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Little wonder this [Beethoven's Ninth Symphony] was the work Leonard Bernstein chose to perform in the former East Berlin Schauspielhaus on Christmas Day, 1989, to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall, substituting the word "Freiheit" (freedom) for Schiller's "Freude" (joy). (The two words were as connected for Beethoven and Schiller as for Bernstein.) Earlier that same year, student protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square blared Beethoven's music over their loudspeakers as they stood up to armed Chinese troops.