The Berlin Wall: A Sobering & Enlightening Walk

We visited the Berlin wall several years ago.

As recounted here, our adult daughter knew little about the Cold War which ended before her birth.

To stand beside such a barrier to freedom surprised all three of us.

It felt like a memorial to the past, which seemed far away but so very close time-wise.

What is the Berlin Wall?

During my childhood but before my memory, the German Democratic Republic (DDR) built the Berlin wall over several days in 1961.

Then divided into “zones,” Berlin sat in the middle of territory seized by the Soviet Union following Germany’s collapse at the end of World War II.

The DDR kept their sector of Berlin isolated from the west.

For the sectors held by the US, Britain, and France, supplies only came via airdrops or specific routes allowed by the Soviets.

But so many people slipping through the sealed border from East Berlin to West Berlin angered the Communists in control.

(See any Cold War spy novel).

As traveler Rick Steves wrote:

West Berlin was a 185-square-mile island of capitalism surround by East Germany. Between . . . 1949 and 1961, an estimated three million East Germans emigrated (fled) to freedom.

To staunch their population loss, the DDR erected the 96-mile-long “Anti-Facist Protective Rampart” almost overnight.”

Rick Steves’ Germany p. 767

At midnight on August 13, 1961, the DDR began building a high wall to separate the city and slow the escapees.

It dived families and neighborhoods, even as it went up between apartment buildings.

Hated then and still hated now

By the time the DDR built the wall, many Berliners and Germans hated the Communist life.

They dashed across or past the wall, desperate to escape before the DDR completely sealed them in the Communist prison.

Too many people jumped over the wall from apartment buildings on the Eastern side.

More than one parent tossed a child.

Others tunneled underground. Two men flew gliders over the wall.

Some of this I knew.

The rest (with photos), we learned at the splendid Berlin Wall Memorial.

Such an interesting walk

Berlin has more than its share of fantastic museums.

However, this particular one is a self-paced open air and you can walk the Berlin Wall during daylight.

We read through the exhibit boards, marveled at the very wall, right there.

(And yes, you can touch it!)

Below are examples of three open-air exhibits (Placards explain what happened in English and German).

Memories?

The memorial park skirts the remaining intact section of the wall. A lovely grassy parkland stretches to the east of the wall. Chronologically, it worked best for us to walk from the south to the north.

We stopped to read the exhibits all along the way, so thankful horrifying concertina wire no longer stars the top.

Our daughter knew nothing–somehow I’d forgotten to describe this part of history.

I told her of President John F. Kennedy’s famous response, “I am a Berliner.”

And also, President Ronald Reagan’s admonition to General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev:

It all came down on November 9, 1989.

Friends were out to sea on a submarine that day. The Commanding Officer entered the wardroom and paused to meet the eyes of each man.

He walked around the table, shook their hands, and said, “Congratulations, gentlemen, on winning the Cold War.”

After the Berlin Wall came down.

In 2010-2011, I traveled to three countries that spent 40 years mired behind the Iron Curtain.

I asked the people I visited, relatives of my friends, how things changed in 1989.

A Slovenian shrugged. “My son came home from the army.”

Attila, a Hungarian lawyer, gave me a long answer which basically boiled down to, “We expected to become like Americans overnight. It did not happen. Hungary is a small nation, we had to adapt to the larger ones.”

A Romanian woman nodded her head, defining that 1989 change as “when Capitalism came.”

I’ve pondered her answer ever since.

Before capitalism, we did not know who we could trust and so we focused on our family. You spoke truth to your family and they were the center of your life. You worked your job and then you came home to your family. We grew much of our own food.

Now under capitalism, we work all the time and we have little time for our family. We are not so close anymore.

And the tomatoes have no flavor, either.

(The tomatoes lost their flavor because families no longer had time to grow them. Store purchased tomatoes, as many in the west also know, seldom taste as good as those grown at home.)

Undivided Berlin

We learned a lot walking the Berlin Wall our first night in that marvelous city.

It helped shape the five days we spent there and gave us a glimpse of a different world.

That’s why we travel, of course.

On our final day, we visited a somewhat cheesy but also poignant spot.

(The next post!)

Tweetables

A fascinating walk along the Berlin Wall. Click to Tweet

Where 1961 Berlin split East and West, today. Click to Tweet