Revisiting the Berlin Wall

Preeti Verma Lal

A flower with red petals. A paisley in neon. A woman jumping with joy. A man in red turtleneck and blue jeans. A mushroom with polka dots. A house with red roof and yellow windows. In Berlin, a wall stands painted in vibrant hues. But this is no ordinary wall doubling up as canvas for graffiti artists with spray cans in hand. This wall killed freedom. It had many bleed. It was a symbol of Cold War. A near-insurmountable 11.8 ft high wall stretching 155 km around West Germany, of which 43.1 km cut through the belly of East and West Berlin. The German Democratic Republic (East Germany) that started building the wall on August 13, 1961, named it Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart; the West Berlin government referred to it as the ‘Wall of Shame’.

Remnants of the Berlin Wall that physically and ideologically divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989 still stands chipped and hammered. Since November 1989 when the wall was officially opened, tourists can walk around freely with no fear of gun-totting guards manning 302 watch towers, the menacing death strip, anti-vehicle trenches and ‘fakir beds’ (an oblong bed-size piece of wood with nails pointing upwards). Even 28 years after the opening of the Wall, Berlin has not forgotten the fiendish wall — between 1961 and 1989, nearly 5,000 persons attempted to escape over the wall with an estimated death toll of 200 in and around Berlin.

Most of the Berlin Wall was officially demolished between 1990 and 1992 but parts of it can still be found in Old St Hedwig Cemetery, Bose brucke, East Side Gallery, Berlin Wall Memorial, Gutspark Glienicke, Invalidenfriedhof, Mauerpark, Puschkinallee, Potsdamer Platz, Topography of Terror. The East Side Gallery that runs along River Spree is the longest extant section of the Wall (1.3 km) and the eastern side of the Wall was painted by 118 artists from 21 countries. 

Not too far from the East Side Gallery is Checkpoint C, commonly referred to as Charlie Checkpoint, a single crossing point (by foot or by car) for foreigners and members of the Allied Forces. Now located in the Allied Museum in Berlin’s Dahlem neighbourhood, Checkpoint Charlie is a grim reminder of the past. A Charlie Checkpoint Black Box repeats the 28-year-old history of the crossing point between East and West Berlin. The Gallery Walls, along Friedrichstarbe and the Zimmerstrabe, detail the escape attempts, expansion of the checkpoint and black and white photographs of world leaders at Checkpoint C. The original guard house with sandbags is no longer there but memories of the Checkpoint come alive with actors dressed as allied military policeman posing with tourists for a fee. Charlie souvenir shops have proliferated and one can even buy pieces of the Berlin Wall. In Octopussy, James Bond (played by Roger Moore) passed through Checkpoint Charlie.

On June 12, 1987, US President Ronald Reagan said: Mister Gorbachev, Tear Down This Wall. The Russian President did not tear down the wall. People did. And the world is better without the Berlin Wall.