David Bowie's (Important) Role in the Fall of the Berlin Wall

What caused the Berlin Wall to fall?

It's a question that's still hotly debated today. Directly, it was brought about by decisions and events that originated from the east—not so much from the west.?They began as political reforms initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev; and disarray in East German leadership contributed to the confusion at the Wall by East German guards.?

But more than anything, relentless pressure from the people of Eastern Europe compounded those forces that ultimately brought down the wall that had encircled West Berlin since 1961.

There’s a popular belief that President Ronald Reagan’s speech at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin on June 12, 1987, where he famously called on Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall,” also had something to do with it.

Today, Reagan’s speech continues to be viewed as one of the most memorable performances of an American president in Berlin after John F. Kennedy's "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech of 1963.

Some 45,000 Berliners witnessed Reagan’s wall speech, compared to the 450,000 people who attended John F Kennedy pronouncing, “Ich bin ein Berliner”.

Certainly, although decades apart, both speeches contributed in helping to set the conditions for the fall of the Berlin Wall.?None of those speeches or events operated in isolation of the others.

In fact, another event, now often forgotten, also changed the mood around the Wall, and had its own influence in changing world history.

“The Concert for Berlin” was kicked off on June 6, 1987--only a week prior to President Reagan’s speech.?For three days, at the Platz der Republik, musicians like Bruce Hornsby, New Model Army, Genesis, and the Eurythmics took the stage to sing to the divided city of Berlin.?It was an open-air festival staged in front of the Reichstag, with the stage?only a stone's throw from—and well within earshot of—the Berlin Wall.

David Bowie was the opening act for the concert.?He proved to be an inspired choice, not only for his obvious talent, but also because Bowie knew West Berlin well, and had recorded three of his albums in Berlin. He'd lived there for three years in the late 1970s, in an apartment in the Sch?neberg neighborhood.

In 1977, Bowie recorded the second of his three Berlin albums, named after its title track, “Heroes.”?That year, East German border guards shot and killed an 18-year-old boy, Dietmar Schweitzer, as he escape across the wall into West Berlin.?A few months later, 22-year-old Henri Weise drowned trying to cross the Spree River.

Though "Heroes" is today remembered as an anthem of optimism and defiance, its lyrics captured the hopelessness and desperation of a city divided by violence and terror.?

It’s no accident that the song yearns, "I wish you could swim / Like the dolphins, like dolphins can swim," a reference to the East Germans, like Weise, who died trying to cross the Spree.

In this way, “Heroes” integrated the prevailing Cold War themes of fear and isolation that had hung over the city since the erection of the Berlin Wall, telling a story of two lovers who meet at the wall and try in vain to find a way to be together.

At the Concert for Berlin, it was also no accident that the song that Bowie chose to sing on the second night was “Heroes.”?It didn’t take long for the song to become an anthem for a divided Berlin—shifting the perspective of the Wall as a permanent structure to one that would eventually—and inevitably—fall away into the dustbin of history. ?

When Bowie performed on the second night at around 10 pm, he began by telling the crowd, in German, "We send our wishes to all our friends who are on the other side of the wall."?

The song, “Heroes,” is perhaps best known for this verse:

I, I can remember (I remember)

Standing, by the wall (by the wall)

And the guns, shot above our heads (over our heads)

And we kissed, as though nothing could fall (nothing could fall)

The lyrics, remembered in this context, are tragic, each verse ending with the line "nothing can keep us together"

The song ends with a plea that eventually things will change, if only for a day:

And the shame, was on the other side

Oh we can beat them, forever and ever

Then we could be heroes, just for one day

Rock music had always been treated by the Communist authorities in the East as a decadent influence and a destabilizing threat, and one that could incite the country's entertainment-starved youth to rebel.

With permission from each of the bands, western radio stations in the American Sector broadcasted the show in its entirety, and the concert was held in close enough enough proximity to the Wall that many East Berliners could hear the forbidden Western concert together, despite being divided by a concrete wall.?

More than 2,000 East Berliners flocked to the Brandenburg Gate to listen to the concert.?

On the third and final night of the concert, Genesis was the headline attraction.?As they sang their hit song, “Land of Confusion,” East German authorities decided that they'd had enough. Police in areas near the wall, where young East Berliners had gathered to listen, cracked down violently, attacking people with water cannons?

One eyewitness, Tina Krone said, “The police had cordoned off the street at the Russian Embassy (about a quarter-mile from the Wall).?They kept arresting people, dragging them along the surface of the street. It was like a horror movie. We were enraged."

“The mood changed when individual people were picked out from the crowd and arrested by officers in civil clothing,” Krone said.

"They kept arresting people, dragging them along the surface of the street. It was like a horror movie. We were enraged," an eyewitness said.

As many as 200 people were taken into custody in what amounted to a small pitched battle between the cops and the kids. And the frustrated East Berliners, as gleefully noted by West German media, began chanting "The wall must fall!" and "Gorby get us out!"

Olof Pock, a picture editor who was fifteen years old at the time, climbed up on an East Berlin rooftop to listen to Eurythmics.

"The mood was one of enjoying forbidden fruit," Pock said. "We knew that this was somehow being done for our benefit."

"At the end of the concert, the police began to herd people back from the Wall," Pock remembered. "They completely overreacted. They were beating kids with billy clubs."

Many of the eyewitnesses claim that the violent police crackdown on the third night of the concerts in East Berlin were crucial in changing the mood against The Soviet Union and East Germany. ?

The gathered East Berlin crowds were inflamed.?But by overreacting, East German authorities had effectively transformed the innocent concert listeners into activists.

“Heroes” became an anthem of optimism, hope and defiance for East and West Berliners— a clarion call to triumph “forever?and ever,” just like the lovers in Bowie's song—finally finding a way to escape the Wall and be together.

But it’s what Bowie recounted about performing the song that evening in West Berlin in 1987 that especially conveys the influence of music during the Cold War:

“I’ll never forget that. It was one of the most emotional performances I’ve ever done. I was in tears. They’d backed up the stage to the wall itself so that the wall was acting as our backdrop. We kind of heard that a few of the East Berliners might actually get the chance to hear the thing, but we didn’t realize in what numbers they would. And there were thousands on the other side that had come close to the wall. So it was like a double concert where the wall was the division. And we would hear them cheering and singing along from the other side. God, even now I get choked up. It was breaking my heart. I’d never done anything like that in my life, and I guess I never will again. When we did “Heroes” it really felt anthemic, almost like a prayer. However well we do it these days, it’s almost like walking through it compared to that night, because it meant so much more.”

Berliner’s on both sides of the Wall expressed their outrage.

The Berlin Wall came down just two years later; and, ever since, just like President Reagan’s speech, the role that the Concert for Berlin played, and particularly Bowie's performance there, has been frequently debated.

After the Berlin Wall fell, Bowie performed again—and sang that song to a unified city.

Bowie's performance, like Reagan's speech, may not have pre-determined the fall of the Berlin Wall, but both envisioned a world where the Wall did not exist, and certainly helped set the necessary conditions for it to happen.

He played there again in 2004.?It would be his final performance of “Heroes”.

In retrospect, Bowie’s “Heroes” was one—albeit integral—component in a unique, volatile mix that influenced the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War.

Another song that played a key role is a long-forgotten hiphop track by West Berlin group John F und die Gropiuslerchen. According to police reports, several protesters played “Berlin, Berlin, dein Herz kennt keine Mauern” (“Berlin, Berlin, your heart knows no walls”) on their tape recorders. The chorus, which samples a speech by ex-chancellor Willy Brandt, become their chant:?“Die Mauer muss weg” (“The wall must go”).

Bowie died from cancer in 2016 at the age of 69, but his role is still remembered in Germany and in Berlin today. ?

On the day David Bowie died, the German Foreign Ministry itself seemed to endorse his role in helping to bring down the wall —, tweeting giving him credit, and linking in the tweet to his live performance of "Heroes" that day in 1987: