Berlin • Germany on Sunday celebrates the 25th anniversary of the night the Berlin Wall fell, a pivotal moment in the collapse of communism and the start of the country's emergence as the major power at the heart of Europe.
A 9-mile chain of lighted balloons along the former border will be released into the air early Sunday evening — around the time on Nov. 9, 1989, when a garbled announcement by a senior communist official set off the chain of events that brought down the Cold War's most potent symbol.
The opening of East Germany's fortified frontier capped months of ferment across eastern and central Europe that had already ushered in Poland's first post-communist prime minister and prompted Hungary to cut open its border fence.