Several leading overseas academics will be in Dunedin this weekend to attend a University of Otago conference devoted to the fall of the Berlin Wall, 20 years ago.
On November 9, 1989, thousands of East Berliners gathered and demanded the immediate opening of the border.
Then, in dramatic scenes, they began clambering over the wall that had separated East from West Berlin since 1961 and, in doing so, changed the history of Germany, Europe and the world forever.
Historian Prof Mary Fulbrook, of University College, London; Prof Ruediger Steinmetz, of Leipzig; and Berlin-based political scientist Prof Michael Zuern are keynote speakers at the three-day conference, organised by the Otago University politics department and the German programme.
The conference starts on Sunday and explores the cultural, media-related and political effects of the wall's demise.
