Ed Note: Yesterday was the 24th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. (Has it really been that long?) Here, reprinted from the Chicago Schlager Music Review, is an interesting analysis of that event, punctuated with German pop music by some very hot German chicks:
By Tom Faber
CSMR Editor
CHICAGO, USA-- 24 years ago today, the Berlin Wall fell. Freedom loving people around the world celebrated as that infernal Russian-Soviet constructed scar on the face on humanity was, at long last, breached and would soon be dismantled.
Linda Hesse and Helene Fischer were both born behind the Iron Curtain |
The liberation of the oppressed people of the Soviet puppet state in the East of Germany on that fateful late autumn day was a direct result of the stalwart resistance to socialist oppression exerted by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and his chief ally, British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.
They rearmed the West and refused to listen to the voices of appeasement. As a result, communism collapsed.
Combined with timely, decisive action by German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, in 1989 the 16 million captives in the East of Germany,were at long last, reunited with their kindred spirits in the civilized Western world.
This historic date is of special interest to schlager music fans.
Had the wall not fallen in 1989, we might never have even heard of, much less enjoyed, the work of such schlager luminaries as Helene Fischer, Ella Endlich, Stepanie Hertel, Linda Hesse and Ute Freudenberg.
You see, all these girls were born behind the Iron Curtain. Had communism not been defeated and the wall not fallen they would never have been free to come West and develop their full potentialities. They would never have been free to share with the world their own wonderful magic.
The schlager superstar, Helene Fischer, was born of ethnic German parents in 1984 in the former Soviet concentration camp town of Krasnoyarsk, USSR. Linda Hesse, the cute new schlager pop phenom was born the very same year in Halberstadt, East Germany.
The theatrical multi-talented, Ella Endlich, was also born in 1984 in Weimar, East Germany. And Stephanie Hertel came to life in 1979 in Oelsnitz, in the communist East.
And the venerably traditional schlager performer, Ute Freudenberg, was also born in Weimar in 1956 -- 3 years after Soviet tanks brutally crushed a rebellion of workers in East Germany who were demanding freedom and reunification with the West.
After the fall of the wall, they all offered their formidable talents to music lovers in the reunited Europe and all have met with a well-deserved appreciation of their talents and consequently commensurate material reward.
So today it's great to celebrate the relegation of communism to, as President Reagan predicted, the ash heap of human history.
And it's a great day to celebrate these wonderful schlager music luminaries who have been rendered free to so greatly enhance our lives.
Thanks, President Reagan. Thanks, girls.
Here is Austrian schlager star, Simone's 1990 entry to the Eurovision Song Contest, Keine Mauern Mehr, No Walls Anywhere - a dynamic musical celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall:
And here, from Helene Fischer's 2012 Christmas Day ARD TV special, Helene introduces Linda Hesse and they join in singing Linda's smash 2012 hit, Ich bin ja kein Mann, (I'm not a man) Both girls were born behind the communist Iron Curtain and were freed by the fall of the Berlin wall which signaled the defeat of Soviet communism:
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Thank you for taking on the Ad Council - they make me want to scratch my eyes and ears out!
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