Germany launches celebration weekend for Berlin Wall's fall

Germany kicks off celebrations Friday marking the 25th anniversary of the epochal fall of the Berlin Wall, set to culminate with rock stars and veteran freedom activists joining a millions-strong crowd.
      
Chancellor Angela Merkel, who grew up in communist East Germany, will lead three days of commemorations for those killed trying to flee the repressive state, leading up to a giant festival Sunday marking the joyous breach of Europe's Cold War division on November 9, 1989.
      
"I think you never forget how you felt that day -- at least I will never forget it," Merkel, 60, said in a recent podcast.
      
"I had to wait 35 years for that feeling of liberty. It changed my life."       

The festivities under the banner "Courage for Freedom" will remember the peaceful revolution that led communist authorities to finally open the border after 28 years in which Easterners were prisoners of their own country.
      
Germany would reunite within the year, on October 3, 1990.
      
Compared to previous anniversaries, the organisation this time has been more grassroots, with Berlin embracing its image as an international capital of the arts.
      
Celebrations will begin with the launch of an ambitious installation featuring 8,000 illuminated white balloons pegged to the ground along a 15-kilometre (nine-mile) stretch of the Wall's former 155-kilometre path.
      
The glowing orbs, which from above will look like a long string of pearls, are to be released Sunday from their ropes and set free into the night sky, to the stirring strains of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy".
      
Dissident singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann, who was kicked out of East Germany in 1976 for his critical songs, will...