Berlin Wall
Berlin Wall is one of the most famous landmarks of the German capital. To see it, the former state border of the GDR with West Berlin, thousands of foreign tourists arrive every year, including from Russia and other CIS countries. Despite the fact that from the former Berlin Wall, which stood for 28 years and three decades ago destroyed, only a small section of 1.3 kilometers long remains, interest in this historical monument is as lively and genuine as it was at the end of the XX century.
Video: Berlin Wall 25 years later
Contents- Highlights
- What preceded the construction
- Erection of the Berlin Wall
What the odious border looked like - The fall and destruction of the wall
- The Berlin Wall today
- How to get there
Highlights
What preceded the construction
At the time the wall was built, the two Germanies, the FRG and the GDR, were still very young entities and there was no clearly marked border between them on the ground. The same was true of Berlin, whose division into eastern and western parts was more legal than real. This transparency led to conflicts at the political level and a massive outflow of specialists from the Soviet zone of occupation to the West. This was not surprising: the Federal Republic paid more, so East Germans (Ossis) preferred to work there and simply fled from the “socialist paradise”. At the same time, the two states that emerged on the territory of the former Reich after World War II, to put it mildly, were not friendly with each other, which led to a serious aggravation of the situation around the once common capital – Berlin.
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In total, there have been several so-called Berlin crises during the existence of both Germanys. The first two occurred in 1948-1949 and 1953. The third one broke out in 1958 and lasted three years: it was particularly tense. By this time, the eastern districts of Berlin, while legally remaining under Soviet occupation, were actually controlled by the GDR. The rest of the city, both de jure and de facto, was under the rule of the Americans, British and French. The Soviet Union demanded free city status for West Berlin. The anti-Hitler coalition allies rejected these demands, fearing that the enclave might later be annexed to the GDR and there would be nothing they could do..
The situation was also negatively affected by the skewed economic policy pursued by the government of the German Democratic Republic led by Walter Ulbricht. It sought to “catch up and overtake” the FRG and, it seems, was ready to sacrifice anything to achieve the goal. Following the example of the USSR, collective farms were forcibly created in the agricultural sector, and labor standards were raised for workers in the cities. However, the low wages and generally low standard of living forced East Germans to seek a better life in the West, and people fled en masse. In 1960 alone, about 400,000 people left their homeland. The leadership was well aware that if this process was not stopped, the young state would have a long life.
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What to do in such a difficult situation? Over this puzzled at the highest level: August 3, 1961 at an emergency meeting in Moscow gathered the first persons of the countries that were members of the Warsaw Pact. President Ulbricht believed that closing the border with West Berlin was the only way out. The Allies did not object, but had little idea how to put it into practice. Nikita Khrushchev, first secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, suggested two options. The first – an air barrier – was eventually rejected by the negotiators, as it was fraught with problems in the international arena, and above all complications with the United States. The second option remained – a wall that would divide Berlin in two. They decided to settle on it.
Erection of the Berlin Wall
The appearance of a physical border between the two parts of Berlin came as a complete surprise to the population. It all began on the night of August 13, 1961, when GDR troops were pulled to the notional dividing line. They promptly, with the help of barbed wire, closed all sections of the border within the city limits. The military ordered the Berliners, who gathered on both sides of the border, to disperse, but people did not listen to them. There is no telling what this spontaneous rally would have turned into had it not been for the water cannons brought in by the authorities, which they used to hit the crowd, dispersing it in less than an hour.
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What the odious border looked like
The border, which could only be compared to a fortress gate, was more than just a wall. It was a complex construction consisting of a concrete structure (106 kilometers long and an average height of 3.6 meters) and two types of fences. The first was of metal mesh (66.5 km) and the second was of barbed wire (127.5 km) stretched over a wall through which voltage was allowed to flow. In case of an attempt to penetrate through it, signal flares were triggered, and the border guards were immediately sent to the place of illegal crossing of the Berlin Wall. Meeting them, as you can imagine, turned out to be big trouble for the trespassers.
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After the resignation of long-time leader Erich Honecker and those close to him, the outflow of people to the West became even greater, and this fact only emphasized the meaninglessness of the existence of the Berlin Wall. On November 9, 1989, it was announced on television that the Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED had decided to lift the restrictions on border crossings with West Berlin and the FRG. The Ossis did not wait for the new regulations to come into force, and in the evening of the same day rushed to the ominous structure. The border guards tried to push back the crowd with the already tried and tested means – water cannons, but eventually gave in to the pressure and opened the border. On the other side of the border, people also gathered, rushing into East Berlin. The inhabitants of the divided city hugged each other, laughed and cried with happiness – for the first time in thirty years!
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The date December 22, 1989 became a landmark: on that memorable day the Brandenburg Gate was opened for passage. As for the Berlin Wall itself, it was still standing, but not much of its former intimidating appearance remained. In some places it was already broken, in some places it was painted with a lot of graffiti. People had drawn pictures and left inscriptions on it. Not only tourists, but also the townspeople themselves could not deny themselves the desire to break off at least one piece of the wall as a souvenir, realizing that it was not just a souvenir, but a priceless historical artifact. All the more so because the wall was soon torn down, which happened a few months after the unification of the FRG and GDR into a single state on the night of October 3, 1990.
.The Berlin Wall today
An object like the Berlin Wall, having ceased to exist physically, could not disappear without a trace. After it left an unkind memory, which is unlikely to be erased from the public consciousness. And it is hardly worth forgetting such sad lessons of history, which are necessary to prevent similar things in the future. This border didn’t just divide the whole city – it became a place sprinkled with the blood of innocent people who were desperately trying to escape from the totalitarian state, but died while crossing it. The exact number of victims is still unknown to this day. According to the official statistics of the former GDR, there were 125 people. A number of other sources give this figure: 192 people. However, there is every reason to believe that these figures are clearly understated. If we believe some media, referring to the archives of the Stasi (East Germany’s secret police), the number of dead is 1,245.
.The innocent victims of the political confrontation were dedicated a large part of the Berlin Wall memorial complex, opened on May 21, 2010, which was named “Window of Memory”. The monument, made of rusted steel, weighs about a ton. Several rows of black-and-white photos of the dead are mounted on it. Some found their deaths by jumping from the windows of houses on Bernauer Strasse – the same ones that were later bricked up. Others died trying to move from East Berlin to the western part of the city. The memorial, located on Bernauer Straße, was completed in 2012 and covers an area of 4 hectares. The Reconciliation Chapel, erected in 2000 on the site of the church of the same name, which was blown up in 1985, became a part of it. The construction of the complex – its initiator was the pastor of the Evangelical Church Manfred Fischer – cost the city treasury 28 million euros. But can historical memory be measured in money?
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The surviving fragment of the 1316-meter-long Berlin Wall remains a living reminder of the tragic times of division and confrontation. When the border embodied in concrete fell, artists from all over the world rushed here, inspired by the spirit of freedom. They painted the remaining section of the wall with their paintings. So suddenly and completely spontaneously, an entire open-air art gallery called the East Side Gallery emerged, which translates as “East Side Gallery”. The result of spontaneous creativity was the appearance of 106 paintings united by the theme of the political détente of 1989-1990 in East Germany. The most famous and recognizable work was a mural made by our compatriot Dmitry Vrubel. The artist captured in graffiti the famous kiss of Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, and Erich Honecker, First Secretary of the SED Central Committee.
Separate mention should also be made of the former Checkpoint Charlie (Checkpoint Charlie) on Friedrichstrasse, the most famous of the three checkpoints under American control. Only high-ranking officials could cross the border through Checkpoint Charlie. Attempts by ordinary Germans to enter West Berlin illegally from here were brutally suppressed by GDR border guards, who fired on every intruder without warning.
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At the above-mentioned border crossing there is now the Berlin Wall Museum, among the exhibits of which are various equipment and devices with which the inhabitants of the “socialist paradise” tried to escape to “rotting capitalism”. These are parachutes, paragliders, small submarines and even armored cars and balloons. In the collection there are a lot of photos depicting watchtowers, bunkers, technical means of warning and many other things, for which the Berlin Wall became infamous throughout the civilized world. Relatives of Berliners who died trying to cross the wall often come here.
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One popular exhibit is Soviet and American soldiers looking at each other, with portraits of them placed in light boxes (by artist Frank Thiel). Another famous exposition – “From Gandhi to Valensa” – is devoted to the theme of human struggle for civil rights, but only by peaceful means, without violence and bloodshed. The history of Checkpoint Charlie itself is told in an open-air exposition: comments to the photos are available both in German and in Russian. The museum will also show tourists a documentary about the stages of destruction of this terrible border, which seemed to exist forever.
.How to get there
Given that the Berlin Wall stretches for several dozen kilometers within the city, it has no address in the usual sense.
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The surviving fragments of this engineering-concrete construction are scattered in various areas around its perimeter. The best preserved and most significant parts of the legendary border can be reached by metro from the Niederkirchenstracce and Warschauer Straße stations.
Official website of the Berlin Wall Memorial: www.berliner-mauer-gedenkstaette.de. The materials are duplicated in three languages: German, English and French.
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