Springsteen and the Berlin Wall

November 9, 1989 is considered the day that the Berlin Wall collapsed.

Nineteen years later, a new twist is being put into the history of the fall.

Reuters reports that a 1988 concert by Bruce Springsteen in East Berlin sparked East Germans to rebel.

When Bruce Springsteen spoke out against the Berlin Wall at the biggest concert in East German history in 1988, no one in the crowd of 160,000 had the faintest idea that the symbol of the Cold War would soon be history.

But now — 20 years after the American rock star went behind the Iron Curtain — organizers, historians and people who witnessed it say his message came at a critical juncture in German history in the run-up to the Wall’s collapse.

...Springsteen, an influential songwriter and singer whose lyrics are often about people struggling, got permission at long last to perform in East Berlin in 1988.

Even though his songs are full of emotion and politics, East Germany had welcomed him as a “hero of the working class.” The Communists may have unwittingly created an evening that did more to change East Germany than Woodstock did to the United States.

Annoyed at the billing “Concert for Nicaragua” that Communist East German leaders stamped on his July 19 performance, Springsteen stopped halfway through the three-hour show for a short speech — in heavily accented German:

“I want to tell you I’m not here for or against any government,” Springsteen said, as he pointedly introduced his rendition of the Bob Dylan ballad “Chimes of Freedom.”

“I came to play rock ’n’ roll for you East Berliners in the hope that one day all the barriers will be torn down.”

...Other Americans had spoken out against the Wall in Berlin.

But both presidents John F. Kennedy in 1963 (“Ich bin ein Berliner”) and Ronald Reagan in 1987 (“Tear down this Wall”) gave their addresses in West Berlin.

Springsteen delivered his words in the heart of East Berlin, where Communist East Germany had long portrayed the United States as a decadent and belligerent “class enemy.”

“Springsteen’s concert and speech certainly contributed in a larger sense to the events leading up to the fall of the Wall,” said Gerd Dietrich, a historian at Berlin’s Humboldt University.

Not to take anything away from the impact of Western artists performing in East Berlin and specifically that Springsteen concert, but to trace the fall of the Berlin Wall to that concert is more than a bit over the top.

Comparing Springsteen's role in defeating Soviet oppression to the roles played by Kennedy and Reagan is really a stretch.

The tremendous influence that Pope John Paul II had on the people oppressed under Soviet domination, the unfaltering steadfastness of Ronald Reagan in standing up for freedom and liberty, as well as the era of "perestroika" ushered in by Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, were far more significant to bringing about the toppling of the Wall than a single concert.

Let's get a grip.