Berlin Wall

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Where did the Berlin Wall go?
This week visitors to Berlin can get a feel for what it meant 18 years ago to look at Brandenburg Gate with a wall in front of it. A South Korean artist has installed a fluorescent plastic copy of the Berlin Wall in protest of the enduring division of the Korean peninsula. It is hard to find any of the few remaining sections of the Berlin Wall these days. After reunification, the government was quick to sell off these reminders of the Cold War. Checkpoint Charlie is now just a small booth - and a poll found that 21% of East Germans feel that life was better before reunification.
by msnbc :: 2007-11-17 ::

The Berlin Wall by Frederick Taylor
Two decades since its demise, the Berlin Wall has faded from our thoughts. But Frederick Taylor's book revives memories of a time when it seemed the Wall would never fall. His book profiles a structure that's had a permanent impact on families, statesmen and nations. Taylor sets the scene with a sprint through Berlin's history, culminating in the defeat of the Nazis in 1945. With the Soviets occupying its eastern half, and American, French and British forces in the western sectors, Berlin was the embodiment of the world's great divide. West Berliners had to come to terms with the shock of finding themselves on a capitalist island inside a Stalinist republic.
by blogcritics :: 2007-10-18 :: Berlin Wall

Germany Struggles to Save Berlin Wall Remains
When communist East Germany collapsed in 1989, Berliners were eager to tear down the Berlin Wall. 17 years later officials and artists are arguing about how to do the exact opposite and keep the wall's largest remaining section, a major tourist attraction, from falling apart. "The wall is rotten inside, crumbling away on the outside and there is not enough money to pay for its entire preservation," said Joerg Flaehmig, adding that the planned start of restoration would most likely have to be postponed - referring to the East Side Gallery, a 3-quarter-mile stretch of the wall in Berlin's Friedrichshain that 118 artists covered with graffiti in 1990.
by abcnews :: 2007-08-14 :: Berlin Wall

The piece of paper that brought down the Berlin Wall
The statement from East Germany's news agency ADN ran to 4 paragraphs. "You'll all have seen this?" grumbled Guenter Schabowski as he waved the dispatch at a news conference in East Berlin on Nov. 9, 1989. "No! What is it? Read it out!" demanded the foreign press. So he did. East Germans would be given permission for private journeys to the West without "fulfilling preconditions." They would get permits at short notice and could have "permanent emigration" visas too. When would this begin? "Immediately, as far as I know." But This was no travel policy tweak: after 28 years as a divider between East and West, the Wall was coming down.
by thestar :: 2007-05-01 :: Berlin Wall

A car tour of bygone East Berlin
Two decades ago, I crossed over the Berlin Wall. It was no cloak-and-dagger escape from the Communist East, but a day trip with my father, a West German citizen. Still, there was plenty of drama, from the border guard to the East German soldiers goose-stepping. Those days are gone. The station at Friedrichstrasse, where I entered Berlin's Soviet zone, is now a subway stop. Many Berliners miss the bad times, the dark, romantic world of John Le Carré's spy novels - if only because they are sure they won't return. "I don't want the Cold War back. It's just that it all meant something back then: Reagan, Gorbachev," a German colleague told me.
by estripes :: 2007-02-22 :: East Germany

Berlin Wall Killings Claimed at Least 125 Victims
At least 125 people were killed at the Berlin Wall during the 28 years that it divided the city at the height of the Cold War, mostly young men who sought to escape the communist-ruled East for West Berlin, according to a commission. At least 81 deaths are being investigated as possible Berlin Wall casualties, according to a disclosure by the government-commissioned project "Deaths at the Berlin Wall 1961-1989." The project was set up in October, 2005, to determine the number and circumstances of Cold War victims of the Wall. Sixty-two cases were ruled out as ``Wall deaths."
by bloomberg :: 2006-08-12 :: Berlin Wall

1989: Berliners celebrate the fall of the Wall
The Berlin Wall has been breached after nearly 3 decades keeping East and West Berliners apart. 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 were be met by jubilant West Berliners on the other side. Ecstatic crowds began to clamber on top of the Wall and hack large chunks out of the 45-kilometre barrier. It had been erected in 1961 on the orders of East Germany's former leader Walter Ulbricht stop people leaving for West Germany.
by bbc :: 2005-08-13 :: Berlin Wall

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