Description of the Berlin Wall

The Berlin Wall

Background

The Berlin wall was built in 1961 because there were so many people who tried to immigrate into the West side of Berlin and enter a better life then they had in the East side.

In the early morning of 8-13-1961 the DDR began to blockade the streets between East and West Berlin with a incite wire fence (= Stacheldrahtzaun) Tanks arrived at concentration points and they blockaded streets with stones and barricades. The S-/U-Bahn (the train through the city) was disconnected and it was prohibited for the people to go to the West side of Berlin, 60,000 commuter included.

On the 8-23-1961 nobody was allowed to pass the wall from both sides and on 8-17-1962 the 18 year old Peter Fechter got shot and died as he tried to jump over the wall from East to West.

Extents

The boarder from West to East was 166km long and around 107km were covered with the wall.

English: The Fall of the Berlin Wall, 1989. The ph...

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The Berlin Wall at Friedrichstrasse, East Germany

The structure of the wall from West to East was: first a 4m tall concrete wall and behind (on the East side) the death-line, where the immigrants who already reached this points got shot without warnings. In front of this line were a large dig for stopping vehicles for escaping from the East side and after that there were trails for guards and awake dogs. And finally after that there were another wall on the to the East side. The boarder crossed 192 streets, 97 to East Berlin and 95 to the DDR.

The Fall

1989 there were discussions about the Berlin wall because of a mass immigration to Hungary and the Leipzig's Monday demonstration with the result that the DDR-traveling law was changed. Guenter Schabowski said on November 9th 1989 said in an unclearly formulation that the boarder is...