At the urging of others I visited the Newseum while I was in Washington D.C. last week. The Newseum is exactly what it sounds like, a News Museum.
The exhibits here feature a wide range of subjects including stories about how news is made, the history of journalism, major stories in history and how they were covered, and more. One of these exhibits featured the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. Here are several images from this exhibit.
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| A life-sized guard tower with machine gun turrets. |
After the Wall came down the West finally got a chance to see what was really happening behind the Iron Curtain. Alan Greenspan wrote in his autobiography that American leaders were well aware that East Germany was fairly far behind West Germany in GDP (a common measure of a nation's prosperity), but had no idea how far behind. They guessed that East Germany's GDP would turn out to be 70% of that of West Germany. They were shocked to discover the East Germany's GDP was less than half of this guesstimate. Now that the Wall had been dismantled, the hostage nation could finally rebuild.
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For what it's worth, I have a piece of the wall here on the bookshelf in my office, courtesy my brother and his wife who were there the day the wall came down. Are we really going to build another wall?
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Meantime life goes on... all around you.
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