The fall of the Berlin Wall was an historic evening not for both East Germany (then-officially known as the German Democratic Republic, abbreviated as GDR, now officially known as the Federal Republic of German, abbreviated as FRG, commonly known as Germany) and West Germany (officially known, and still officially known, as the Federal Republic of Germany, abbreviated as FRG), but also for the entire world, as the fall of the wall changed the face both communism and politics.
Right, When one thinks of Berlin, therer is no grater symbol than Brandenburger Tor (German for Brandenburger Gate); it is hard to imagine that a quarter of a century ago, not that long when one thinks about it, that the Brandenburg Gate was where the Berlin Wall once stood; it was also where the then-President of the Untied States of America, the late Ronald Reagan (commonly known as Ronald Reagan; born on Monday, 6 February, 1911; died on Saturday, 5 June, 2004), who was in Berlin commemorating the 750th anniversary of Berlin, had made an historic speech about the Berlin Wall by saying these exact words:
We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
The Brandenburg Gate was also where East and West Germany were separated. When one looks back at the photos, one sees that it was a no-man’s land. Nonetheless, lots more people are out today. The Deutsche Wiedervereinigung (German for German Reunification) has cost Germany considerably, according to various estimates, 3 trillion dollars, and that many German citizens are still paying for it still to this day. Right. Many people ask where does the money go towards?
The answer to that question claims that the money largely brings East Germany to different standards. By getting rid of the old apartment blocks, by getting rid of the old industry, and by trying to bring it up to a modern age. It continues to be costly, as many German citizens are paying 5.50 percent of their income tax still to this day to help subsidise the erstwhile East Germany. Of course, this is just one of many spots that one sees a huge rejuvenation in the city of Berlin.
It is also estimated that the erstwhile East Germany had always had a lower life expectancy than West Germany during the Berlin Wall era, but that the former is now on par with the latter since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and that the unemployment rate in the former, albeit still higher than the latter, is at its lowest level since the 1990s.
The gross domestice product (abbreviated as GDP) in East Germany is the same today (2014) as it was 10 years ago. 10 years ago, it was 70 percent to that of West Germany. Gert Georg Wagner (commonly known as Gert Wagner, or even as Gert G. Wagner; born on Monday, 5 January, 1953), a German economist, argues that the German Reunification is a success story, despite many argue it is an unsuccessful one; he says that in the early 1990s, the GDP of East Germany was only about 30 percent to that of West Germany.
There is no example in history that an economy with such low productivity could catch up in 25 years to a really high, a really efficient and effective economy as we have in West Germany.
Those that argue that it is an unsuccessful one, they argue it being an
unsuccessful one because it is estimated that more than 2 million East Germans
had moved to West Germany in the years following the German Reunification. Michael Christopher Burda (commonly known as Michael Burda, or even as Michael C. Burda; born on Saturday, 4 April, 1959), an American macroeconomist and labour economics professor at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (German for Humboldt University of Berlin),
founded in the year 1810 as the Universität zu Berlin (German for University of Berlin),
known from the year 1828 as the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität (German for Frederick
William University), and later, but unofficially, known after its location as
the Universität unter den Linden (German for Unter den Linden University. Note that the translation for Unter den Linden literally means Under the Linden Trees):
They were under duress in the 1990s. Young people had to get jobs so they left; they just went to the West. But a lot of those guys have thought about coming back.
It is also estimated that the salaries in East Germany are about 20 per cent
lower than in West Germany.
In the year 2013, Chris Austin Hadfield (commonly known as Chris Hadfield; born on Saturday, 29 August, 1959), who was the first Canadian to walk in space and is now a retired Canadian astronaut, once posted a tweet in his Twitter account that when he went to space for first time, he saw with his own eyes how the city of Berlin was divided. The lights in East Germany are still old and powered by gas and the lights in West Germany are still electric.
There are even more estimates that sate that 1 in 3 people was an informant working for an official state security service of East Germany that was one of the most effective and repressive intelligence and secret police agencies to ever have existed, the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, under the German abbreviation as MfS, (German for the Ministry for State Security, German abbreviation for MSS), commonly known under the German abbreviation as Staatssicherheit (German abbreviation for Stasi, literally State Security), also known as Staatssicherheitsdienst, under the German abbreviation as SSD, (German for State Security Service, German abbreviation for SSS). The Stasi informed on neighbours, friends, or even their very own loved ones; it was known as an enormous surveillance machine that included a spy network. The Stasi agents intercepted and read 90,000 letters a day; their contents often used or manipulated to put someone in jail.
Reinhard Weißhuhn (born on Wednesday, 4 April, 1951) was living under the Stasi surveillance for 15 years due to having been a representative of the civil rights movement in East Germany; he was lucky enough to avoid arrest due to what he believes having strong ties to journalists in West Germany.
People who have visited the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial have stated that there were more than 100 interrogation rooms along the prison’s dim-lit halls, sinister by dint of their blandness: a desk, a table, a chair, and a phone.
In the year 2013, Chris Austin Hadfield (commonly known as Chris Hadfield; born on Saturday, 29 August, 1959), who was the first Canadian to walk in space and is now a retired Canadian astronaut, once posted a tweet in his Twitter account that when he went to space for first time, he saw with his own eyes how the city of Berlin was divided. The lights in East Germany are still old and powered by gas and the lights in West Germany are still electric.
There are even more estimates that sate that 1 in 3 people was an informant working for an official state security service of East Germany that was one of the most effective and repressive intelligence and secret police agencies to ever have existed, the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, under the German abbreviation as MfS, (German for the Ministry for State Security, German abbreviation for MSS), commonly known under the German abbreviation as Staatssicherheit (German abbreviation for Stasi, literally State Security), also known as Staatssicherheitsdienst, under the German abbreviation as SSD, (German for State Security Service, German abbreviation for SSS). The Stasi informed on neighbours, friends, or even their very own loved ones; it was known as an enormous surveillance machine that included a spy network. The Stasi agents intercepted and read 90,000 letters a day; their contents often used or manipulated to put someone in jail.
Reinhard Weißhuhn (born on Wednesday, 4 April, 1951) was living under the Stasi surveillance for 15 years due to having been a representative of the civil rights movement in East Germany; he was lucky enough to avoid arrest due to what he believes having strong ties to journalists in West Germany.
They had bugs in the telephone, they had bugs in the apartment, they had people on the street … everything you could imagine.
Cliewe Juritza (born in 1966) was an erstwhile East German political prisoner who was serving a 1 year jail term at the Gedenkstätte
Berlin-Hohenschönhausen (German for Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial); he spent
a year in that prison after he was captured trying to reach West Germany, in the
year 1984; he is now a private German tour guide who offers private guided tours in well-known and unknown places of Berlin and Potsdam and who offers non-private guided tours at the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial, where he shares his personal political prisoner and Kalter Krieg (German for Cold War) stories; he knowns all too well the Stasi by stating that:
If you look outside of the prison, the large building … this was a factory of the Stasi. The production of the gadgets of espionage or observation. Altogether, there were 91,000 [State Security] employees … and 2,500 were working here.
People who have visited the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial have stated that there were more than 100 interrogation rooms along the prison’s dim-lit halls, sinister by dint of their blandness: a desk, a table, a chair, and a phone.
Potsdamer Platz (German for Potsdam Square) is today the busiest neighbourhood in Berlin; it is hard to imagine that the Potsdamer Platz was the death strip a quarter century ago. One would be killed by dogs, who were released by the guards, for either intruding or being a would-be escapee, There were mines there, snipers, and other gunmen, because the Potsdamer Platz was the outer wall. Where the middle of the intersection of the Potsdamer Platz is located today, was a second inner wall. When one looks at the difference between the busyness of today and what it was back then, one will see that it is just so stark. When one speaks of a death strip, the only place in modern Berlin that still remains is in the Potsdamer Platz. The outer wall, the inner wall, and the no-man’s land in-between. It was places like the Potsdamer Platz that so many people did escape or tried to escape – so many dying in the process between 1961 and 1989.
Very close to the Potsdamer Platz, just a block down, was where Hans Conrad Schumann (commonly known as Conrad Schumann; born on Saturday, 8 March, 1942; died on Saturday, 20 June, 1998), who was an East German solider serving under the Nationale Volksarmee, abbreviated as the NVA (German for the National People’s Army, abbreviated as NPA),
Very close to the Potsdamer Platz, just a block down, was where Hans Conrad Schumann (commonly known as Conrad Schumann; born on Saturday, 8 March, 1942; died on Saturday, 26 June, 1998), who was an East German solider serving under the Nationale Volksarmee, abbreviated as the NVA (German for the National People’s Army, abbreviated as NPA), but was enlisted in the East German Volkspolizei-Bereitschaften, abbreviated as the VPB (German for Standby, or Alert People’s Police), became the very person to successfully escape from East Germany to West Germany on Tuesday, 15 August, 1961, during day three of the construction of the Berlin Wall, as the wall was simply a low-barbed fence during the time of his escape; he made his escape after West Germans across from him from the other side shouted to him, “Komm’ rüber!” (German for “Come over!”), where there was a West Berlin police car that had pulled up waiting for him and promptly drove him away from the scene.
Sculptors Florian and Michael Brauer and Edward Anders made a sculpture in honour of the late Conrad Schumann, giving the name of the sculpture Mauerspringer (German for Walljumper). The sculpture was once located close to the site of his escape, before it was moved to its current location at the side of a building on Brunnenstraße, several metres south of Bernauer Straße.
Other than Conrad Schumann, around 5,000 people successfully escaped from East Germany to West Germany. Albeit around 5,000 successfully escaped, it is reported that many other would-be escapees were unsuccessful in escaping after they were killed trying to escape. The number of would-be escapees killed has been disputed, with numbers figuring in at well above 200, another at 136, and an another at 98, The official figures listed at 98 is claimed by prior sources, the 136 confirmed deaths is claimed by the Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung, abbreviated as ZZF (German for the Center for Contemporary Historical Research), whilst the well above 200 figure is vocally claimed by Alexandra Hildebrandt (born as Alexandra Weissmann on Friday, 23 February, 1959), who became the co-founder and current Director of the Mauermuseum – Museum Haus am Checkpoint Charlie, or Haus am Checkpoint Charlie Mauermuseum (German for Checkpoint Charlie Museum) after the death of her late husband Rainer Hildebrandt (born on Monday, 14 December, 1914; died on Friday, 9 January, 2004).
On the same day of Conrad Schumann’s escape, Peter Leibing (born in 1941; died on Sunday, 2 November, 2008), a German photographer working for the Hamburg picture agency Contiepress at the time, happened to capture a photograph of Conrad Schumann’s escape after he was tipped by the Berlin police that Conrad Schumann, who was only referred to the Berlin police as the East German Border Guard, might become the very first person to successfully escape from East Germany to West Germany.
Today, Peter Leibing’s photo has become a well-known image not just inside the world of photography,
Today, Peter Lebing’s photo has become a well-known image not just inside the world of photography, but also outside the world of photography, such as the Cold War, so much so that the Overseas Press Club (officially known as the Overseas Press Club of America, abbreviated as OPC), awarded Peter Leibing’s photo the Overseas Press Club Best Photograph award for the year 1961, whilst UNESCO (acronymic for the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization) inducted Peter Leibing’s photo into the UNESCO Memory of the World programme, in May of 2011, as part of a collection of documents on the fall of the Berlin Wall.
On Bernauer Straße, there once stood a Gothic Revival Architecture (also referred to as Gothic Revival, Victorian Gothic, Neo-Gothic or Jigsaw Gothic, and as Collegiate Gothic when used for school, college, and university buildings) church named the Kapelle der Versöhnung (German for Chapel of Reconciliation) that sat in-between the two walls.
In 1985, 101 years after the completion of the Gothic Revival church, the inner and outer wall was blown up by East Germany. According to the official justification by the GDR government, it was destroyed in order ‘to increase the security, order and cleanliness on the state border with West Berlin’. The Gothic Revival church had been left to rot in that no-man’s land – being used essentially as a rest place for many guards.
In 1999, the Gothic Revival church was constructed, not in its full completion, under the leadership of the Austrian clay artist Martin Rauch. The Gothic Revival church, now a chapel, was given the same name to its original, but many parts of it were found in the wreckage, many parts found in people’s homes. People had saved it away. It has today formed a part of this chapel.
It was also an historic evening together with unforgettable words from anchorman Hans Joachim Friedrichs of the nightly news program Tagesthemen (stylised as tagesthemen, German for “Issues of the Day”) after proclaiming in German, which his proclamation is translated in English, these exact words:
This is a historic day. East Germany has announced that, starting immediately, its borders are open to everyone. The GDR is opening its borders… the gates in the Berlin Wall stand open.
On Wednesday, 26 June, 1963, 22 months after the erection of the Berlin Wall, the then-President of the United States of America, John Fitzgerald Kennedy (commonly known as Jack Kennedy, or JFK, or by his initials as JFK; born on Tuesday, 29 May, 1917; died on Saturday, 22 November, 1963) was on the steps of Rathaus Schöneberg, the city hall for the borough of Tempelhof-Schöneberg, in Berlin, had made an historic speech about the Berlin wall by saying these exact words:
Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was civis romanus sum [“I am a Roman citizen” . Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is “Ich bin ein Berliner!”… All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words “Ich bin ein Berliner!”
Another nightly news program, Tagesthemen (stylised as tagesschau①, German for “Day’s Show”, or loosely “Review of the Day”; a play on the term Wochenschau, the weekly newsreel erstwhile shown in cinemas German for “Issues of the Day”), also aired the historic event and so did Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (German for Second German Television, usually abbreviated as ZDF),
ZDF was the first to air the historic event at approximately 17:17, whilst the Arbeitsgemeinschaft der öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunkanstalten der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (abbreviated as ARD – Consortium of public broadcasters in Germany) was the second to air the historic event at approximately 20:00.
Websites and Sources
This content of this blogspot post, “Berlin Wall”, is taken from websites that I consider both informative and reliable. The objective of this blogspot post is not to provide information, but to help those informative and reliable websites to be noticed. Some, if not all, of those informative and reliable websites are already noticed, but I still find it best to post their content due to both copyright and educational purposes.
The Berlin Wall
Berlin Wall Memorial
Chronicle of the Wall
A multimedia story of the Berlin Wall (1961 - 1990)
Berlin Wall Online
Berlin Wall
Berlin Wall newsreel archives
Berlin Wall image group
(German) Photos of the Berlin Wall (1962 - 1990)
Berlin Wall
Berlin Wall, 25 years after fall of communism
Berlin Wall: CBC News
Berlin Wall: German reunification ‘a success story’
Berlin Wall: East Germans lived in fear under Stasi surveillance
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