Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Museum für Naturkunde
Tues-Fri 9.30am-6pm, Sat & Sun 10am-6pm • €6 •
W
naturkundemuseum-berlin.de • U-Naturkundemuseum
Just west of where Chausseestrasse crosses Invalidenstrasse is the
Museum für Naturkunde
,
one of the world's largest natural history museums; its origins go back to 1716, though
the present building and the nucleus of the collection date from the 1880s.
Here you'll see a skeleton of a brachiosaurus, fossil remains of an archaeopteryx
(the oldest known bird), and some entertaining rooms devoted to the evolution of
vertebrates and the ape family; there's also an interesting, if slightly ghoulish, section
on how the numerous stuffed animals were “prepared for exhibition”. Finally, the
museum boasts a vast mineralogy collection, including a number of meteorites.
The Berlin Wall Memorial
Bernauer Str. • Tues-Sun: April-Oct 9.30am-7pm; Nov-March 9.30am-6pm • Free •
W
berliner-mauer-gedenkstaette.de •
S-Nordbahnhof
Opposite S-Bahn Nordbahnhof is the first of two buildings dedicated to the
Berlin Wall
Memorial
(Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer), which contains a bookshop and screens an
introductory film. Bernauer Strasse was literally bisected by the Wall; before the Wall
was built you could enter or exit the Soviet Zone just by going through the door of one
of the buildings, which is why, on August 13, 1961, some citizens, who woke up to
THE BERLIN WALL
After the war, Berlin was split among Britain, France, the US and USSR, as Stalin, Roosevelt and
Churchill had agreed at Yalta. Each sector was administered by the relevant country, and was
supposed to exist peacefully with its neighbours under a unified city council. But, almost from
the outset, antagonism between the Soviet and other sectors was high. Just three years after
the war ended, the Soviet forces closed down the land access corridors to the city from the
Western zones in what became known as the
Berlin Blockade
: it was successfully overcome
by a massive
airlift
of food and supplies that lasted nearly a year (see p.124). This, followed by
the 1953 uprising (see p.120), large-scale cross-border emigration (between 1949 and 1961,
the year the Wall was built, over three million East Germans - almost a fifth of the population
- fled to the Federal Republic) and innumerable “incidents”, led to the building of what the
GDR called an “an antifascist protection barrier”.
The Wall was erected overnight on
August 13, 1961
when, at 2am, forty thousand East
German soldiers, policemen and Workers' Militia went into action closing U- and S-Bahn lines
and stringing barbed wire across streets leading into West Berlin to cordon off the Soviet
sector. The Wall followed its boundaries implacably, cutting through houses, across squares
and rivers with its own cool illogicality. Many Berliners were evicted from their homes, while
others had their doors and windows blocked by bales of barbed wire. Suddenly the British,
American and French sectors of the city were corralled some 200km inside the GDR, yet
though they reinforced patrols, the Allies did nothing to prevent the sealing of the border.
Despite earlier rumours, most people in West and East Berlin were taken by surprise. Those who
lived far from the border area only learned of its closure when they found all routes to West Berlin
blocked. Crowds gathered and extra border guards sent to prevent trouble. There was little most
people could do other than accept this latest development, though some - including a few
border guards - managed to find loopholes in the new barrier and flee west. But within a few
days, building workers were reinforcing the barbed wire and makeshift barricades with bricks
and mortar. As an additional measure, West Berliners were no longer allowed to cross the border
into East Berlin. From 1961 onwards the GDR strengthened the Wall making it an almost
impenetrable barrier - in effect two walls separated by a
Sperrgebiet
(forbidden zone), dotted
with watchtowers and patrolled by soldiers and dogs. It was also known as the
Todesstreifen
(
death strip
) as border troops, known as Grepos, were under instructions to shoot anyone
attempting to scale the Wall, and to shoot accurately: any guard suspected of deliberately
missing was court-martialled, and his family could expect severe harassment from the
authorities. Over the years, over two hundred people were
killed
endeavouring to cross the Wall.
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