In the last century, perhaps the greatest symbol of people’s passion for freedom was the partitioning of East Germany after the communist takeover.
Because of the amount of land taken out of private hands and forced into collective control and the repression of private trade in the German Democratic Republic (as East Germany was called in 1958) thousands of refugees fled to the west. In 1959, 144,000 fled. But when the forced collective went from 45% to 85%, the number of refugees rose to 199,000 in 1960. The first seven months of 1961, 207,000 left Eastern Germany including a huge number of the Nation’s brightest minds – doctors, dentists, engineers, and teachers.
By 1961 it is estimated 2.7 million had left since the German Democratic Republic had been established in 1949. In June of 1961 alone, 30,000 refugees fled. On August 13, 1961, a Sunday morning, under the communist leadership of Erich Honecker, the GDR began to block off Eastern Berlin with paving stones, barricades, and barbed wire. Railway and subway services to West Berlin were halted, even for the 60,000 or so commuters who worked in West Berlin. In a few days the barricades began to be replaced by a concrete wall.
One year after the first barricades went up, a young 18-year-old man named Peter Fechter was the first of more than a hundred to be shot and killed while trying to escape. The higher the wall was built, the more guards stationed to watch, the wider the “death area” behind the wall, the deeper the trench to stop vehicles, the more attempts there were to escape. In Berlin, the wall stretched 107 kilometers, but many escaped by tunneling under the wall. Before the houses were evacuated that bordered the wall, many leaped from the windows of buildings into nets or to the pavement. Soon the windows of buildings were bricked shut; next the houses were demolished. Patrol trucks, watch dogs, watchtowers, bunkers and trenches were added to the border area. Then, behind the wall, a second wall was constructed. Yet people continued to escape.
The Berlin Wall
Two families secretly bought small amounts of nylon cloth, enough to eventually sew together a hot air balloon. They waited until midnight then drove to a deserted field and launched their balloon; it remained aloft for 23 minutes before the burner died, but that was long enough to carry four adults and four children to their freedom. Back in East Germany, the sale of nylon was restricted and there was a ban on the sale of rope and twine.
No one knows exactly how many people escaped in the twenty-eight years the Berlin Wall stood. The wall became a symbol of all obstructions to freedom instead of stopping the free flow of people and ideas, it provided a tangible object that epitomized the barriers which the human spirit felt challenged to conquer.
Brandenburg Gate
It was a sentence from President Kennedy’s speech when visiting Berlin in June of 1962 that gave words to the struggle for freedom. Throwing out the speech given him by speechwriters, Kennedy wrote a new one while riding through the streets of West Berlin where between one and two million Germans roared and cheered for four hours. At checkpoint Charlie he climbed alone up to the viewing stand. Suddenly, in a far-off window in an Eastern side apartment three women appeared waving handkerchiefs – a dangerous and risky gesture. Kennedy, realizing their risk, stood in tribute to those three. Then he squared his shoulders and began the speech that let the world know how deeply innate is the conquering spirit that longs for freedom, the speech ending with the historic words: “Ich bin ein Berliner.” He was saying that we were all are Berliners at heart because we all long to be free.
Twenty-five years later Ronald Reagan stood at the Brandenburg Gate of the Berlin Wall in the midst of a cold war that felt like the whole world was walking a tight-rope of fear and anxiety. While West Berlin prepared to celebrate the 750th anniversary of the founding of Berlin, and East Berlin demonstrated against a wall that had stood for a quarter century, Reagan delivered some lines that had been opposed by most of the American diplomats but had been insisted on by President Reagan.
General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come
here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.
Two years later the wall was torn down by the people who wanted freedom.
Down through history, dictators and philosophies have attempted to enslave the human spirit. Blood has flowed like a river in the fight to regain human dignity. The Magna Carta, The Bill of Rights, The Declaration of Independence, and the Emancipation Proclamation have taken their place with other great instruments of liberation that bear testimony to the human passion for freedom. The official seals of governments have burned onto these documents that have deeply affected our own way of life.
But never has there been a document of freedom with the power to alter the course of history and change human lives like the declaration that bears the bloodstained brand of a cross. And this seal is burned, not on a piece of paper, but on the very soul of every spirit enslaved by sin. The document reads as a simple invitation: “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.”
Prison bars, heavy chains, dungeons, concentration camps and shackles: none of these can hold a candle to the bondage of the human soul devised by the father of lies. But no release, no emancipation, no pardon can bring freedom like the freedom bought at Calvary. That is freedom, indeed! Let freedom ring!
Deep within, the heart has always known that there is freedom
Somehow breathed into the very soul of life.
The prisoner, the powerless, the slave have always known it;
There’s just something that keeps reaching for the sky.
Even life begins because a baby fights for freedom,
And songs we love to sing have freedom’s theme;
Some have walked through fire and flood to find a place of freedom,
And some faced hell itself for freedom’s dream.
Let freedom ring wherever minds know what it means to be in chains.
Let freedom ring wherever hearts know pain.
Let freedom echo through the lonely streets where prisons have no key –
We can be free and we can sing,
“Let freedom ring!”
God built freedom into every fiber of creation,
And He meant for us to all be free and whole;
But when my Lord brought freedom with the blood of His redemption,
His cross stamped “pardoned” on my very soul!
I’ll sing it out with every breath and let the whole world hear it –
This hallelujah anthem of the free!
Iron bars and heavy chains can never hold us captive;
The Son has made us free and free indeed!
Let freedom ring down through the ages from a Hill called Calvary!
Let freedom ring wherever hearts know pain.
Let freedom echo through the lonely streets where prisons have no key --
We can be free and we can sing:
“Let freedom ring!
Lyric: Gloria Gaither; Music: Bill Gaither
© Gaither Music Company 1982
