Hello and welcome to the witness history podcast with me, Ilona Tola. Today I'm taking you

back to the newly reunited Germany of 1991 and the vote to decide which city would become

the country's capital. Two sides fought ferociously. Bonn to retain the capital status it held

in West Germany against the historic capital in Berlin. It's the 20th of June 1991 and the German

Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble is at the makeshift government building the Vasawek in Bonn.

He's about to give one of the most important speeches of his career, arguing that Berlin has to be

made the capital of the new reunified Germany. And then about 45 minutes before the session I got

myself a coffee and lit up my pipe and I thought about how to start my speech because the beginning

is the most important part. After World War II when Germany was split into two halves,

lawmakers decided that the small and unheralded city of Bonn should become the temporary capital

of West Germany. And it stayed that way as it became clear that the division of the country between

capitalist West and communist East was there to stay. Bonn thrived as the capital of West Germany

which underwent an economic miracle to recover from the Second World War. The world looked at a small

modest Bonn who would later become the mayor of the city. Queen Elizabeth was visiting

as John of Kennedy, Michael Gorbachev and so on and so on. A lot of people and the citizens of Bonn

passed in the splendor and they did well because the federal government provided jobs, prosperity and

left-wing cultural life. Berlin, located east of the border, was separated in two by the Berlin Wall.

This giant scar across the landscape of the German political aggression and a pretty nasty piece

of calculated inhumanity to boot. But in 1989 the fall of the wall made headlines around the world.

Bulldozers breaking holes in the Berlin Wall, the most sinister, fortified border in the world.

The iron curtain opened. So the re-unifying itself, post-war order in Europe is now collapsing.

Are you happy? Yes, I am happy. Marvelous. I think it's marvelous.

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