Society

On August 13, 1961, the leadership of the former German Democratic Republic began building the Berlin Wall. 2011 the reunified German capital is observing the 50th anniversary of the Wall with numerous events, which are dedicated to the victims of the former regime.

It is one of the saddest chapters in recent German history: in the night of August 12 to 13, 1961, the then Chairman of the Socialist Unity Party (SED), Walter Ulbricht, gave the order to seal off the border sectors of Berlin. East German armed forces and border police tore up streets and blocked the eastern part of the city with barricades made of paving stones, chunks of asphalt and barbed wire. These measures hit the people of Berlin out of the blue; many learned of them on that bright and beautiful Sunday only through the news.

“Nobody intends to build a wall”

In response to a question at an international press conference in East Berlin on June 15, 1961, Ulbricht had assured journalists: “Nobody intends to build a wall”. Yet on August 18th, construction crews replaced the first temporary barriers with a wall made of hollow blocks. And that was not all: until the peaceful fall of the Berlin Wall 28 years later on November 9, 1989, the surveillance system was continually extended.

Under the protection of the Soviet Union, the East German leadership built a sophisticated lockdown system round West Berlin for a distance of over 160 kilometers. From platforms on the west side of the Berlin landmark of the Brandenburg Gate, which stood in the middle of the system, one could look into the heavily guarded and practically insurmountable border area behind the Wall: the “death strip” was a mined desert, secured with spring guns and policed moreover by armed soldiers in guard towers. At night this area was lit as bright as day by floodlights. The “anti-fascist protective wall”, as the GDR regime called the mammoth construction, was intended to intimidate its citizens and prevent them from escaping to the West. From the founding of the GDR in 1949 up to 1961, well over two million people had fled their East German homeland, frequently via West Berlin. As the economic situation deteriorated still further, the flow of refugees to the West increased daily. In addition, the countries of the Eastern bloc upgraded their position of power in divided Berlin against the Western Allies – the United States, France and Great Britain.

Symbol of the “Cold War”

The extensive construction divided not only the city; it dramatically separated families and friends, abruptly cut off streets, public transit connections and waterways. It cemented, in the truest sense of the word, the division of Germany and Europe, and became a symbol of the “Cold War” between the Eastern bloc, under the leadership of the Soviet Union, and the Western states, under the leadership of the United States. At the same time, the Wall symbolized a kind of anticipatory declaration of bankruptcy on the part of the totalitarian regime of East Germany, which could secure its existence only by imprisoning its own population – a circumstance that was to lead, in the 1980s, to the collapse of the system and, somewhat later, to the dissolution of the GDR and the reunification of Germany.

Today a double row of cobblestones set in the streets and the “Wall Trail”, the former course of the Wall, which can now be followed by foot or on bike, remind one of the former “Iron Curtain”. Remains of the Wall can be seen, for example, in the Niederkirchnerstraße in Berlin-Center in the grounds of the documentation center “Topography of Terror”, or at the East Side Gallery in the Mühlenstraße in the district of Friedrichshain. In the Bernauer Straße, at the border of the Berlin districts of Wedding and Center, between which the Wall ran and where numerous tragedies of escape were played out, is the Berlin Wall Memorial. It presents this chapter of German-German history with a section of the border installations, complete with watchtower and defused “death strip”, a documentation center and the Chapel of Reconciliation (Kapelle der Versöhnung). On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the building of the Wall, the Memorial will inaugurate an extension of the exhibition that treats the consequences of the Wall for the people in this part of the city. The central memorial ceremonies will also take place at this historic site. They are dedicated to the victims of the Berlin Wall.

50th anniversary of the building of the Berlin Wall in memory of the victims

“Illegal emigration” (Republikflucht) was punished very severely: in the case of “unlawful crossing of the border” GDR border guards had the order to shot-to-kill. Exactly how many people died on the Berlin Wall is unknown; according to scholarly estimates, the number was at least 136; other calculations put it at more than 200. Already in the first days after the construction of the Wall the attempt to cross the barrier proved to be the doom of several GDR citizens: on August 24th Günter Litwin became the first victim shot by East German border guards. The last victim of the shoot-to-kill order was 20-year-old Chris Gueffroy, on February 5, 1989.

Despite the mortal danger, many East Germans attempted to cross the heavily guarded border, whether by foot, through self-dug tunnels, in hot-air balloons, in the trunk of cars or with brute force – in 1963 the former National People’s Army solider Wolfgang Engels succeeded in escaping in a tank; two years before, he had himself been involved in building the Wall.

The stories of these people are the focus of the numerous commemorative events round the 50th anniversary on August 13, 2011. In addition to exhibitions, readings and prayer services, there will be many film programs, theater and dance performances, discussions with contemporary witnesses and city tours, including one on cultural life in divided Berlin at the time of the escalation of the Cold War.