The Berlin Wall

The Beginning
Shortly after midnight on 13 August 1961, East German soldiers and police began rolling out miles of barbed wire that would soon be replaced with prefab concrete slabs. All of a sudden, streets were cut in two, transportation between the city halves was halted and East Germans, including commuters, were no longer allowed to travel to West Berlin.

The Berlin Wall was a desperate measure launched by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) to stop the sustained brain-and-brawn drain the country had experienced since its 1949 founding. Some 3.6 million people had already headed to western Germany, putting the GDR on the brink of economic and political collapse. The actual construction of the Wall, however, came as a shock to many: only a couple of months before that fateful August day, GDR head of state Walter Ulbricht had declared at a press conference that there were no plans to build a wall.

The Physical Border

Euphemistically called the ‘Anti-Fascist Protection Barrier’, the Berlin Wall was an instrument of oppression that turned West Berlin into an island of democracy within a sea of socialism. It consisted of a 43km-long inner-city barrier separating West from East Berlin and a 112km border between West Berlin and East Germany. Each reinforced concrete segment was 3.6m high, 1.2m wide and weighed 2.6 tonnes. In some areas, the border strip included the Spree River or canals.

Continually reinforced and refined over time, the Berlin Wall eventually grew into a complex border-security system consisting of not one, but two, walls: the main wall abutting the border with West Berlin and the so-called hinterland security wall, with the 'death strip' in between. A would-be escapee who managed to scale the hinterland wall was first confronted with an electrified fence that triggered an alarm. After this, he or she would have to contend with guard dogs, spiked fences, trenches and other obstacles. Other elements included a patrol path with lamp posts that would flood the death strip with glaring light at night. Set up at regular intervals along the entire border were 300 watchtowers staffed by guards with shoot-to-kill orders. Only nine towers remain, including the one at Erna-Berger-Strasse near Potsdamer Platz.

In West Berlin, the Wall came right up to residential areas. Artists tried to humanise the grey concrete scar by covering it in colourful graffiti. The West Berlin government erected viewing platforms, which people could climb to peek across into East Berlin.

Escapes
There are no exact numbers, but it is believed that of the nearly 100,000 GDR citizens who tried to escape, hundreds died in the process, many by drowning, suffering fatal accidents or committing suicide when caught. More than 100 were shot and killed by border guards – the first only a few days after 13 August 1961. Guards who prevented an escape were rewarded with commendations, promotions and bonuses.

The first person to be shot at the Wall was 24-year-old trained tailor Günter Litfin. The Wall had been in existence for only 11 days when a hailstorm of bullets ripped through his body as he tried to swim to freedom across a 40m-wide canal on 24 August 1961, a Sunday. Since 2003, his brother Jürgen Litfin has kept Günter’s legacy alive with a memorial exhibit in a GDR watchtower near where he was killed. It's a bit off the beaten path but well worth visiting, not only to see the inside of this rare border relic but mainly for a chance to meet this outspoken eyewitness to history.

Another famous incident illustrating the barbarity of the shoot-to-kill order occurred on 17 August 1962 when 18-year-old would-be escapee Peter Fechter was shot and wounded and then left to bleed to death as East German guards looked on. There's a memorial in his honour on Zimmerstrasse, near Checkpoint Charlie. Behind the Reichstag, on the southern bank of the Spree River, the seven white crosses of the Gedenkort Weisse Kreuze commemorate the Wall victims, as does the emotional 'Window of Remembrance' at the Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer. This memorial features the names and photographs of all the people who were shot or died in an accident while attempting to escape.

The Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer runs along 1.4km of Bernauer Strasse, which was literally split in two by the Berlin Wall, with one side of apartment buildings on the western side and the other in the east. As the barrier was erected, many residents on the eastern side decided to flee spontaneously by jumping into rescue nets or sliding down ropes, risking severe injury and death. Bernauer Strasse was also where several escape tunnels were dug, most famously Tunnel 29 in 1962, so named because 29 people managed to flee to the West before border guards detected the route.
The fact that there was no limit to the ingenuity of would-be escapees is documented at the Mauermuseum near Checkpoint Charlie. On display are several original contraptions used to flee East Germany, including a hot air balloon, a hollow surfboard, a specially rigged car and even a homemade mini-submarine.

The End
The Wall's demise came as unexpectedly as its creation. Once again the GDR was losing its people in droves, this time via Hungary, which had opened its borders with Austria. Thus emboldened, East Germans took to the streets by the hundreds of thousands, demanding improved human rights and an end to the dictatorship of the SED (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschland), the single party in East Germany. A series of demonstrations culminated in a gathering of half a million people on Alexanderplatz on 4 November 1989, vociferously demanding political reform. Something had to give.

It did, on 9 November, when government spokesperson Günter Schabowski announced during a press conference on live TV that all travel restrictions to the West would be lifted. When asked by a reporter when this regulation would come into effect, he nervously shuffled his papers looking for the answer, then responded with the historic words: 'As far as I know, immediately.' In fact, the ruling was not supposed to take effect until the following day, but no one had informed Schabowski.

The news spread through East Berlin like wildfire, with hundreds of thousands heading towards the Wall. Border guards had no choice but to stand back. Amid scenes of wild partying and mile-long parades of GDR-made Trabant cars, the two Berlins came together again.

Today
The dismantling of the hated border fortifications began almost immediately and by now the city halves have visually merged so perfectly that it takes a keen eye to tell East from West. Fortunately, there’s help in the form of a double row of cobblestones with bronze plaques inscribed 'Berliner Mauer 1961-1989' that guides you along 5.7km of the Wall’s course. Also keep an eye out for the Berlin Wall History Mile, which consists of 32 information panels set up along the course of the Wall. They draw attention, in four languages, to specific events that took place at each location. Berlin’s division, the construction of the Wall, how the Wall fell, and the people who died at the Wall are all addressed. For details, see www.berlin.de/mauer/en/history/history-mile.

Only about 2km of the actual concrete barrier still stands today; most famous is the 1.3km stretch that is now the East Side Gallery. But there are plenty of other traces scattered throughout the city, including lamps, patrol paths, fences, perimeter defences, switch boxes and so on. Most are so perfectly integrated they're only discernible to the practised eye. A brilliant source for tracking down these fragments is the Memorial Landscape Berlin Wall (www.berlin-wall-map.com), an interactive Geographic Information System (GIS) that documents all remaining bits and pieces, no matter how small.