Trailing the Berlin Wall

On Tuesday, August 12th, I visited the Berliner Mauer Gedenkstätte, a memorial to the Berlin Wall that runs about 6 blocks (1.4 km) along Bernauer Strasse in the strip once occupied by the fortified barrier between East and West Berlin. I was in Berlin again, along with Markus and Miriam, visiting my sister-in-law and her husband. Berlin: so much culture to see, so many places to shop, so many movies playing in English! It's hard to pick what to do with your three days in the city.

We'd planned a bike trip on Sunday, taking a train out to Chorin, where we rented bikes and pedaled up and down the country hills. Organic farms line the roads (Demeter). There's a cloister ruin (active as a concert site, but roofless) and lots of lakes. We had a lovely ride and capped it with an hour bathing in a lake tucked beyond a no-car road. We always feel lucky to travel with Christina and Peter, who have decades of exploration to share.

For those who know Berlin and the former East Germany, you will know that the city and its environs bear the legacy of Germany's division. When you're out in the country, as we were, you know you're in the former East. In this case, scantily populated areas are a clue, as are brightly renovated buildings, like the train station in Chorin. But the main clue is the knowledge that West Berlin was a small island that bordered East Berlin and was surrounded on all sides by the German Democratic Republic (DDR). If you leave Berlin by land or water today, you are soon in the former East by default.

Nearly 25 years since reunification, you don't necessarily notice where you are at any given time, east-west-wise. That is, buildings and space have become quite blended. I feel anachronistic when I wonder if I'm currently in the old East or the old West. The good news is it no longer matters. Throughout the city, the Berlin Wall is marked by a double line of square pavers. The line is visible at the foot of the Bernauer Straße U-Bahn station, famously made obselete by the sudden border closing in 1961. This station marks the northeast end of the memorial.

You can also see the path of the wall in the photo of me, standing just on the former West side of the line marking the wall. Alexanderplatz and its TV tower, a pride of  East Germany, was visible to someone looking over the 3.6-meter wall from West Berlin.

Bernauer Straße, northwest end of the Berlin Wall Memorial

The Berlin Wall Memorial fills the space that once was the Todesstreifen (death strip) with grassy lawns and exhibition elements in rust-brown metal. (We chose the same material for the monument to our son--see slide show 4). Adjacent buildings display large-scale graphics. Here, a famous photograph of a fleeing East German police officer, who jumped the barbed wire laid around the non-Russian sectors when the border was closed on August 13, 1961.

Iconic photo of escaping police officer.

You can listen throughout the memorial to recordings of historical speeches by functionaries and eye-witness stories. The former wall is marked by vertical rods, placed somewhat at random and providing a see-through delineation. Here the rods meet a large cube shape. And here is where the particular story of Bernauer Straße becomes clear. 

Memorial to the former apartment buildings on Bernauer Straße.

Berlin was divided up after World War II into four zones: Russian, French, British, and American, just as all of Germany had been divided this way. The divisions must have been bureaucratically drawn and made no real sense. Before the erection of the wall, people's lives involved passing through the four sectors. Suddenly, passage was forbidden. The border ran down Bernauer Straße such that buildings were in East Germany and the sidewalk to the street was in the West. At first people fled, some by jumping out windows into fireman's parachutes in the West below. The authorities began to brick in the West-side windows. Residents were resettled. Ultimately, the buildings were demolished and replaced by wall. Imagine suddenly not being allowed to go out your front door, or anywhere on that side, anymore. Recessed metal lines mark the former layout of the homes located on (and sometimes bisected by) the border.

The former Bernauer Straße 7.

Once the buildings stopped serving as an escape route, the land beneath them was dug to create escape tunnels. These are marked in the memorial with a zebra-stripe line. In the above photo, you can see a boy running along one of the tunnel lines.

Escape tunnel.

Along the memorial, daily life occurs in normal rhythms out on Bernauer Straße.

Ambulance passing.

At the midway point, there is a monument reconstructing the actual wall and the no man's land with all its fortifications. Full scale. On the old West side, you can mount a four-storey viewing tower to see down into the site. Also in the middle of the memorial is the outline of the Church of Reconciliation, a church that stood for decades in the no man's land, beyond the wall, locked away from its parishioners in the West. It was demolished in the 1980s. A new Chapel of Reconciliation, an eco-award-winning building of adobe, now stands on the site. Both of these elements escaped my photographic activities, but you can follow links to see them.

The far end of the memorial is the site of the Documentation Center, where you can view films and visit a gift shop. Walking toward it, you reach another sobering aspect of the wall and the destruction it caused. This end is a cemetery, and significant portions were flattened to make way for the wall. The following photos show the grassy expanse with children playing and people relaxing on the lawn, a stone element inside the current cemetery, and a monument marking the graves that were destroyed.

The former cemetery end of the memorial.

The memorial borders the cemetery here.

Monument to destroyed graves.

On previous visits to Berlin, these rusted rods have caught my attention as I passed by on the street car. At last we've spent a slow day absorbing the space, the beauty, and the somber, perplexing history.

The old wall. The new memorial. Reminder.