The Guide

The Wall that separated a city, a state, a nation and virtually the whole world. It became one of the main landmarks of the Cold War, representing the fighting parties and their attitudes. The Berlin Wall appeared in 1961, from day to day. A long concrete obstacle to stop people from crossing the imaginary line drawn through the city. Separating families, friends, cultures for almost 30 years.
The Soviets had this physical splitting of the city in mind for a longer time. First, after the failed blockade of 1948, humiliting upstands in 1953 and major escape attempts in the 50s they finally decided to stop it all for good.
The Berlin Wall was the first piece of concrete structures to close the border between two Germanies. In a short time afterwards, when the whole wall was completed, barb wire, mine fields and pillboxes were built on both sides of the border. Crossing of the so called "green border" was almost impossible and only well equipped spies and desperate people tried it. Many failed, were caught, shot, torn apart by land mines. These victims almost vanished from Earth's surface, but in Berlin, the situation was different.

This piece of the border was attempted many, many times. From the day as the wall was build, people trying to escape the concrete cage, jumping from the buildings' roofs over the wall. Later, trying to break the fences and for a bottle of vodka and a bunch of "deutschmarken" get the plan of the minefields somewhere.
Paying lots of money to people for leading them over to the other side. Sometimes they were successful under the cover of night, sometimes they were not. And the guards on the border were instructed to shoot first and then ask questions. People died on the Berlin Wall, even in the times of the liberation and the pre-time of the fall of the regime in 1989, people were shot dead on the leathal strip of earth on the bumpers of the superpowers. Only in this period over 100 people were shot. The trials with the commanding officers are still underway.
Finally, the Wall was dismanteled in 1990 and was the final sign for the system to collapse and to end the Cold War. This was acknowledged throughout the world, on both sides of the Wall.
Just in summer 1998, a monument reminding of the Wall was opened to the public in Berlin. It presents a reconstructed 100 meters of the Wall closed by mirrors on both sides evoking a unending alley of concrete. The walls of the monument bear all names of the victims which lost their lives there.

In memory of The Wall victims.

Created on 29 August '98