Protesters who are worried about traffic pollution threw eggs at Berlin's mayor Wednesday as he reopened a bridge linking east and west on the fifth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Few others showed interest in commemorations of the 1989 event that led to German unification, and there was no central ceremony.The luster of reunification has worn off for many Germans because of the high economic and social costs of the merger and its implications for Germany's position in post-Cold War Europe.
About 20 demonstrators were arrested for yelling and whistling at Mayor Eberhard Diepgen as he gave a speech at the Oberbaum Bridge under the protection of shield-carrying police. A green paint bomb hit the mayor's shoulder.
The Spree River bridge had been closed to motor vehicle traffic since the wall went up in 1961. It is the last major road link between east and west to be reopened.
"Street cars instead of autobahn!" 200 people shouted during the ceremony.
Fewer than a dozen people attended a wreath-laying ceremony outside the Reichstag parliament building memorializing the more than 370 East Germans killed trying to flee to the West.
Wednesday was also the 56th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the night Nazi thugs burned Jewish businesses and synagogues across Germany and dragged 20,000 Jews to concentration camps.
The head of Germany's Jewish community, Ignatz Bubis, urged the government to designate Nov. 9 a national day in memory of the 6 million European Jews killed in the Holocaust.