Germany marked 35 years since the Berlin Wall fell with festivities on Saturday under the theme “Preserve Freedom!”, against the sombre backdrop of conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine and fears that democracy is under attack around the world.

The liberal ideals of 1989 “are not something we can take for granted”, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Friday, just days after his governing coalition collapsed.

“A look at our history and at the world around us shows this,” added Scholz, whose three-party alliance imploded the day Donald Trump was re-elected US president, plunging Germany into political turmoil and towards new elections.

November 9, 1989, is celebrated as the day East Germany opened the borders to the West after months of peaceful mass protests, paving the way for German reunification and the collapse of Soviet Communism.

That “joyful day” underlines the sombre fact “that freedom and democracy have never been a given”, Berlin mayor Kai Wegner told a commemoration service at the Berlin Wall Memorial on Saturday.

One Berliner who remembers the momentous events, retiree Jutta Krueger, 75, said it was “a shame” Germany’s political crisis had erupted just before the anniversary weekend. “But we should still really celebrate the fall of the Wall,” she said, hailing it as the moment East Germans could travel and “freedom had arrived throughout Germany”.

Saturday’s event at the Berlin Wall Memorial, which was attended by President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, honoured the at least 140 people killed trying to flee the Russian-backed German Democratic Republic (GDR) during the Cold War.

Enduring relevance

In the evening, a “freedom party” with a music and light show was to be held at Berlin’s iconic Brandenburg Gate, on the former path of the concrete barrier that had cut the city in two since 1961.

On Sunday, the Russian protest punk band Pussy Riot was to perform outside the former headquarters of the Stasi, former East Germany’s feared secret police.

Pro-democracy activists from around the world have been invited for the commemorations — including Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya and Iranian dissident Masih Alinejad.

Talks, performances and an open-air art exhibition will mark what culture minister Claudia Roth called “one of the most joyous moments in world history”. Replica placards from the 1989 protests are on display along four kilometres of the Wall’s route.

Among the art installations will be thousands of images created by citizens on the theme of “freedom”, to drive home the enduring relevance of the historical event.

Berlin’s top cultural official, Joe Chialo, said the theme was crucial “at a time when we are confronted by rising populism, disinformation and social division”.

Axel Klausmeier, head of the Berlin Wall Foundation, said the values of the 1989 protests were “the power bank for the defence of our democracy, which today is being gnawed at from the left and the right”.

‘Populism and division’

The fall of the Berlin Wall — a symbol of the Cold War and the division between an Eastern and a Western Bloc — contributed to the collapse of Communism in eastern Europe and the reunification of Germany a year later.

The 155-kilometre “wall of shame” was erected around West Berlin in 1961 to end an exodus of citizens from the Western Bloc enclave in Communist East Germany.

Most East Germans are grateful the GDR regime ended but many still have unhappy memories of the perceived arrogance of West Germans, and resentment lingers about a remaining gap in incomes and pensions.

These sentiments have been cited to explain strong support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in eastern Germany, and for the Russia-friendly, anti-capitalist BSW.

Strong gains for both at three state elections in the east in September highlighted enduring political divisions between eastern and western Germany, more than three decades after reunification.

This weekend also marks a darker chapter in German history.

During the Nazis’ Kristallnacht or Night of Broken Glass pogrom of November 9-10, 1938, at least 90 Jews were killed, tens of thousands were sent to concentration camps, countless properties were destroyed and 1,400 synagogues torched in Germany and Austria.

“It is very important for our society to remember the victims […] and learn the correct lessons from those events for our conduct today,” government spokesperson Christiane Hoffmann said on Friday.

Her comments came just days after several members of the AfD, which is anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim, were arrested as suspected members of a racist paramilitary group that practised urban warfare drills.