Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
find themselves on the wrong side of the newly established “national border”, leapt
out of windows to get to the West. Over the years, the facades of these buildings were
cemented up and incorporated into the partition itself, until they were knocked down
and replaced by the Wall proper in 1979. A short section of Wall as it once was - both
walls and a death-strip between - remain preserved at the corner of Bernauer Strasse
and Ackerstrasse.
Down the road at Bernauer Strasse 111, the
Wall Documentation Centre
keeps the
story of the Wall alive using photos, sound recordings and information terminals and
has a useful viewing tower that you can climb to contemplate the barrier and the way
in which it once divided the city.
The Gesundbrunnen bunkers
Gesundbrunnen U-Bahn • Tours, which start within easy walking distance of the o
ce, are run by Berliner Unterwelten; tickets available
from the o
ce from 10am on the day •
T
030 49 91 05 17,
W
berlinerunterwelten.de • U- & S-Gesundbrunnen
Immediately north of the Spandauer Vorstadt - and two stops north on the S-Bahn
from the Nordbahnhof - lies U- and S-Bahn
Gesundbrunnen
, around which several
underground passages and
bunkers
are open for fascinating and unusual tours. hese
are organized by the non-profit
Berliner Unterwelten
; their ticket o
ce is in the
southern entrance hall of the Gesundbrunnen U-Bahn station. he company offers
Initial escape attempts were straightforward, and often successful - hollowing out
furniture, ramming checkpoint barriers and simple disguise brought many people over.
However, the authorities quickly rose to the challenge, and would-be escapees were
forced to become more resourceful, digging tunnels and constructing gliders, one-man
submarines and hot-air balloons. By the time the Wall came down, every escape method
conceivable seemed to have been used - even down to passing through Checkpoint
Charlie in the stomach of a pantomime cow - and those desperate to get out of the GDR
preferred the long wait and complications of applying to leave o
cially to the risk of being
gunned down by a border guard.
An oddity of the Wall was that it was built a few metres inside GDR territory; the West Berlin
authorities therefore had little control over the
gra
ti
that covered it. The Wall was an
ever-changing mixture of colours and slogans, with occasional bursts of bitterness: “My friends
are dying behind you”; humour: “Why not jump over and join the Party?”; and stupidity: “We
shoulda nuked 'em in 45”.
Late in 1989 the East German government, spurred by Gorbachev's
glasnost
and confronted
by a tense domestic climate, realized it could keep the impossible stable no longer. To an
initially disbelieving and then jubilant Europe, travel restrictions for GDR citizens were lifted
on
November 9, 1989
- effectively, the Wall had ceased to matter, and pictures of Berliners,
East and West, hacking away at the detested symbol filled newspapers and TV bulletins around
the world. Within days, enterprising characters were renting out hammers and chisels so that
souvenir hunters could take home their own chip of the Wall.
Today, especially in the city centre, it's barely possible to tell exactly where the Wall ran: odd
juxtapositions of dereliction against modernity, and the occasional unexpected swathe of the
erstwhile “death strip”, are in most cases all that's left of one of the most hated borders the
world has ever known. The simple row of
cobbles
that has been placed along much of the
former course of the Wall acts as a necessary reminder. Few significant stretches remain; the
sections devoted to the East Side Gallery (see p.130) and the Berlin Wall Memorial (see above)
are the most notable exceptions.
One sad postscript to the story of the Wall hit the headlines in spring 1992. Two former
border guards
were tried for the murder of Chris Gueffroy, shot dead while illegally trying to
cross the border at Neukölln in February 1989. Under the GDR government the guards had
been treated to a meal by their superiors and given extra holiday for their patriotic actions;
under the new regime, they received sentences for murder - while those ultimately
responsible, the former leaders of the GDR, largely avoided punishment.
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