Diplomatic documents · 1989–1990
The perception of German reunification in international diplomatic documents
Quaderni di Dodis 12 · Bern 2019
Berlin 1986: Lklundin, CC BY-SA 4.0
How the world watched the Wall come down
The documents were written between 14 September 1989 and 11 November 1990, from the refugee crisis before the Wall opened to the weeks after German unity. They come from embassies in Bonn and East Berlin, from other missions in Berlin, from posts further afield — among them Warsaw, Paris and Tel Aviv — and from ministries and other offices in the capitals. Telegrams, memos, minutes and letters show how events were perceived at the time, often before anyone knew how the story would end.
This digital edition presents documents from the volume When the Wall Came Down. The Perception of German Reunification in International Diplomatic Documents 1989–1990 (Quaderni di Dodis 12), edited by Marc Dierikx and Sacha Zala and published by Diplomatic Documents of Switzerland (Dodis), Bern, and the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History, Munich–Berlin, 2019.
The edition comprises 63 documents from eleven countries — Austria, Canada, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States — written in eight languages. German, English and French documents appear in the original, all others in English translation.
The volume was released under a CC BY licence and is reproduced here for demonstration purposes. The original publication is on Dodis.
Berlin Wall graffiti 1986: Nancy Wong, CC BY-SA 4.0
Eleven countries
Each country contributed a selection of documents on how it saw the fall of the Wall and German reunification. Choose a country to follow its documents through the chronicle.
- 63Documents
- 11Countries
- 8Languages
- 15Months