BERLIN WALL, BERLIN

The Berlin Wall stood in Berlin, Germany, for 28 years, 2 months, and 26 days.
However, it was not just any wall—it was the Wall: politically, a symbol of the post-World
War II Cold War world order; architecturally, an example of the power of the most basic
building block of architecture; and artistically, a giant 166-kilometer-long blank canvas.
After the defeat of the Third Reich in 1945, both Germany and its capital, Berlin, were
partitioned into four zones, each under the administration of one of the Allies: Great
Entries A–F 263
Britain, France, the United States, and the USSR. The partition of Germany was done so
along existing provincial boundaries. The partition of Berlin, which was located in the
middle of the Soviet sector, was done so in terms of postal codes.
In 1949 the French-, British-, and American-controlled sectors were merged to form
the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), with Bonn as its capital. In that same year, the
Soviet-controlled eastern quarter of Germany became the German Democratic Republic
(GDR), with (East) Berlin as its capital. Although the USSR proclaimed the sovereignty
of the GDR in 1954, East Germany effectively was an internally run satellite of the
USSR.
Between the years 1949 and 1961, it is estimated that approximately three million
people, or roughly one-sixth of the population, fled from the GDR to the West. This
exodus occurred both along the 1,400-kilometer border with the FRG and from East to
West Berlin. Because the refugees were from all professions and mostly under the age of
25, the GDR soon faced a social and economic crisis, especially in terms of the loss of
trained and specialist personnel.
To stop this flow of refugees, armed units of the GDR began to seal off the open
border between East and West Berlin in the early morning of 13 August 1961. The border
between the GDR and the FRG was also sealed, and West Berlin became, in effect, an
island in the middle of the GDR. The justification for these fortifications was clear in the
GDR’s name for them—“the antifascist protective barrier”—suggesting the prevention of
the West from coming in, not the prevention of the East from going out.
At first the Berlin Wall was merely a hastily constructed barbed-wire fence with
armed guards. During the remainder of 1961, these initial fortifications rapidly grew
more sophisticated. In front of the Brandenburg Gate, soldiers constructed a seven-foothigh
(2.1 meters), six-foot-deep (1.8 meters) tankproof bar rier with steel posts and
prefabricated concrete slabs laid flat and held with mortar. Elsewhere in Berlin, concrete
slabs were laid vertically and then topped off with square concrete blocks and barbed
wire.
On the eastern side of the Wall, the GDR then slowly began to construct a no-man’s
land. First, a second wall was built approximately one city block (100 meters) into East
Berlin. This system was perfected with lookout towers, searchlights, tank traps, dog runs,
trip wires, alarmed fences, and ditches in between the two walls. Then the above-ground
division was doubled underground as Berlin’s subway lines were severed and terminated
at the border. Eventually, all roads, train lines, canals, and other transportation routes in
and out of West Berlin were either severed or controlled by GDR border police.
In some areas of Berlin, the East-West border ran right down the middle of a street,
thanks to the previously mentioned decision to use postal codes as the division line. In
these locations, the buildings on the East were evacuated and their openings bricked up,
effectively making the buildings themselves the Berlin Wall. Eventually, these buildings
and also the early versions of the Wall were demolished and replaced with the
superefficient “fourth generation,” or 1979 version, which proved to be the most famous.
It consisted of four-foot-wide (1.2 meters) prefabricated concrete L-shaped panels nearly
12 feet (3.6 meters) high, laid side-by-side in mortar and topped with a round concrete
tube. Each panel weighed 2.6 tons and had to be installed with a crane.
This last version of the Berlin Wall is the one that became famous for its graffiti. Soon
after the 1979 version was built, all sorts of comments, slogans, stories, constructions,
Encyclopedia of 20th-century architecture 264
figures, and grotesque fantasies began to be written, stenciled, and painted onto it. Every
year, the GDR border guards would dutifully paint over these scribbles in a futile attempt
to draw attention away from them, and every year the Wall would fill right back up with
its multicolored messages.
The Wall soon became no longer a thorn in the side of West Berlin but rather an asset,
almost a tourist attraction. Tourists from around the world no longer came to West Berlin
to take in an opera or to visit a museum but rather to marvel at this three-dimensional
expression of an arbitrary line on the map. The American artist Keith Haring painted a
vast stretch near “Checkpoint Charlie” in 1986 and held a press conference afterward.
After that point, the Wall was considered art.
The beginnings of the fall of the Berlin Wall can be traced to the 1985 election of
Mikhail Gorbachev as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Gorbachev’s policies, which allowed the satellite nations of Eastern Europe to determine
their own affairs, brought about demands in those countries for more freedom. In May
1989 the Hungarian government opened its border with Austria, thereby lifting
Churchill’s famous “iron curtain” and allowing GDR citizens to travel to the West via
Hungary. On 9 November 1989 the GDR announced on the radio that all citizens were
free to travel wherever they wanted. This decree effectively rendered the Berlin Wall
useless.
Within one year, the Berlin Wall was practically destroyed by both angry East
Germans and hungry souvenir hunters. Other parts were dismantled and recycled for road
construction. On 3 October 1990 East and West Germany were officially unified into a
single Federal Republic of Germany. In 1995 one watchtower and four stretches of the
remaining Berlin Wall totaling 1.71 kilometers were placed under protection and
designated as historical monuments. The Wall thus officially became history.