Officially, the Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989. Although the demolition took more than four years and several sections were left behind for commemorative purposes, it was on that day that the passage between East and West Berlin, and therefore between East and West Germany, was opened to all citizens of both countries. It would be no exaggeration to say that it was a surprise. Earlier that year, even the best-informed observers predicted the wall would remain in place for at least several more decades. What’s more, earlier in the day, officials involved in the opening did not anticipate that Germany’s Socialist Union Party’s intelligence chief, Günter Schabowski, would falsely declare on state television that night that border movement liberalization would take effect “immediately and without delay.”
Around 11 o’clock that night, when the border guards finally gave up trying to hold the line, the scene around both Berlins looked like what participants remembered 36 years later. The biggest street festival of their lives. For those who were not able to attend the celebrations at the time, it may be inconceivable that such an event could actually occur without any hint.
But footage taken by a tourist very close to the Berlin Wall in the summer of 1989 depicts a city where events seem frozen in place. Although the built environment is not without touches of faded grandeur here and there (and, as many West Berliners soon discovered, the real urban grandeur was to the east), the overall impression given by what was then the epicenter of Cold War geopolitics is that of Dullesville.
The most visually interesting feature of these parts of Berlin in the late 1980s is, of course, the wall itself. The barbarity of its shape, the banal menace of its guards, the accumulation of political and non-political graffiti. At one point, a tourist’s video camera captured a monument to a fallen wall jumper. The most recent of those players was Chris Gueffroy, who made the fateful escape from the East last February. He would soon be immortalized in history as the last person to be shot trying to climb over the wall, but he would not be the last to die. That title belonged to Winfried Freudenberg, who fell from a balloon he was rigging to cross the border in March 1989. At this point, long after the reunified German capital’s rapid urban growth had made it one of Europe’s most popular cities, neither she nor Geffroy recognized the former East Berlin they were desperately trying to escape, much less the West Berlin they had dreamed of.
Related content:
How the Berlin Wall worked: The engineering and structural design of the wall that formidably divided East and West
See Berlin before and after World War II in amazing color video
Berlin’s golden age is revived in a classic and avant-garde film. Berlin: Symphony of the Metropolis (1927)
Things to keep in mind when driving to West Berlin during the Cold War: Weird happenings in the 1980s
Bruce Springsteen in 1988 East Berlin: I’m not here for any government. I came to play rock
Watch Samuel Beckett walk the streets of Berlin like a boss, 1969
Based in Seoul, Colin Mbemust write and broadcastIt’s about cities, languages and cultures. he is the author of the newsletter books about cities books as well Home page (I won’t summarize Korea) and korean newtro. Follow him on the social network formerly known as Twitter. @Colinbemust.
Source: Open Culture – www.openculture.com
