The twentieth-fifth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall happened last November; that was an important event in the history of the modern world; among other things it indicated the end of the Cold War (thought it should be considered the start of the end) which had lasted 45 years or so and was a major event of the Twentieth Century. The Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989, which was also — well-remembered in Germany — the fifty-first anniversary of Kristallnacht, which was the first big foreshadowing of the Holocaust. The astrological indicator of the fall of the Berlin Wall was a Saturn-Neptune conjunction, and it will be useful to look at hard aspect of those two planets to shed further light on that event, which we did recently.
Kristallnacht is also know, especially in the English-speaking world, as The Night of the Broken Glass. It started in Gernany on the night of November 9, 1938 and extended into the next day, and in places further in time. The name comes from all the broken glass left in the streets after synagogues were destroyed, the windows of Jewish-owned stores were broken, tens of thousands of Jewish citizens were arrested, and over one hundred — true figures are hard to come by, but the official figure is 91 — people were killed. German law soon cracked down on Jews, and it became clear that the Nazis were going to make life unbearable for Jewish people. Concentration camps were enlarged. The seeds of the Holocaust were planted that evening. It is a date of some significance to the German people, and the 75th anniversary was commemorated in 2013.
In the chart for Kristalnacht we immediately notice two oppositions: Sun and Node opposite Uranus — unexpected events on this day will affect the whole world — and Mars opposite Saturn, which is a push-pull indication which suggests that energy will be mis-applied. Another interpretation of Mars-Saturn is disciplined energy, but unfortunately that is difficult to manifest.
In human life the Saturn Return is a common astrological concept. The first Saturn Return, at ages 28 to 30, marks the coming of real adulthood, unlike the legal adulthood that happens at 21, three -quarters of a Saturn Cycle. But as one approaches the Saturn Return, one can feel that changes are taking place. A person might suddenly decide to move, get married, or get divorced. It is a significant milestone, and it the basis for Gail Sheehy’s book Passages and the old saying “Never Trust Anyone Over Thirty” said by those in the Sixties who were under Thirty. But clearly something important happens as one nears the age of thirty. The point is that the Berlin wall that was approaching its thirtieth birthday when it was torn down.
The Berlin Wall — a wall separating East and West Berlin — was constructed starting on August 13, 1961. The reason, according to Americans, was to keep the people of East Berlin from escaping to the better jobs available in West Berlin. East Berlin was at that time under control of the Communists, allied with Nikita Khrushchev, the Premier of the Soviet Union, whereas West Berlin was allied with the United States, Britain, and France, the three Western powers that controlled Germany. That American story of why the Wall was build leaves out the context, as is usually the case with a one-sided view of events.
It all started, obviously, with World War II. During that war, Germany killed something on the order of twenty million civilians of the Soviet Union as well as some civilians of Britain, which was attacked by air, and France, which was occupied. The United States lost no civilians, at least in the home country, to the Germans. After the war Germany was divided between the four powers. Reparations were suppose to be paid by Germany to the countries that lost people and goods to Germany during the war, but unfortunately this policy was not really followed. Then, after John Kennedy won the 1960 Presidential election in America by decrying a fictitious missile gap in favor of the Soviet Union, and otherwise tried to insult the Soviets, the Cold War took a more negative turn. After a June 1961 summit in Vienna between the US and the USSR was unable to settle differences, US officials considered a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union for December of 1963. Such a plan was rejected by the President, but he increased the defense budget and expanded the draft calls. East Germany responded by building a wall, first of barbed wire and later replaced with concrete. Thus the Berlin Wall, a symbol of the Cold War, was born.
Looking at the chart for the birth of the Berlin Wall, we see Jupiter just past a conjunction with Saturn. This conjunction takes place every twenty years, and in recent centuries the conjunction happens near the beginning of even decades (1920, 1940, …). This was the beginning of the decade of the Sixties, but notice that the Uranus Pluto conjunction is a long way from exact, it will takes several years for that to manifest. Note the tight Sun-mercury conjunction: news of this event rapidly reached the world. These two planets are loosly conjoined with Uranus: this event was unexpected and, at the time, revolutionary.
The Berlin Wall lasted the remainder of the Cold War, and it destruction was a symbol of the end of the Cold War, though few realized it at the time. The year 1989 saw the overthrow of Communist regimes in many countries, such as the notably one in Poland that year. Starting that summer East Berliners were travelling to Hungary, who then refused to return to East Berlin. The long-time leader of East Germany resigned earlier that year. On November 9 it was announced that the borders between East and West Berlin were open. People of East Berlin gathered at the Wall. The demolition of the Wall started that evening and continued for weeks.
In the chart for the fall of the Berlin Wall, notice the Saturn-Neptune conjunction, which was also prominent in the discussion of the Korean War and was discussed in much detail a month ago. As was said then, Saturn Neptune seems to indicate what was once considered a good idea is now seen as something to end as soon as possible. Again, we have a Sun-Mercury conjunction, and again news of this event spread widely, but in this case those two planets are conjoined to Pluto, which indicates wide-scale changes or destruction of the old. And it was.