‘This is it?’ I thought as I stood in front of a stretch of the Berlin Wall near Gendarmenmarkt Square. Barely 10 feet high, it looked rather unimposing, and like just another wall. But go back in time and the same wall takes on a gigantic stature.
The history behind the Berlin Wall
Post the World War II, Berlin was divided into East Berlin (under Soviet Union) and West Berlin (under the US), as they differed in political ideologies. In an attempt to push their communist agenda and stop emigration from East Berlin to the more democratic, Capitalist West, Soviet Union constructed the Berlin wall in 1961.
Here are some facts about the Berlin Wall that will leave you astounded:
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The barricading for the Berlin Wall—a circumference of over 140 kilometres between East and West Berlin—was done overnight, without any prior notice or warning. So when the people of Berlin woke up one morning in August 1961, they found their city divided into two! East and West Berliners could no longer cross over to the other side. In an instant, the wall divided families and left people unemployed, for several had families, friends and work places on the other side of the wall.
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The wall isolated West Berliners from the rest of the world, not for a month or a year, but for 28 long years!
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This long stretch of concrete dividing the city was heavily guarded with barbed wires, armed patrol, sniffer dogs, watch towers, and circumscribed by a wide no-man’s land covered with a bed of nails, infamously referred to as the ‘death strip’ or ‘Stalin’s Carpet’. In 28 years, only 5,000 people managed to cross this wall, of which 1,500 are rumoured to be the guards themselves.
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People found ingenious ways to cross over — floating over the wall in a hot air balloon, sewing themselves into car seats and driving past, or by digging tunnels!
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October 1961 saw a nail biting incident at Charlie Checkpoint, the official border crossing point for diplomats. A US diplomat was denied entry into East Berlin to see an opera. Soon, the situation escalated, bringing ten Soviet and American tanks 100 yards from each other in a face off! As the world sat back, holding its breath for a tense 16-hours, the tanks peaceably withdrew.
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The Wall came to physically symbolize the ‘Iron Curtain’ that separated Western Europe from the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. While the Soviet officially referred to it as the ‘Anti-Fascist Protective Wall’, the US called it the ‘Wall of Shame’ that restricted freedom.
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Amidst growing anti-wall sentiment, in June 1963, US President John F Kennedy visited West Berlin and gave his famous speech Ich bin ein Berliner (‘I am a Berliner’), to boost the morale of West Berliners.
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Several international artists including David Bowie (1987) and Bruce Springsteen (1988) held concerts by the wall, calling for peace.
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Finally, on the historic day of November 9, 1989, the gates were thrown open for people to cross over from East to West Berlin and vice versa. Interestingly, this ‘falling of the wall’ was not a political decision, but an accidental announcement made by an ill-informed Günter Schabowski, the party boss in East Berlin. Crowds crossed and climbed onto the wall in a celebratory atmosphere. Over the next few weeks, euphoric people and souvenir hunters chipped away parts of the Wall. In 1990, the wall was officially pulled down; though parts of it were retained as historical landmarks.
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The longest surviving stretch of the Berlin Wall is the East Side Gallery (1,316 km). The longest open-air gallery in the world, it is painted over with 101 works (mostly graffiti and socio-political messages) by 118 artists from 21 countries, and continues to be the mecca for every tourist in Berlin.
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For a few years after November 1989, the ‘fall of the wall’ was celebrated with concerts by several artists performing songs of freedom in Berlin.
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On 9 November 2009, Berlin celebrated the 20th Anniversary of the fall of the wall with a ‘Festival of Freedom’ that had dignitaries from around the world in attendance. A high point was the toppling of over 1,000 colourfully-designed foam domino tiles, each over 8 feet tall, stacked along the former route of the Wall in the city centre. This domino wall was toppled in stages, converging in front of the Brandenburg Gate.
That’s a lot of history for a concrete wall Won’t you say?
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