BERLIN WALL.

In the aftermath of the division of Germany into two states in 1949, the city of Berlin, controlled by the four Allies (France, Great Britain, and the United States on the one side and the Soviet Union on the other side), remained the only place where Germans could freely commute between the Eastern and the Western blocs of the Cold War. The inner German border zone had already been sealed off by the East German state in May 1952. By August 1961, approximately 2.2 million citizens of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) had left their country without official permission via the border separating the West Berlin sectors from the Soviet sector and the surrounding GDR territory. Reacting to the dictatorial transformation of East German society, the curtailing of basic human and civil rights, and a chronically weak economy, members of all classes and social groups, but in particular qualified workers and professionals, opted for a new start in the liberal capitalist part of their country. The impending collapse of the East German state and economy led the communist regime to close the Berlin border completely on 13 August 1961. They thus began to erect a wall, protected by barbed wire and made of concrete bricks and slabs. These barriers were later replaced by large concrete segments approximately 3.6 meters (12 feet) high and 1.2 meters (4 feet) wide (and topped by barbed wire) both inside the city (the "Berlin Wall" in the colloquial sense) and at the border between West Berlin and its rural surrounding regions.

East German plans to close the Berlin border dated back to the early 1950s but had lacked support by the Soviets. In a climate of rising international tension after the 1958 Berlin ultimatum proclaimed by Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet premier, to get the Western Allies out of their sectors, this seemed to be the only option to prevent a breakdown of the regime, in particular because U.S. president John F. Kennedy had assured the Soviet leadership that the Western powers would not take any military countermeasures as long as their own rights in West Berlin and the free use of the transit ways between West Berlin and the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) were guaranteed. The logistic and military preparation by the East German people's police had been under way for several months but successfully hidden from the public, so that the closure of the border and its immediate and effective fortification within a week came as a shock to the German population and the Western political elite. The actual work was done by civilian construction workers under the close supervision of paramilitary units of the people's police and the voluntary "fighting squads of the working class," a free-time militia recruited from state-owned enterprises. Units of the National People's Army (Nationale Volksarmee) and the Soviet Army were held in reserve in more remote areas, but did not have to intervene.

Even before the construction of the wall, attempting to leave East Germany without formal permission was persecuted under the law as a crime. A system of meticulous regulations prohibited nonresidents from staying in near-border areas. This was now complemented by a system of no-access areas with all vegetation or other objects removed, observation towers, and the continuous patrolling of guards armed with submachine guns who were trained to prevent any illegal trespassing, if necessary by "eliminating" the "violator of the border." From the whole setting it was evident that such persons were expected to come from within the GDR territory rather than, as the communist propaganda incessantly claimed, from the West. Later on the border installations at the inner German border, though not those around West Berlin, were fortified through the deployment of automatic gunfire devices, mines, and electronic detectors.

EFFECTIVENESS AND DEATH TOLL REASSESSED

As a means to cut short the drain of GDR refugees, the Berlin Wall proved to be effective. Their numbers immediately dwindled from 47,000 in August 1961 to fewer than 30,000 per year. Crossing the Berlin Wall as well as the inner German border became a life-threatening undertaking mostly risked by young single men, while others preferred to accept the assistance of refuge assistants (Fluchthelfer) to reach the West either by being smuggled out on one of the official transit ways or by using forged documents and traveling through a third transit country. The death toll at the fortified borders of the GDR after 13 August 1961 is now estimated to number at least 169 following the conservative numbers of the Berlin state prosecutor, while the Central Agency for the Investigation of Government and Unification Crimes at the Berlin Police Department has counted a total of 262. To these numbers, one must add the 159 persons killed at the GDR border before August 1961 to arrive at the total for the period from 1949 to 1989. According to both sources a slight majority of these victims died at the inner German border between East and West Germany. There are still no reliable figures for the much smaller numbers of those drowned or shot in the attempt to leave the GDR via the Baltic Sea, nor for those who were killed while crossing the border to one of the other socialist countries (Czechoslovakia, Poland) or from one of the Soviet bloc countries to the West. The estimate of an overall toll of nearly one thousand victims of the GDR border regime published by the Working Group August 13th must be considered as an exaggeration.

TUMBLING DOWN DURING THE DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION

During the 1980s the number of GDR citizens being allowed to visit West Germany rose to the hundreds of thousand. In this context, lifting all constraints on traveling abroad quickly became a top issue once the political U-turn came about in the fall of 1989. On the evening of 9 November 1989, Günter Schabowski, a member of the East German Politburo of the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED), acting as its spokesperson, held a live televised press conference communicating the most recent decisions taken by the SED leadership. One of these decisions he announced was a new decree regulating permission for GDR citizens to travel out of the GDR. Asked by a reporter when the new regulation would come into effect, he replied "immediately, with no delay." Because news agencies and television stations immediately repeated Schabowski's statement, and many East Berliners interpreted his announcement literally, within hours several thousand people had gathered at East Berlin border checkpoints clamoring for the gates to be opened. Because Schabowski's public communication had been coordinated neither with other members of the SED leadership nor with the Ministry of Defense and its border troops, the gatherings at the border, which had been observed and reported on by Western media, went on unhindered, leaving the border guards on-site without any instructions. In a chaotic situation of failing communication, the resignation of top leaders, and the peaceful presence of ever more persons at the checkpoints, permission was given to "flood" the checkpoint areas at 11:30 p.m. With the barriers lifted, some ten thousand East Berliners entered downtown West Berlin to be joined by their Western co-citizens in a spectacular all-night mass party covered live throughout the world.

JURIDICAL AND MEMORIAL AFTERLIFE

The fall of the Berlin Wall marked the point of no return in the breakdown of the Soviet bloc, opening the window of opportunity for Helmut Kohl's policy of immediate German reunification. In the days that followed, a spontaneous reappropriation of the wall by the people set in. Thousands of "wall peckers" dismantled the concrete segments, which, because they had been embellished and decorated by myriads of unknown graffiti and mural artists on their Western side, made nice colorful collector items that could also be sold in Berlin and elsewhere at good prices. Under the continuing pressure of mass demonstrations, additional checkpoints were now opened for free passage. By the end of the year the GDR created additional crossing points by tearing down the wall where old street connections between East and West Berlin had been blocked for twenty-eight years. When both city halves were also united politically, in conjunction with the joining of the two German states in October 1990, one of the first projects of the new city government was to do away with all the remaining sections of the wall. By December, most former border areas had been cleared and were made available again for urban planning and construction. In the meantime, with the construction boom following reunification, it has become rather difficult to identify the last traces of the former borderline in the downtown cityscape. There are only two large stretches of concrete wall segments left: one at Bernauer Straße, where a documentation center on the Berlin Wall run by the Federal Republic is situated, and one south of the city center, where East German artists had used its eastern side to create the East Side Gallery during the democratic revolution.

The criminal dimension of killings at the GDR borders have been dealt with in several trials both against rank-and-file members of the border troops and against their superiors and finally the top party functionaries. Whereas most of the lower ranks came away with short prisons sentences or probation, some of the top leaders such as Schabowski and the last SED leader, Egon Krenz, had to serve several years in prison. By the early twenty-first century, a sometimes heated debate had set in regarding how to memorialize properly the Berlin Wall as part of the city's history, and several research projects on the victims and the details of the GDR border regime were under way.

See alsoCold War; 1989.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, Deutschlandradio, and Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung Potsdam. "Chronik der Mauer, January 1961–1989/90." Available at http://www.chronik-der-mauer.de.

Burkhardt, Heiko. "Berlin Wall Online." Available at http://www.dailysoft.com/berlinwall.

Hertle, Hans-Hermann. "The Fall of the Wall: The Unintended Dissolution of East Germany's Ruling Regime." Cold War International History Project Bulletin, no. 12/13 (2001): 131–164.

Klausmeier, Axel, and Leo Schmidt. Wall Remnants, Wall Traces: The Comprehensive Guide to the Berlin Wall. Berlin, 2004.

When the Wall Came Tumbling Down: 50 Hours That Changed the World. VHS. Directed by Hans-Hermann Hertle and Günther Scholz. Northampton, Mass.: Icestorm International, 1999. Originally made for German television.

Thomas Lindenberger