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It was 50 years ago today, August 13th, 1961, that East German soldiers began cordoning off the western part of the city. This was the beginning of the Berlin Wall. Germany marked the occasion with a ceremony earlier today. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Christian Wulff, and Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit were all present to remember those who died attempting to cross the barrier from East Berlin to West Berlin.
Addressing the ceremony on Bernauer, a street famously divided by the Wall and now site of a memorial, Mayor Wowereit said the capital was remembering the “saddest day in its recent history”.
“It is our common responsibility to keep alive the memories and pass them on to the next generation, to maintain freedom and democracy and to do everything so that such injustices may never happen again,” he said.
Earlier, Mr Wulff told Die Welt newspaper that the modern Germany could take pride in “East Germans’ irrepressible desire for freedom and West Germans’ solidarity with them”.
The wall was finally opened in 1989. Link -via Fark
Previously: Read more about the history of the Berlin Wall in The Fall of the Wall.
Twenty years ago today, the Berlin Wall was breached and collapse of European Communism rapidly accelerated. From the archives of the BBC:
At midnight East Germany’s Communist rulers gave permission for gates along the Wall to be opened after hundreds of people converged on crossing points.
They surged through cheering and shouting and were be met by jubilant West Berliners on the other side.
Ecstatic crowds immediately began to clamber on top of the Wall and hack large chunks out of the 28-mile (45-kilometre) barrier.
Link | Timeline of the Wall | Interactive Map of the Wall | PBS Documentary | Image: U.S. Department of State
Has it really been twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall? An architect in Leipzig, Germany opened an apartment to prepare for renovations and found it had been virtually untouched since at least 1989!
It appears the inhabitant of the humble flat fled in a hurry and shrivelled bread rolls still lay in a string bag.
Grocery brands from the Socialist state filled the kitchen.
“When we opened the door we felt like Howard Carter when he found the grave of Tutankhamun,” Mark Aretz told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper.
“Everything was a mess but it was like a historic treasure trove, a portal into an age long gone.”
Documents show the flat had been occupied by a 24-year-man who had been in some trouble with East German authorities, and must have fled before the Berlin Wall came down in November of 1989. A wall calendar was turned to August 1988. Link -Thanks, Paul!
