Berlin will host the party of the decade tomorrow to mark the tenth anniversary of the fall of the Wall, with a free concert at the Brandenburg Gate and a spectacular light show that will illuminate the entire length of the former border between east and west. But the celebrations have already left an unpleasant taste in the mouths of many easterners, who complain that the revolution that brought down communism in 1989 is being hijacked by the western establishment.
At an official commemoration in the Reichstag, speakers will include the former Soviet leader, Mr Mikhail Gorbachev, former US president Mr George Bush, ex-chancellor Dr Helmut Kohl and his successor, Mr Gerhard Schroder. But it was only after angry protests last week that the organisers agreed to invite Dr Joachim Gauck, a former East German pastor who helped to organise the demonstrations against the communist state.
"If I had been officially invited, I'd have said no. It shows that Germany's political class think they are the heroes of November 9th, 1989," said Prof Jens Reich, the soft-spoken microbiologist who became one of the leaders of the East German opposition in the months preceding the destruction of the Wall.
In September 1989, along with two dozen other civil rights activists, Prof Reich founded the Neues Forum, the most effective opposition organisation established in East Germany. As thousands of easterners took advantage of Hungary's open border to flee to the West, opposition leaders, such as Prof Reich and the painter and peace activist Ms Baerbel Bohley, were determined to stay put and attempt to change society by organising people power.
"I used to get phone calls every day from many people who took to the streets all over the GDR and created their own little revolution because they were fed up with this state and they felt confident about doing it because we had given them courage," recalls Ms Bohley.
"But that has been forgotten very quickly. The governing politicians in Germany don't want to know about that. They really believe that they were the doers back then and that they were very important. Now they're celebrating themselves."
Ms Bohley and her colleagues in the civil rights movement fared badly in East Germany's first - and last - free elections in 1990 and she soon became a marginal figure, calling for secret police informers to be brought to justice and highlighting the dubious past of some leading politicians in the newly united Germany.
When ordinary East Germans took to the streets in the autumn of 1989, their motto was Wir sind das Volk - We are the People. Last week, a giant banner appeared on a skyscraper overlooking Berlin's Alexanderplatz - where half a million people protested on November 4th, 1989 - with the words Wir waren das Volk - We were the People.
The banner was erected by the local council, as an ironic expression of the disappointment many easterners feel about life in a united Germany. But many former civil rights activists are struck by a greater irony - the council is run by the Party of Democratic Socialism, the successor to the Socialist Unity Party that governed East Germany for 40 years.
