Archivist’s Pick: When the Wall Came Tumbling Down

Here’s this month’s piece from the Drucker Institute’s archivist, Bridget Lawlor. By drawing lessons from the vast treasure trove of papers and other objects that are collected in Peter Drucker’s achives, Bridget is giving new life to decades-old material.

In this short audio recording of a Nov. 7, 1989 question-and-answer session at Claremont Graduate University, Peter Drucker receives several questions regarding civil unrest in East Berlin. Drucker remarks that the events in East Germany were “totally unprecedented in human history.” He believed them to be unique because the world was witnessing the “collapsing of an empire from within with no external war, no aggression, no civil war, no bloodshed or very little.”

Two days later, on Nov. 9, the spokesman for East Berlin’s Communist Party announced the change in his city’s relationship with the West. Beginning at midnight, the party representative announced, citizens of East Berlin were free to cross the country’s borders. The Berlin Wall had fallen.

Enjoy the one minute excerpt below. (And click here to listen to the full Drucker lecture.)