In the autumn of 1989 I was part of the worldwide television audience that watched the fall of the Berlin Wall with astonished incredulity. I had grown up in postwar West Germany with the conviction that the Berlin Wall, and the division of the country and of Europe, were the forever-cemented historical outcome of National Socialism and of the Second World War. The historic events of 1989 then taught me the lesson that history is contingent and unpredictable.