Happy 20th birthday! - Two decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall

In 1959, just fifty years ago, I was in Berlin with the British Army. The infamous wall had not yet been built round the whole city, which was divided into four sectors, Russian, American, French and British. Berlin stood geographically to the right/centre of East Germany, or 'The People's Democratic Republic'. The rest of the country had been divided into zones by the victorious Allies following the destruction of the Nazis and suicide of Hitler.

East Berlin was like a small model of East Germany, a Soviet-controlled wilderness where the people unfortunate enough to be have been thus segregated scratched out whatever living they could, while the State erected huge blocks of ugly flats. The British Zone of Berlin was mostly residential, and included part of a navigable river-lake called the Havel, a military airport at Gatow, a very well designed and spacious barracks at Kladow, shopping in Charlottenburg and the Kurfurstendam (itself maintaining a ruined church as a memory of the fall of Berlin), and beautiful parkland. The British also had the great prison at Spandau, where survivors of the War Crimes Tribunal were locked up. The French, despite General de Gaulle's efforts not to, got most of industrialised, rather slummy West Berlin as their zone in the Reinickendorf, Wedding and Jungfernheide. Both the US Zone and their Sector in the city were southerly, residential and blessed with good weather. They also had Tempelhof Airport. The Soviet Sector was singularly larger than the rest of the Allied sectors put together. The East authorities hardly bothered to level unbelievable bomb damage, except for carparks and soviet-style apartment buildings looking as if they had been transferred brick for brick from the new suburbs of Moscow.

This grim atmosphere was somewhat lightened by the fact that soldiers serving in any of the sectors were free (more or less; you had to be in uniform and carry all necessary papers) to visit other sectors. At that time the West Mark was worth nearly three times more than the East Mark. British soldiers would take advantage of this by buying normally very expensive Leica cameras and equipment from eager shopkeepers in the Russian Sector. We could also hear and watch grand opera in the hardly damaged Opera House. Most of the singers were Russian or Polish and in fine voice.
Both Russia and East Germany were at that time anxious, because hundreds of citizens of the People's Democratic Republic wished to join their relatives living in the rapidly recovering western zones and sector, though they were not allowed to. The illusion of the modern, democratic 'good life' brought by Russians to the good burghers of East Berlin, Danzig and Dresden was just that - an illusion. This led to a constant stream of families and professionals such as doctors and architects going West. The Kremlin and Honneker, president of East Germany decided to build a massive wall, and mount guard on it with Russian and East German soldiers and police with orders to shoot to kill when they found men, women or children (sometimes pathetically accompanied by household pets), trying to climb the wall to freedom. To the horror of both sides, the great 155 kilometre wall was built, mostly in 1961.

One of the first escapees was in fact an East German soldier, who, deciding he did not like the implications of the great wall, vaulted over barbed wire on 15 August, with the athletic ease of his 19 years, seeking (and finding) freedom in the Bernaurstrasse. He was much photographed during the feat.

After the Wall was finished, people like the 18-year old bricklayer Fechter were shot attempting to repeat young soldier Schumann's escapade, and the photographers were kept busy for years afterwards snapping bleeding corpses. The 'freedom' of the 'Democratic Republic' found expression in the following figures: there were 14,000 frontier guards, armed to the teeth: 3,221 would-be escapers were arrested in the act: there were five thousand successful jumps over the electric fences, guard dogs and wall.
Between 239 and 800 (the difference depends on the source) persons were killed trying to leave East Berlin: Twenty-seven East German soldiers or policemen died in fire-fights with escapees.

Two complete families escaped using hot air balloons. Thomas Krugen flew out in a borrowed light aircraft. Many escaped hidden uncomfortably in motorcars. 70 tunnels were dug, boarded and aired for use by escapers.

By the time Walter Ulbricht, head of the Communist Party in East Germany had been ordered directly by Stalin to build the Wall, 3.5 million East Germans had chosen freedom -10% of the working population, or one out of every five citizens. The last citizen to be killed at the Wall was young student Gueffroy, who in 1989 took ten bullets in the chest in near the Britz Canal. Six months later international and internal pressure, perestroika encouraged by Gorbachev, a visit by the Polish Pope to Poland (during which his sermons did a great deal to help finish the Cold War: Stalin scoffed "How many divisions does the Pope have?"), led to the destruction of the entire Wall by Germans on one side, and Germans helping on the other, watched by East German police and soldiers who had apparently decided to do or say nothing. With the collapse of the great Wall of Berlin twenty years ago this year began the long awaited end of Soviet Communism throughout the great Soviet Empire.

by Dean Swift - photographs: E Honneker, W. Ulbricht.
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