Berlin celebrated the 20th anniversary of the fall of its notorious wall last night with an emotionally tone-deaf decision to erect another one around a U2 pop concert dedicated to freedom.

True, there were no minefields or watchtowers, but the new temporary wall erected before the performance certainly sent the wrong signals.

Only 10,000 fans in possession of previously allocated free tickets were allowed to pass through the checkpoints — yes, checkpoints — to listen to the Irish band.

“It’s completely ridiculous that they are blocking the view,” said Louis-Pierre Boily, 23, a Canadian who failed to get tickets.

U2, in Berlin for the MTV European Music Awards, agreed to play in front of the Brandenburg Gate as part of the Wall festivities which culminate on November 9 — the day the East German regime allowed its citizens to pour across the frontier.

On Monday Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, President Sarkozy of France, President Medvedev of Russia and Gordon Brown will troop to the gate to mark the historic turning point.

By that time, U2 will have moved on and the background music will be provided by Bon Jovi.

The U2 event was seen by Germany as a deeply significant start to the festivities. The band’s poignant lyrics — I have run, I have crawled, I have scaled these city walls — were seen as full of political significance, speaking directly to the East-West German divide.

It is enough for a band to mention the word wall or freedom for it to be taken up by hundreds of thousands of German fans. The Germans take this so much to heart that even David Hasselhoff, the crooning star of Knight Rider and Baywatch, is still venerated for his song Looking for Freedom.

It was thus a bit of a blow to the zeitgeist when the 2m wall — no more than a metal safety barrier covered with tarpaulin — was run up. Fans of U2 who had once chanted “We are the people” in anti-regime demonstrations, said that they were being treated like second-class citizens.

“It is a big event,” said Frank Henkel, the parliamentary head in Berlin of the Christian Democrats. “It would be great if the organisers could avoid barriers of any kind.”

The climax of the Berlin Wall celebration will involve setting up over 1,000 Spiro foam dominoes around the German parliament building, the Reichstag.

They will trace the Berlin Wall through part of the centre of the city. At a signal from the Chancellor, Angela Merkel, they will be toppled. The organisers have promised the biggest firework display of recent times.

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