1961 - 2011 The Berlin Wall Fifty Years On

When in the early hours of Sunday 13 August 1961, the last moviegoers had returned from Western theatres and restaurants, the East Germans rolled out kilometers of barbed wire. The Berlin Wall was a fact. Little did they know that fifty years on, the Wall would be Berlin's top tourist attraction.

On that August morning, Berlin had ceased to exist. Instead Berliners now lived in either West or East Berlin. The forty-three-kilometer long wall sliced right through the heart of the city. Divided families no longer could visit or communicate with each other. Floodlit by night, guarded by attack dogs and watched over by trigger-happy guards, the wall separated West from East. Yet many East Berliners tried to escape but only few succeeded. Australian-born writer Anna Funder retells their story in Stasiland: True Stories from behind the Berlin Wall.  

After the Second World War, Berlin was split up into four sections administered by Britain, the US, France and USSR. A few years later in 1949, The Soviet zone became the German Democratic Republic (GDR). In the early days, east and west Berliners moved about the city with relative ease. People living in the east held jobs in the west. They visited relatives and friends and spent evenings at western movie theatres, went shopping during the daytime and dined in western – capitalist – establishments.

Every day, hundreds of thousands of East Berliners commuted to well-paid jobs in the West. Far more serious, the GDR economy showed no growth. The open border meant that thousands of skilled workers and scientists could flee East Germany simply by walking across the border or taking the U-Bahn, the Subway, into West Berlin.

For the next twenty-eight years, East Germany denied the existence of West Berlin. City maps published in the east showed the western side as a blank.

Right from its erection in 1961, the Berlin Wall has been a popular tourist attraction. Viewing platforms allowed Westerns a peek across into East Berlin. Western graffiti artists could not resist its smooth surface and turned it into master pieces. When the wall came down in 1989, the most prized souvenirs were fragment with colourful graffiti.

A walk along East Side Gallery is closest you can get of what the wall must have been like. This 1300-m stretch is the best preserved section of the Berlin Wall. Artists from around the world daubed it with post-1989 graffiti. It is strange but true, Berlin's most popular tourist attraction is the Berlin wall, even though only a few fragments still stand.

Museum Haus am Checkpoint Charlie
The Haus am Checkpoint Charlie is not like any other museum, it is a chronicle of the Cold War Years and the extraordinary and ingenious escape attempts made by GDR citizens to reach the West.

Weekend Berlin - From The Wall to Checkpoint Charlie

Berlin - Stroll Along Unter den Linden

Berlin Alexanderplatz - Shopping and History
Berlin's Alexanderplatz, a huge square, rests in the shadow of Berlin's 365-meter TV tower, and is easy to spot. Repeatedly bombed during World War II, the square had to be re-designed German. GDR city planners cluttered it with prefab offices and concrete blocks.

Berlin Potsdamerplatz - Center for Shoppers and Movie Fans

Berlin Wall 50 Years On: Families Divided, Loved Ones Lost
Half a century after the infamous German wall was built, two ex-East Berliners look back at how it changed their lives forever