For this reason, when the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy decided to present a segment of the Berlin Wall to mark the 20th anniversary of its destruction, alongside a new exhibition on democracy and human rights in Taipei, the 228 Memorial Foundation and the German Institute in Taipei offered their help to outreach efforts to local citizens.

Without a doubt, Brigitt Ory, director-general of the German Institute in Taiwan, believes that reaching out to Taiwanese is crucial to preserving the memory and inspiration of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Speaking with The China Post on her experience in Germany in November 1989, when she was still a student in political science, she recalled how the event was something that she hadn't expected.

“Oh! This is not possible, what is happening,” she remembered saying on the spur of the moment, while watching the breaking news on television that night.

“We didn't realize what was happening,” she said.

The Berlin Wall burst open almost twenty years ago after months of rising tension in East Germany. Many rushed immediately to border crossings after a Communist East German government leader told a news conference they were free to travel to the West — and vice versa.

Asked about her impressions of East Berlin during her visit for New Year's Eve celebrations that year, which peacefully gathered around two million people near the Brandenburg Gate, she notes her surprise at discovering the buildings, the old and nice museums and the people.

“I wasn't shocked, I was happy, it was magical, because I'd never thought in my lifetime I would be so happy,” she said.

Also, she recollected the distinctive smell of the East side of the city as citizens used different heating systems in the winter — mostly solid fuels.

“I remember the air was different and the streets covered with stones,” she pointed out.

Meanwhile, as the Berlin Wall was peacefully swept away in the months that followed, the two Germanies began a reunification process that was completed 11 months later in 1990 — to the surprise of some political commentators.

“You couldn't go back,” she went on,“you couldn't turn back time, no way, it was impossible. I think in the East and also in the West, there were some politicians who said 'Oh! Maybe not so fast!' but how could you say that?”

“German unification and European integration are just two sides of the same coin; because that was clear from the beginning, deep integration in Europe could be a political solution for the two Germanies,” she continued.

To Brigitt Ory, there was no doubt of the success of a peaceful reunification from the outset; the series of events that first triggered the fall of the Berlin Wall were surprisingly peacefull.

“I think the East German security was also surprised that it was so peaceful, and they couldn't use violence against these peaceful people,” she said.

Ory remarked that “if they would just have been given the order to use their guns, [the security forces] would have done this. But they never came out with this order, this is quite interesting.”

Contrary to the prediction of Erich Honecker, the longtime leader of East Germany, who in January 1989 said the wall would stand for a “hundred more years” if the conditions which had caused its construction did not change, she stressed that “such conditions” might have changed progressively.

The Wall began as a cordon of barbed wire thrown up by communist guards early on August 13, 1961, to stem a loss of skilled workers and professionals drawn by West Germany's post-war “economic miracle.”

Families were split, houses demolished and roads truncated for what mutated over years into two parallel walls separated by a raked sandy “death strip” where at least 136 people were killed trying to cross to the West.