In the early hours of 13 August 1961, construction began quietly on the Berlin Wall, as residents of the city slept. Two months earlier in response to a journalist’s question about rumours of a wall, East German leader Ulbricht publicly stated: “Niemand hat die Absicht, eine Mauer zu errichten!” (No one has any intention of building a wall.)
East Germany (DDR/GDR) asserted the wall’s purpose as an “anti-fascist protection barrier” to protect its citizens from the West. With thousands streaming to the west, the GDR could not afford to continue losing people and their subsequent productivity to the economy; the nation’s wall would keep her own people locked inside. Berlin was visibly divided in two, as too, would the ideological and physical separation between West and East Germany.
With the fall of the Wall in 1989, large portions of the Wall were demolished in a rush to destroy visible reminders, save for a number of notable exceptions throughout the city. Few wall remnants or fragments remain; the East Side Gallery, the long segment on Niederkirchner Strasse, and the Memorial and Documentation Centre at Bernauer Strasse are some of the most visible. As shown above, cobblestones on the pavement provide visible traces and essential reminders about the former route of the Wall.
I made the photo above on 19 October 2012 in Berlin on Ebertstrasse, just west of Platz des 18. März and Brandenburg Gate (near position 12 in this walking tour). This post appears on Fotoeins Fotopress at fotoeins.com as http://wp.me/p1BIdT-5gu.