The 20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall
November 6th, 2009
Monday, November 9th, 2009 will mark the 20th anniversary of the day the Berlin Wall came down. Built with barbed wire and concrete in August of 1961 by the Communist East, The Berlin Wall, stretching for about 30 miles, was a Cold War symbol which separated East and West Berlin, preventing people from leaving East Germany. According to the “August 13 Association” which specialises in the history of the Berlin Wall, at least 938 people – 255 in Berlin alone – died, shot by East German border guards, attempting to flee to West Berlin or West Germany. It stood for 28 years as a division between the Soviets and the Allies. The wall was torn down after Communism collapsed in 1989. During the summer of 1989, tens of thousands of East Germans fled the communist regime. The photos below show the initial building of the Wall in 1961, the fall of the Wall in 1989 and how the sections of the Wall look today. The last group of photos shows comparisons of how Berlin looked with the Wall and how the city looks now that the Wall is gone.
Two weeks after the East German government sealed off the Soviet-occupied sector, Berlin's former chief crossing point between East and West, the Brandenburg Gate on "Pariser Platz," appears as no man's land, in this aerial view taken from the British sector of Berlin, on August 26, 1961. Seen in the foreground is part of the city's park "Tiergarten," divided by the avenue "Strasse des 17. Juni," behind Brandenburg Gate proceeds the famous boulevard "Unter den Linden," with parts of a newly erected cement barrier on the left. Further in the background is the cupola of the Berliner Dom, left, and the brick-red Berlin City Hall, or "Rotes Rathaus," in the center. The neoclassical facade of the former grand Hotel Adlon can be seen on the right. (AP Photo)
West Berlin police stand guard behind barbed wire along the new 250-yard massive concrete wall at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, Germany, on Nov. 23, 1961. Beyond the wall, Communists pull down a fiber board screen behind which the building operations took place. (AP Photo)
An East German soldier of the border guard patrols along the barbed wire fence between the French and Soviet sector in the Schoenholz district in Berlin, Germany, September 25, 1961. A family, in the background, is forced to leave their home close to the sector's border and loads their belongings onto a truck. (AP Photo/Ede Reichart)
In this undated August 1961 file photo West Berliners at right watch East German construction workers erect a wall across Wildenbruchstrasse and Heidelbergerstrasse in West Berlin in August 1961. (AP Photo/File)
In this Oct. 7, 1961 file photo a West Berlin policeman stands in front of the concrete wall dividing East and West Berlin at Bernauer Strasse as East Berlin workmen add blocks to the wall to increase the height of the barrier. (AP Photo/Files)
A refugee from the German Domcratic Republic (DDR) is seen during his attempt to escape from the East German part of Berlin to West Berlin by climbing over the Berlin Wall on October 16, 1961. (AP Photo)
A West German police officer, front center, looks at a woman following the activities through the barbed wire fence between the French and Soviet sector in the Schoenholz district in Berlin, Germany, September 25, 1961. A family, left background, is forced to leave their home close to the sector's border and loads their belongings up a van. In the background are three East German soldiers of the border guard. (AP Photo/Ede Reichart)
An East Berlin policeman puts bricks in place as the Berlin Wall is heightened to 15 feet, 5 m, separating East and West Berlin, Germany, on Sept. 9, 1961. People watch from their apartment building windows in background above. (AP Photo)
East German police, foreground, mop up after work narrowing the passageway between East and West Berlin at the city's Heinrich Heine Strasse border crossing point on Dec. 4, 1961. Communist workers labor at several points along the wall to restrict further traffic between sectors of the divided city. (AP Photo)
West Berliners, with their backs to camera, watch East Berliners unload prefabricated concrete plates to reinforce the Berlin Wall at Wilhelm St. in Berlin, Germany on Sept. 12, 1961. The sector border is being reinforced with roadblocks on every street leading into West Berlin in order to prevent further escapes by trucks. (AP Photo/Eddie Worth, File)
U.S. Army tanks, foreground, face off against Soviet tanks across the Berlin Wall at Checkpoint Charlie on the Friedrichstrasse, in a tense standoff on Oct. 27 and 28, 1961. (AP Photo)
An August 17, 1962 photo shows dying Peter Fechter carried away by East German border guards who shot him down when he tried to flee to the west. Fechter was lying 50 minutes in no-man's land before he was taken to a hospital where he died shortly after arrival. (AP Photo / files)
A high wall of concrete blocks, topped with barbed wire, divides Sebastian Strasse in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin, Germany, on Feb. 15, 1962. To the left is the American sector and beyond the wall to the right is the Russian sector. (AP Photo)
The Brandenburg Gate is sealed off in the Soviet-occupied sector of East Berlin, Germany, in Nov. 1961. Located at the center of the German capital, the gate stands behind part of the Berlin Wall that divides East and West Berlin. (AP Photo)
This is a view of the red brick wall on the border between East and West Berlin in Germany in Jan. 1962. The Communists added a wooden fence to impede a clear view into the Communist East Berlin zone. At left, West Berlin police armed with automatic weapons patrol along the wall. (AP Photo)
Thousands of people line up at the Schillerstrasse in Charlottenburg, Berlin, Germany, to apply for a passage slip to get across the border after Berlin was seperated with a wall as Eastern and Western sections, December 19, 1963. (AP Photo)
Despite the presence of steel barriers and a concrete wall instead of tanks at Checkpoint Charlie, all appears serene in this scene from Berlin, mid-Oct. 1964. (AP Photo)
East German border guards carry away a refugee who was wounded by East German machine gun fire as he dashed through communist border installations toward the Berlin wall. (AP Wire-Photo)
U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy is followed by West Berlin Mayor Willy Brandt as he climbs a ladder to a platform giving a view over the concrete wall in West Berlin, February 22, 1962. The Brandenberg Gate is in the background. (AP Photo)
The Communist-built Berlin wall climbs a hill along the outlying West Berlin district of Spandau, rounded at the top to make climbing by refugees more difficult and prefabricated for easy repair. (AP-Photo/Edwin Reichert)
A crane drops tank traps in East Berlin, East Germany, April 18, 1967 reinforcing the meters high wall separating the city, as the communists held their seventh party congress in East Berlin. (AP Photo/Edwin Reichert)
A man waves to his relatives on the other side of the Berlin Wall, August 1967. (photo by NATO)
President John F. Kennedy, right, stands on tower at the U.S. Army's Checkpoint Charlie overlooking the barbed wire wall dividing East and West Berlin, June 26, 1963. In background is East Berlin, Germany. Standing next to Kennedy is West German Chancellor Konrad Adenhauer, back to camera, and standing beside Adenhauer is West Berlin Mayor Willy Brandt, back to camera. (AP Photo)
View over the Berlin border wall at the Potsdam square. (AP-Photo/Elke Bruhn-Hoffmann)
A picture taken 29 April 1984 shows various graffiti painted on the Berlin Wall on the West Berlin side while East German and Soviet flags (R) fly on the other side of the East Berlin no-mans-land spiked with anti-tanks traps. (JOEL ROBINE/AFP/Getty Images)
East German border guards stand on a section of the Berlin wall with the Brandenburg gate in the background on November 11, 1989 in Berlin. On November 9, Gunter Schabowski, the East Berlin Communist party boss, declared that starting from midnight, East Germans would be free to leave the country, without permission, at any point along the border, including the crossing-points through the Wall in Berlin. (GUNTHER KERN/AFP/Getty Images)
Picture taken on November 11, 1989 shows west Berliners gathering in front of the Berlin Wall as they watch people trying to demolish a section of the wall in order to open a new crossing point between East and West Berlin, near the Potsdamer Square in Berlin. During the summer of 1989, tens of thousands of East Germans fled their oppressive communist regime to a new life of freedom in the west. (GERARD MALIE/AFP/Getty Images)
An East German border guard peers through a crack in the Berlin Wall, Nov. 17, 1989, shortly after a West Berliner painted a keyhole around the opening. (AP Photo/John Gaps III)
Picture taken on November 11, 1989 shows thousands of young East Berliners gathering at the Berlin Wall, near the Brandenburg Gate (background). (GERARD MALIE/AFP/Getty Images)
West Berliners crowd in front of the Berlin Wall early 11 November 1989 as they watch East German border guards demolishing a section of the wall in order to open a new crossing point between East and West Berlin, near the Potsdamer Square. The day before, Gunter Schabowski, the East Berlin Communist party boss, declared that starting from midnight, East Germans would be free to leave the country, without permission, at any point along the border, including the crossing-points through the Wall in Berlin. (GERARD MALIE/AFP/Getty Images)
A long row of East German Trabant cars passing through Checkpoint Charlie into West Berlin is greeted by enthusiastic West Berliners. (Photo by EPA PHOTOS DPA FILES/AFP/Getty Images)
Berliners celebrate on top of the wall as East Germans (backs to camera) flood through the dismantled Berlin Wall into West Berlin at Potsdamer Platz, in this November 12, 1989 picture. (AP Photo/Lionel Cironneau, File)
Aerial view of a traffic jam on November 11, 1989 at the Strasse des 17. Juni with the Brandenburg Gate in the background as thousands of East German citizens move into West Berlin after the opening of the wall by the East German government. (AP Photo)
People walking on the Berlin wall in front of the Brandenburg gate after opening one day before, Nov. 10, 1989. (AP Photo)
A man hammers away at the Berlin Wall, as the border barrier between East and West Germany was torn down after 28 years, in this Nov. 12, 1989 file picture. (AP Photo/John Gaps III)
People crowding Masante Bridge at Stubenrauchstrasse in Berlin on Tuesday, Nov. 14, 1989, to celebrate opening of another border passage between East and West Berlin. Picture was taken from West Berlin side of the wall. Benner reads: "We are welcoming our neighbors!" (AP Photo/Udo Weitz)
Germans from East and West stand on the Berlin Wall in front of the the Reichstag Building in this Nov. 10, 1989 photo, one day after the wall opened. (AP Photo)
East German border guards are pictured Monday, November 13, 1989, in front of segments of the Berlin Wall, which were removed to open the wall at Potsdamer Platz passage. (AP Photo/John Gaps III)
This was the scene when two East German border guards patrolled atop of Berlin Wall with the illuminated Brandenburg Gate in background, in Berlin, Nov. 14, 1989. West Berlin police had just reported that East Germany would open the wall at the historical landmark. (AP Photo/Jockel Finck)
People from East Germany greet citizens of West Germany at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin 22 December 1989. On November 09, Gunter Schabowski, the East Berlin Communist party boss, declared that starting from midnight, East Germans would be free to leave the country, without permission, at any point along the border, including the crossing-points through the Wall in Berlin. (PATRICK HERTZOG/AFP/Getty Images)
A crowd of people holding umbrellas is seen in front of the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin, Dec. 22, 1989, as both East Berlin and West Berlin celebrate the opening of the place around the Gate in Germany. The landmark had been closed for 28 years after the former East German government built the Berlin Wall that divided the city during the Cold War. (AP Photo/Jockel Finck)
Young East Berliners shout for joy as they run into West Berlin through an opening in the Berlin Wall near the Brandenburg Gate, Fri., Dec. 23, 1989. The new East German government had promised to fully open the gate by Christmas. (AP Photo/Hansjoerg Krauss)
An old East German guard tower sits between apartment buildings July 12, 2001 in Berlin, Germany. The Berlin Wall, which was constructed in 1961 by the former government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), will marked its 40th anniversary on August 13th. (Photo by Nina Ruecker/Getty Images)
A view of the Berlin Wall Memorial on Bernauer Strasse July 11, 2001 in Berlin, Germany. Pieces of the wall are still standing in parks around the city and are honored as historic monuments. (Photo by Nina Ruecker/Getty Images)
People gather in a park by the Berlin Wall in Penzlauer Berg July 11, 2001 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Nina Ruecker/Getty Images)
A girl rides on a swing at the Berlin Wall Park in Penzlauer Berg July 11, 2001 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Nina Ruecker/Getty Images)
Candles burn to commemorate victims who died while trying to flee the former East Germany at Glienicker Bridge on the 46th anniversary of construction of the Berlin Wall August 13, 2007 in Berlin, Germany. Authorities in the eastern German city of Magdeburg had recently discovered a 1973 document of the former East German internal security agency, the Stasi, giving guards at border posts the order to shoot anyone trying to flee the country, even women and children. The document confirms that shooting escapees was an official policy of the former East German government, something former East German politicians have long denied. Over a thousand East Germans died while attempting to escape East Germany for the West. East German officials and Allied forces often used Glienicker Bridge, which stands at the former border between East Germany and West Berlin, to exchange refugees and captured spies during the Cold War. (Photo by Carsten Koall/Getty Images)
A damaged part of the former Berlin Wall stands near the Potsdamer Platz on August 13, 2007 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Carsten Koall/Getty Images)
View of a remaining section of the Berlin wall (1961-1989) taken on November 3, 2008, between the Bundespresse-Konferenz building and the Marie-Elisabeth-Lueders-Haus (background) parliament annex near the river Spree in the heart of Berlin. (JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP/Getty Images)
View of an outer wall and an observation tower in the former prison of the East German, communist-era secret police, known as the Stasi, at Hohenschoenhausen in Berlin July 1, 2009. The complex included interrogation and detention facilities as well as underground cells where the regime's critics underwent relentless psychological torture. (JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP/Getty Images)
People watch a preserved segment of the Berlin wall (1961-1989) at East Side Gallery on Berlin's Muhlen Strasse on October 25, 2009. Germany will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall on November 9, 2009. (FRED DUFOUR/AFP/Getty Images)
A sight seeing bus pass a line to mark the Berlin Wall on August 13, 2007 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Carsten Koall/Getty Images)
A general view at the monumental area on Bernauer Street for the Berlin Wall on August 13, 2007 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Carsten Koall/Getty Images)
A general view at the monumental area Bernauer Street for the Berlin Wall on August 13, 2007 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Carsten Koall/Getty Images)
A boy touches the concrete plates of the east side of the former Berlin Wall at the wall memorial at Bernauer Street in Berlin, Thursday, Aug. 13, 2009, prior to the 48th anniversary remembrance celebration of the construction of the Wall. The wall memorial was constructed in Bernauer Street using original parts of the wall in memory of the barrier which separated east and west Berlin which fell in 1989. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
The photo shows an already cleaned part of the East Side Gallery photographed in Berlin, Friday, March 20, 2009. The longest still standing stretch of the Berlin Wall is supposed to be completely redone for the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9, 2009. (AP Photo/Franka Bruns)
Former sections of the Berlin Wall are reflcted in a puddle on a sunny, fall day on October 11, 2008 in Teltow, just outside Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
A former guard tower that once stood over the death strip at the Berlin Wall is now surrounded by newly-built office and apartment buildings on July 7, 2009 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
Actors wearing the uniforms of U.S. and Russian soldiers stand in front of the rebuilt Checkpoint Charlie on July 08, 2009 in Berlin, Germany. Checkpoint Charlie was one of the most well-known border crossing points during the time before 1990, when Berlin was divided in the time between 1961 until 1990. (Photo by Carsten Koall/Getty Images)
A tourist puts her hand on a painting on a segment of East Side Gallery in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2009. The restoration of the 105 wall paintings of the former Berlin Wall is scheduled to be finished for the 20th anniversary of the opening of the Berlin Wall in November 2009. The same 118 artists from 21 countries who created the paintings in 1990 will repaint their pictures in the world's longest open-air art gallery after replacement of the concrete surface of the Wall. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
Tourists pass a painting on a segment of East Side Gallery in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2009. The restoration of the 105 wall paintings of the former Berlin Wall is scheduled to be finished for the 20th anniversary of the opening of the Berlin Wall in November 2009. The same 118 artists from 21 countries who created the paintings in 1990 will repaint their pictures in the world's longest open-air art gallery after replacement of the concrete surface of the Wall. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
Combo shows two pictures taken from Berlin's Bernauer Strasse one with the Berlin Wall (top) separating the streeet taken in June 1968, and the same view (bottom) taken on October 20, 2009 without the wall. (JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP/Getty Images)
Combo shows two pictures of Checkpoint Charlie crossing point, one (top) in June 1968, then marking the border between East (Soviet sector) and West Berlin (American sector) and the same view (bottom) taken on October 20, 2009 as a tourist magnet like many of the remaining Berlin wall sites. (JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP/Getty Images)
Combo shows two pictures of the German Reichstag building (back L) one with the Berlin Wall (top) taken on November 10, 1989, and the same view (bottom) taken twenty years later on October 20, 2009 without the wall. (GERARD MALIE/AFP/Getty Images)
Two picture combo shows a 1988 image (top) of the grafitti-covered Communist wall close to the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and a photo made during the Berlin rush hour (bottom) on Monday, October 2, 1995. Sign in picture on top reads: "Attention! You are now leaving West Berlin" (AP Photo/File/Jan Bauer(bottom))
Combo shows two pictures, the Glienicke bridge (Glienicker Bruecke), which links Berlin to the city of Potsdam in the state of Brandenburg in Potsdam taken on November 11, 1989 with a jogger running past a Trabant car, and the same view (bottom) taken twenty years later on November 6, 2009. The bridge was often used as a place where spies were "exchanged" between west Berlin and east Germany. (GERARD MALIE/AFP/Getty Images)
Photo taken Oct. 26, 2009 at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin shows a photo of Checkpoint Charlie as US President John F. Kennedy standing on an observation platform, looks into East Berlin on June 26, 1963 across the Communist Berlin Wall that divided the German city. (AP Photo/Franka Bruns)
Photo taken Oct. 26, 2009 near the Reichstag in Berlin shows a photo of Berlin children playing on the remains of the Berlin Wall near West Berlin's Reichstag building, Feb. 20, 1990, where East German border troops began tearing down the wall. (AP Photo/Franka Bruns)
Photo taken Oct. 26, 2009 near the Reichstag in Berlin shows a photo of Germans from East and West standing on the Berlin Wall in front of the the Reichstag Building on Nov. 10, 1989, one day after the wall opened. (AP Photo/Franka Bruns)
Photo taken Oct. 31, 2009 at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin shows a photo of U.S. President Ronald Reagan acknowledging the crowd after his speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin, where he said "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall! ", on June 12, 1987. (AP Photo/Franka Bruns)
Photo taken Oct. 31, 2009 at the Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, and displaying a photo of Reverend Martin Luther King, American civil rights leader, who was invited to Berlin by West Berlin Mayor Willy Brandt, as he visits the red wall at the border Potsdamer Platz on September 13, 1964. (AP Photo/Franka Bruns)
Photo taken Oct. 31, 2009 at the Potsdamer Platz in Berlin shows a photo of then Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter pointing toward East Berlin and the wall during a visit on May 20, 1973 in West Berlin. (AP Photo/Franka Bruns)
Photo taken Nov. 1, 2009 at the former border crossing at Heinrich-Heine-Strasse in Berlin shows US President Richard Nixon looking across the communist wall into East Germany, from West Berlin, on Feb. 27, 1969, during his stay in the divided city. Then German Chancellor Kurt Kiesinger is seen behind Nixon. (AP Photo/Franka Bruns)
http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2009/11/06/the-20th-anniversary-of-the-fall-of-the-berlin-wall/
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