The Brandenburg Gate on November 9, 1989

FOR AS LONG AS there have been calendars, specific dates have marked significant historical and spiritual events in their respective societies. The Americans celebrate their independence on the fourth of July, the French mark the storming of the Bastille on the fourteenth of July, and the British commemorate the infamous Gunpowder Plot on the fifth of November. Every other country – and just about every religion – also celebrates certain days that changed the world. New dates can appear at any moment. In today’s America, the magic date of 9/11 now trumps all others and determines much of our national identity.

Germany is no exception to this phenomenon, although it is unique for having one day in its national calendar so pregnant with meaning that they have a special name for it: der Schicksalstag der Deutschen (the fateful day of the Germans). They mark this day not on 9/11 but on 11/9, i.e. on November 9. The events that have occurred on this day span the entire spectrum of human experience, from defeat to shame, from the profoundest horror to redemption and rebirth. It is the date itself that ties these seemingly random events into a neat package and gives both structure and an astonishing level of meaning to one of the most turbulent histories any nation has ever experienced – and inflicted on the rest of the world.

It wasn’t always this way, but November 9, 1848 happened to be the day that German revolutionary Robert Blum was executed by firing squad in Vienna. His death at the hand of reactionary Austrian soldiers marked the symbolic defeat of the Revolution of 1848, which set the cause of German democracy back by generations. Precisely seventy years later, as a new rebellion broke out among the soldiers and sailors of the defeated German Empire, Prince Max von Baden announced the abdication of the Kaiser even before that ill-fated monarch had come to a decision of his own, thus eliminating the monarchy forever. The brief “German Revolution” ushered in the ill-fated “Weimar Republic,” Germany’s star-crossed “republic without republicans.” What many Social Democrats and progressives regarded as the birth of democracy, conservative author Oswald Spengler called “the stupidest and most cowardly revolution in world history.”

Social Democratic leader Philipp Scheidemann proclaims "the German Republic" from a window of the Reichstag on November 9, 1918. Like Günter Schabowski 71 years later, Scheidemann made his spectacular proclamation without any authorization from above.

Five years later, Adolf Hitler took advantage of a right-wing political meeting scheduled on the eve of this troublesome anniversary at Munich’s Bürgerbräukeller to launch his “National Revolution” against the duly elected democratic government in Berlin. His march on Berlin the next day – November 9 – was stopped by police at Munich’s Feldherrnhalle monument, where sixteen of Hitler’s comrades were shot dead. When Hitler came to power, he declared November 8/9 to be a holiday that would eventually prove as familiar to Germans as July 4 is to Americans.

Nazi-era stamp commemorating Hitler's
abortive "Beer Hall Putsch" on November 9, 1923

Fifteen years later, Joseph Goebbels took advantage of the recent assassination of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by a Jewish man in Paris to launch the so-called Kristallnacht, whereby thousands of Jewish businesses and synagogues were destroyed and thousands of Jews were sent to concentration camps. This organized pogrom, while ostensibly carried out with Hitler’s knowledge, represented a calculated power grab by Goebbels and the symbolic beginning of the Nazis’ “Final Solution of the Jewish Question.” Coming as it did on the twentieth anniversary of the "Jewish" Revolution of 1918 and the fifteenth anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch, the timing was not entirely intentional but certainly highly convenient for Goebbels's propagandistic purposes.

Jewish shopkeeper sweeps up the fragments following
Goebbels's Kristallnacht on November 9, 1938

November 8/9, 1939 was the date when Hitler was assassinated and the world was liberated from Nazi tyranny – or it would have been, if the meticulously-laid plans of Georg Elser had come to fruition. Elser, a simple German worker without a clear ideological orientation who had realized early on that Hitler was going to plunge the world into a global war, chose this date because he knew for a fact that the normally restless and mistrustful Führer would deliver his annual speech in Munich’s Bürgerbräukeller on the evening of November 8. For months, working entirely on his own, Elser studied bomb-making, pilfered explosives from a mining operation, built his own timing device, and gradually hollowed out a detonation chamber in a column of the beer cellar next to where Hitler always delivered his speech. His preparations were utterly flawless and the bomb went off exactly as planned. Unfortunately for Elser and the rest of us, bad luck – or destiny – intervened in the form of bad weather, which prevented Hitler from flying and instead compelled him to take the train. This required Hitler to take an early train back to Berlin, cutting his speech short by just thirteen minutes. The blast killed eight people, seven of them Nazis. Elser was picked up at the Swiss border and was executed on Hitler’s personal orders in the last weeks of the war.

Georg Elser (1903-45) had scheduled Hitler's assassination for
the eve of November 9, 1939, just two months into World War II.
Foggy weather foiled his meticulously-laid plans. A slight
improvement in the weather that night could
have helped Elser save 60 million lives.

A mini-event occurred on November 9, 1974, when RAF terrorist Holger Meins died in prison during a hunger strike, making him into yet another martyr of the German radical left. But the most memorable November 9 of the post-war era is that of 1989, when a spectacular mistake by Politburo member Günter Schabowski at a live press conference led to the sudden and spontaneous opening of the Berlin Wall and the complete unravelling of the German Democratic Republic. This November 9 marked the symbolic end of the division of Europe and of the Cold War itself.

But just how important is the date? If the fall of the Berlin Wall had occurred, say, on October 31 – Reformation Day – Christians and political conservatives would clearly have depicted it as an example of true spiritual “reformation” and the end of a vast cycle of German history (it also would have pleased a lot of Lutherans!). If it had happened just one day later, on November 10, literature professors would have associated it with the birthday of poet and playwright Friedrich Schiller, much of whose work (including the “Ode to Joy” which Beethoven set to music in his Ninth Symphony) was dedicated to the ideals of freedom. Two day later, on November 11, people would either have associated it with the end of World War I, or else with Germany’s riotous 11/11 Mardi Gras traditions and perhaps have regarded the whole thing as a huge joke of history. As it is, however, Germans can wrap up their troubled history in a neat package that promises redemption and a new beginning for their nation – no longer as the model of order and organization, nor the focus of the world’s fear and loathing, but rather as the conscience of humanity, which appears to be a growing consensus among the country’s political class.

Just having returned from the lavish commemorative event at the Brandenburg Gate, I have to admit that the astounding peacefulness of the actual event twenty years ago tonight seems like nothing short of a miracle. Thousands of armed and indoctrinated border guards faced many more thousands of angry citizens demanding to be allowed to pass through the wall, many of whom were certainly spoiling for a fight. A single shot fired by a trigger-happy soldier – or even a handful of paving stones thrown at the police by restless demonstrators – could have transformed what we now celebrate as the “Peaceful Revolution” of November 9, 1989 into yet another “day of infamy” like Kristallnacht, thus putting an entirely different and even more sinister spin on Germany's already troubled history. Even as it is, this date is far too fraught with contradiction for it ever to be proclaimed a national holiday.

The peacefulness and common sense that prevailed that night and throughout this entire period truly give this date an inspiring quality which – I hope – can rub off an all of us. That is why in my opinion 11/9 is much better guide to us than 9/11. Call it “the audacity of hope” if you like. But I’ll always remember that magical night twenty years ago as an affirmation of life as opposed to 9/11’s focus on death and revenge, which can only weaken us and breed more death and revenge. As Henry David Thoreau once wrote, “In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high.” 11/9 is a mighty high target, and one that is well worth aiming at.