It has been almost twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall – a wall which once divided East and West Germany – but has since marked a political revolution towards democracy, not only in Germany but also in the rest of Europe, and shocked the Western world. Such phenomenon seemed almost impossible to attain before especially in a country where the bureaucratics are both paranoid and inefficient. Once, individuals were being spied on by their own friends and neighbors, and where the way across the other border is through a small hole in the Berlin wall. Government service is not effective, and there are often lapses in public services. Despite these, the reunification of a Capitalist and Communist regime has shown how peace, though elusive, is possible for nations with differing ideologies.

For twenty eight years, the Berlin Wall served as a barrier to separate two governments – both politically and physically. It was once a symbol for the Iron Curtain, which was the dominant political ideology at that time, especially of the Communist Regime. During the Berlin Wall’s existence, about a hundred people were killed trying to cross the wall. The fall of the Berlin Wall began with a rumor about a possible demonstration of forty people. Such rallies were unheard of before, and almost nobody challenges the government, since freedom of expression was often suppressed. But it took a mass rally of people with four hundred candles for the phenomenon to take hold, spread and escalate across the German cities.

News of the mass demonstrations, people holding candles spread quickly, not only across Europe but across the globe, with images of people standing on the Wall being shown on television. In November 9, 1989, the wall opened unofficially and forever. Political pundits and analysts describe this Revolution as a symbol of the power of democracy, peace and sense of community among Germans and Europeans. The following year, Germany held its very first elections for the German Democratic Republic.

The fall of the Berlin Wall also marked an end to the Communist Regime in the Soviet Union. Prague, Bulgaria, Romania all experienced a change in government and a change in political power. The Baltic states established its independence from the Soviet in the 1990s. By the early nineties, communism is non-existent in Russia. The great thing about all of these is that it took forty candles – spa candles, natural candles, organic candles – to light up the whole of Germany and served as incendiary torches of freedom.