Berlin Wall recedes further in memory
On Feb. 5, it will have been down longer than up
A quiet but notable anniversary is coming to Germany: On Feb. 5, the Berlin Wall will have been down as long as it was up.
The surprise construction of what would become the Berlin Wall began on Aug. 13, 1961. Berliners awoke to find soldiers installing barricades of barbed wire on the boundaries between East and West Berlin.
It would not be until Nov. 9, 1989 that free passage would once again be allowed between both halves of the city. In total, Berlin was divided by a wall for 10,316 days.
Although Berlin celebrates the fall of the wall every year on Nov. 9, there appears to be no official commemorations planned for Feb. 5.
That date also marks the 29th anniversary of the last person killed while attempting to cross the barrier. On Feb. 5, 1989, two young men were attempting to cross the wall to the West when they were caught by searchlights.
In the subsequent hail of gunfire from East German border guards, one of the men, 20-year-old Chris Gueffroy, was killed. He was the last of more than 140 people who died while attempting to cross the Berlin Wall.
The barrier had been devised to stop the exodus of East Germans fleeing to the more prosperous West. East German officials, however, dubbed it the “Anti- Fascist Protective Rampart.”
During the Cold War the wall became the most visible symbol of oppression in the Soviet Bloc.
As U. S. president John F. Kennedy famously said in a 1963 speech in front of it, “democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in.”
The Berlin Wall was much more than the 12- foot- high sections of concrete wall now preserved in museums and parks around the world.
Continually strengthened over the course of its 28-year reign, the barrier eventually became a latticework of fences, alarm systems, spike mats and ditches. Any wouldbe defector caught within this “death strip” of obstacles could be fired upon at will by border guards.
Its fall came as a result of a misunderstanding. At an East Berlin press conference, an official had been attempting to read a statement about a modest new policy that would allow select East Germans to visit the West with proper approval.
Instead, as the official nervously shuffled papers, he mistakenly announced that passage to the West would be permitted “immediately.”
Within minutes of the stunning announcement, crowds of thousands gathered around Berlin Wall crossings.
In an earlier era, the crowds might have been dispersed with violence, similar to how popular uprisings had been suppressed in Hungary and Czechoslovakia in the 1950s and 1960s.
But the mood was markedly different in 1989 as a result of a series of liberalizing reforms introduced by then Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev. One by one, confused East German border guards responded to the crowds by throwing open the checkpoints.
Despite nearly three decades of unification, the scars of a divided Berlin are still visible. Although East and West soon collaborated to dismantle most sections of the wall, large stretches were kept in place as a memorial. Most notable is the East Side Gallery, a kilometre- long section that preserves Cold War- era murals painted on the West German side of the barrier.
The divisions of the Cold War can also be read in the country’s demographics. Former East German provinces continue to lag behind their West German cousins on everything from average wealth to life expectancy to addiction rates.
Most notably, citizens in the former East Germany generally report that they are not as happy as those in the West. Although the gap is narrowing, polls of “life satisfaction” consistently find lower numbers in the neighbourhoods that had been behind the Iron Curtain.
In 2009, a Pew Research poll found that while enthusiasm for a united Germany remained high, it had ebbed from its post- Cold War peak. Among former East Germans, 82 per cent approved of the move to capitalism, down from 86 per cent in 1991.
DEVISED TO STOP THE EXODUS OF EAST GERMANS FLEEING.