Construction of the Berliner Mauerweg (Berlin Wall Trail) began in 2002 and was completed in 2006, in line with a resolution passed by the Berlin House of Representatives on 11 October 2001. This resolution called for a continuous path for pedestrians and cyclists along the 160 kilometers of the former border installations that had once walled in West Berlin, using the old border patrol roads wherever possible. The route was to be marked out and explained in such a way that visitors would be able to visualize the course of the former border installations.
The state-owned GRÜN BERLIN Park und Garten GmbH was charged with carrying out the project under the overall supervision of the Senate Department for Urban Development. Under GRÜN BERLIN’s leadership, five planning offices designed and carried out forty individual projects. These included building or restoring sections of the trail (with a total length of around 15 kilometers), placing signs marking the path at around 600 different locations, and installing roughly a hundred maps and – along the former outer border with Brandenburg – 17 info boards at historically significant sites. Ten center islands have been built on especially busy streets to help Wall Trail users cross the road. The two underpasses that enable hikers and cyclists to avoid crossing the tracks of the Anhalter Bahn railroad and S-Bahn line 25 (Teltow / Lichterfelde) were the most expensive single measure.
The Berlin Wall Trail project cost a total of around €4.4 million. Project financing came from the Senate Department for Economics, Labour and Women’s Issues (90%), from a state/federal joint fund used to improve regional economic structures, and from the Senate Department for Urban Development’s own resources. These funds were also used to finance some of the construction for the Wall Trail on land belonging to Brandenburg, the federal state that surrounds Berlin.
More construction is needed to further improve the Wall Trail’s usability. These measures will follow once the Senate Department for Economics, Technology and Women’s Issues has released the funds applied for, starting in 2008.
Coordination of the Berlin Wall Trail project:
The Berlin Wall Trail on the Internet:
Content and texts
Berliner Forum für Geschichte und Gegenwart – Berlin forum for history and the present
Monica Geyler-von Bernus
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