The Berlin Wall

Berlin, Germany

Dean here today, reporting on what turned out to be a very enjoyable and educational day. Our jet lag seems to be abating, so we were all up at a reasonable hour and spent the majority of the day sightseeing.  In all, we visited the Berlin Wall Museum, the Holocaust memorial, Potzdamer Platz, and the Brandenburg Gate. We had walked passed Check Point Charlie the night before, but without knowing the historical significance, it was decidedly underwhelming. The TV footage we saw of US and Soviet tanks facing off in October of 1961 and the potential of starting WWIII, definitely made the significance clear.

I have actually been to Berlin before, though that was almost 33 years ago! Yikes. In 1986, while at school in Sweden, I traveled with a few fellow exchange students to West Berlin. At that time, the wall was still in place and getting to the “island” of West Berlin located in the center of East Germany, involved taking an East German train across the communist country and into the walled city.  Armed guards and guard dogs carefully inspected the train before we were allowed in. We were allowed to cross into East Berlin on the condition we spent a minimum amount of money while there. That, it turned out, was very hard to do. The difference between West and East Berlin was immediate and dramatic. The buildings were grey and dirty, practically all cars were the tiny and outdated Trabants, and many street corners had piles of rubble on them. For lunch, we found a plaza with a few kiosks scattered around and enormous lines in front of them. It was clear that speed and customer service was not an East German trait.

Although I knew the basics of the Berlin Wall, I learned a ton more today, and it was a great opportunity to teach Dex and Kylie about the Cold War that followed.  I hadn’t realized, for example, that after WWII, Germany and the city of Berlin were both divided into four sections, English, French, American, and Soviet. The plan was to work towards the unification of these sectors, but because the Soviets and the three western allies could not agree, by 1949 Germany and Berlin were permanently split into two pieces. Over the years, more and more people left East Germany until a full sixth of the population had left. In 1961, the government had had enough. On August 13, 1961, temporary barbed wire fencing was erected around the whole of West Berlin, 160 km. Over the years the fortifications became more and more elaborate - the famous cement exterior wall, an interior wall, lighting, land mines, guard dogs, guard towers, trip sensors, automatic machine guns…. One-hundred and thirty-eight people were known to have died trying to escape, although thousands are estimated to have escaped, many through tunnels. A memorial near the wall included pictures, printed on glass, of all those that died. The much more recent Holocaust Memorial commemorates the 6 million Jews killed during the war and is made up of 2711 cement pillars of various heights.

Today, almost all of the former wall is gone. There doesn’t seem to be any obvious way to know if you are in the former west or east. Incredibly, the wall was built through major intersections and even through buildings, which then became part of the border. Of course, some residents simply jumped from the windows to freedom, so, in time, the windows of these buildings were bricked up, and the buildings eventually made completely off limits. There are, now, in many places, two rows of bricks that mark the wall's path.

For lunch, we had a nice German meal -- schnitzel, pork tenderloin, roast beef, apfel strudel for dessert. We sat in the shade out on the sidewalk in front of the Alt Berliner restaurant. The waitress was very nice and taught us a couple useful phrases for the kids -- without onions, "ohne zwiebeln", and without peas, "ohne erbsen." With our new vocabulary, we joked we would start greeting strangers with, "Gutten tag, ohne zwiebeln, bitte!"

The last two stops for the day were the huge Sony Center at Potsdamer Platz and the iconic Brandenburg Gates. Potsdamer Platz, we learned, has been an important cargo and trading crossroads since the Potzdamer Railroad station was built there in 1838 outside one of the city's gates. The area flourished through the 1920s, but then was destroyed almost completely during the war, and then again during the people's uprising in 1953. After the wall was built, this area became part of the "no man's land" and the widest point in the "death strip" between the inner and outer walls. The area is now filled with tall modern buildings. The Sony Center includes an impressive and gigantic, 100m tall glass canopy, shaped like a giant umbrella over the large central plaza. I think Dex and Kylie, though, mostly enjoyed the ice cream.

The last stop was the nearby Brandenburg Gate, which was completed in 1791, built at the entrance to the city and on the road to the city of Brandenburg. When the wall was constructed, it simply jogged around the gate and across the road. What a crazy and amazing history. Berlin really paid the price for being on the front line of the US and Soviets' Cold War.