Brandenburg Gate existence of two German states and two Berlins, West Berlin mayor Richard von Weizsäcker said: "The German question is open as long as the Brandenburg Gate is closed." On 12 June 1987, U.S. President Ronald Reagan spoke to the West Berlin populace at the Brandenburg Gate, demanding the razing of the Berlin Wall. Addressing the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, Reagan said, On 25 December 1989, less than two months after the Berlin Wall began to come down, the conductor Leonard Bernstein conducted the Berlin Philharmonic in a version of the Ninth Symphony
Wide is the Gate Wide is the Gate Wide is the Gate is the fourth novel in Upton Sinclair's Lanny Budd series. First published in 1943, the story covers the period from 1934 to 1937. In this novel Lanny Budd's marriage to Irma breaks down after he imposes on her to help smuggle a revolutionary named Trudy out of Germany. Her husband Ludi had been arrested and vanished into the Gestapo prison system. Months later Lanny, at a séance, hears that Ludi is dead. He persuades Trudy that Ludi is dead and they secretly marry. Meanwhile, Lanny gets interested in Spain, and is in