To wrap up our most recent weekend, I suggested going to the Berlin Wall Memorial, which I had read was one of Berlin's most highly recommended attractions. Plus, it's mostly outdoors, and the weather was once again awesome. So to the Berlin Wall Memorial we went!
If you are getting the impression that a lot of the tourist attractions in Berlin have to do with the Berlin Wall and the division of Berlin, I would agree with you. Sometimes I wonder what all the tourists would look at if there were never a Berlin Wall! Berlin was a small city all the way through the middle ages and into the 18th and 19th centuries, so there are not many significant sights left over from that period of time. Instead, most of the historical landmarks in Berlin have to do with that much more recent period of history during which Berlin was split in two. As such, between all the information about the wall I've been reading and experiencing lately, I consider myself a Berlin Wall armchair expert. So get ready for some fascinating facts!
The 96-mile-long Berlin Wall was built nearly overnight in 1961 when the East German government wanted to stem the flow of East German citizens fleeing into the West. A total of 2.7 million refugees had successfully escaped from 1949 to just before the wall was built. A mere 2 months before the first barricades went up, the East German government denounced rumors of a wall by announcing, "No one has the intention of erecting a wall!" But as we all know, a wall was indeed soon thereafter erected. As time went on, the East German government continually upgraded the fortifications. At first, the wall was relatively small and in some places consisted of just barbed wire. When you hear "Berlin Wall" and picture the tall, graffiti-ed, concrete wall you'll see in pictures below, you're thinking of a wall that was only built in 1980.
Did you know the fall of the wall was an accident? In 1989, the year the wall fell, East German premier Erich Honecker proclaimed the wall would stand for another 50 or 100 years. But soon, cracks in the East German regime began appearing. Hungary and Czechoslovakia opened their borders, allowing East Germans to pour out. Protests within East Germany broke out, most notably in Leipzig. The East German government tried to quell the demonstrations by announcing looser private travel regulations for East Germans that would slowly and gradually allow for some crossings through Berlin Wall checkpoints.
East German government spokesman Günter Schabowski announced these new gradual measures on November 9 with a press conference, although he was unfamiliar with the details of the new regulations and unaware that the prepared statement he was reciting was making it sound to the world as though East Germans would be able to cross straight into West Berlin without restriction. When he finished his statement and the shocked journalists asked when the crossings could begin, he shrugged and guessed "unverzüglich" - immediately. When the press conference aired on the nightly news, East Germans took it to mean that the border crossings to West Berlin were open and appeared en masse at the wall's checkpoints. The overwhelmed border guards were also unfamiliar with the new regulations and unable to hold back the enormous crowds that had gathered. They simply opened the checkpoints, and East Germans streamed through and met equally ecstatic West Germans, who were waiting with champagne and flowers. The peaceful revolution was complete.
The wall disappeared fairly quickly from the cityscape, even before the official date of German reunification on October 3, 1990. Today, only 3 major sites still have the original wall standing in its original place, and the Berlin Wall memorial is one of them (I blogged about another here). Even in these places, the wall has been heavily damaged by wall-pecking tourists. If you want to take a piece of the wall home with you, simply head to the nearest tourist shop - nearly every tourist outlet has a pile of small concrete pebbles with a smattering of paint that are claimed to be part of the original wall. While there are plenty of legitimate, full-size sections of wall left over (including full-size sections available for sale), I don't trust those pebbles one bit.
And now, to the pictures!
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| The Berlin Wall Memorial, with poles marking the former path of the wall. It's hard to believe that this peaceful stretch of grass used to be heavily guarded |
