The German parliament has marked the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.<br /><br />The special ceremony in the Bundestag kicked off a weekend of events in the German capital.<br /><br />The parliament’s President, Nobert Lammert, said the wall’s demise was the culmination of many acts of protest across the former communist states of eastern Europe.<br /><br />“It was not a miracle, any more than a natural phenomenon. Rather it was the result of a peaceful revolution which was unprecedented in German history, which sped from one event to the next at a breathtaking pace over several months,” Lammert told the chamber.<br /><br />Singer, poet and former East German opposition member Wolf Biermann broke with parliamentary protocol by performing his protest song “Encouragement” on his guitar.<br /><br />The artist, who was expelled from the ex-GDR in 1976 and stripped of his East German citizenship, said the song had comforted dissidents locked up under the old communist government.<br /><br />Controversially, he attacked the modern far-left Die Linke party, which was formed out of East Germany’s former ruling communists, as remnants of the old regime.<br /><br />The commemorations continue in Berlin over the weekend.
