Monday, November 9th, marks the 20th anniversary of the opening of the Berlin Wall. The wall was erected by the East German government in 1961 to keep its citizens from fleeing to the West, and it became the defining symbol of the Cold War that existed between the USSR and the United States after WWII.
You can read and listen to President Ronald Reagan's "Tear Down This Wall" speech of June 12, 1987 here. You can also read and listen to or watch President John F. Kennedy's "Ich Bin Ein Berliner" speech of June 26, 1963.
The following books from our collection cover some of the legal and political issues involved in the subsequent unification of East and West Germany:
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Beyond the Wall: Germany’s Road to Unification by Elizabeth Pond
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The Imperfect Union: Constitutional Structures of German Unification by Peter E. Quint
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The Unification of Germany in International and Domestic Law by Ryszard W. Piotrowicz and Sam K. N. Blay
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Imperfect Justice: An East-West German Diary by Inga Markovits
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Dimensions of German Unification: Economic, Social, and Legal Analyses edited by A. Bradley Shingleton et al
