, across the Rhine from the embassy, when the images of East Germans coming through the wall were shown. Was I surprised? Most certainly, especially by the spontaneity and lack of bloodshed. In the following days, my job brought me into contact with a number of West German business leaders, several of whom said that they had never expected to see in their lifetimes any freedom of movement through the barrier. I like to think that I saw a tear or two in the eyes of some. For a time after the opening, one might see an East German Trabant car abandoned beside the autobahn, probably because the fuel mix it required was not available in the Federal Repub- lic. The magnitude of their owners’ joy at their newfound free- dom is even clearer when one considers that they had waited for up to 17 years to buy a car. The impact on my work was not overnight, but we would soon add constituent-post commercial operations in Berlin and Leipzig, and a lot of our commercial section and country team efforts went into ensuring that American companies would have a fair shot at the privatization of state-owned companies in the East. Not many saw the days leading up to Nov. 9 as the beginning of the end of the German Democratic Republic, but at least one did. On a Monday in October 1989, before the wall fell, I had accompanied Ambassador Vernon Walters to West Berlin. (Mondays were the days of the Wir sind das Volk —We Are the People—demonstrations in East German cities, especially in Leipzig.) The ambassador, our minister in West Berlin, Harry Gilmore, and I were guests at a dinner hosted by West Berlin Mayor Walter Momper. During that dinner, an aide came in and whispered some- thing to Mayor Momper, who arose and announced that the East German military, which had been prepared for confronta- tion, had not fired on or interfered with the demonstration in Leipzig. I was seated next to Momper’s predecessor, Eberhard Diepgen, who said: “That is the end of the GDR.” John W. “Jack” Bligh Jr. was a Foreign Service officer from 1966 through 1996. He was serving as the Minister Counselor for commercial affairs in Bonn when the Berlin Wall came down. He lives in Manlius, New York. My Piece of the Wall Greg Suchan The Berlin Wall I n the autumn of 1989, I had just finished two years as the pol-mil officer in Islamabad and was scheduled to begin Danish language training before setting off to Copenhagen as political counselor. As a bridge assignment, I was sent to the NATO Defense College in Rome for six months. The course included a trip to Europe, including a stop in Berlin that happened to coin- cide with the fall of the wall. Swept up in the drama, my wife and I went directly to the scene of the action. We watched a German man whack away at the despised wall with a hammer and chisel. When we identified ourselves as American diplomats, he handed over two pieces. I offered to pay him, but he wouldn’t take a pfennig. Those pieces of the Berlin Wall, mementos of a world-changing event, formed a bridge between two chapters of our diplomatic life characterized by equally historic develop- ments. In Pakistan, we had been witnesses to the Red Army’s final collapse and withdrawal from Afghanistan. In Copenhagen, we participated in the first outreach to the new Baltic republics that had opened interest offices in the Danish capital, playing a small role in the construction of the post–Cold War political and security architecture in Europe. Greg Suchan was a Foreign Service officer from 1973 to 2007. He currently runs International Consulting LLC. He and his family live in Flat Rock, North Carolina. COURTESYOFGREGSUCHAN FSO Greg Suchan (above) and his wife, Susanne (inset, right), at the Berlin Wall in December 1989.