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http://www.berlin.de/mauer/en/

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Offers a breif overview of the history of the Berlin Wall

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Contents

1. The Berlin Wall: The Partitioning of Berlin

2. The Berlin Wall: Blockade and Crisis

3. The Berlin Wall: Building the Wall

4. The Berlin Wall: 1961-1989

5. The Berlin Wall: The Fall of the Wall

On August 13, 1961, the Communist government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany) began to build a barbed wire and concrete "Antifascistischer Schutzwall," or "antifascist bulwark," between East and West Berlin. The official purpose of this Berlin Wall was to keep Western "fascists" from entering East Germany and undermining the socialist state, but it primarily served the objective of stemming mass defections from East to West. The Berlin Wall stood until November 9, 1989, when the head of the East German Communist Party announced that citizens of the GDR could cross the border whenever they pleased. That night, ecstatic crowds swarmed the wall. Some crossed freely into West Berlin, while others brought hammers and picks and began to chip away at the wall itself. To this day, the Berlin Wall remains one of the most powerful and enduring symbols of the Cold War.

The Berlin Wall: The Partitioning of Berlin

As World War II came to an end in 1945, a pair of Allied peace conferences at Yalta and Potsdam determined the fate of Germany's territories. They split the defeated nation into four "allied occupation zones": The eastern part of the country went to the Soviet Union, while the western part went to the United States, Great Britain and (eventually) France.

Did you know? On October 22, 1961, a quarrel between an East German border guard and an American official on his way to the opera in East Berlin very nearly led to what one observer called "a nuclear-age equivalent of the Wild West Showdown at the O.K. Corral." That day, American and Soviet tanks faced off at Checkpoint Charlie for 16 hours. Photographs of the confrontation are some of the most familiar and memorable images of the Cold War.

Even though Berlin was located entirely within the Soviet part of the country (it sat about 100 miles from the border between the eastern and western occupation zones), the Yalta and Potsdam agreements split the city into similar sectors. The Soviets took the eastern half, while the other Allies took the western. This four-way occupation of Berlin began in June 1945.

The Berlin Wall: Blockade and Crisis

The existence of West Berlin, a conspicuously capitalist city deep within communist East Germany, "stuck like a bone in the Soviet throat," as Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev put it. The Russians began maneuvering to drive the United States, Britain and France out of the city for good. In 1948, a Soviet blockade of West Berlin aimed to starve the western Allies out of the city. Instead of retreating, however, the United States and its allies supplied their sectors of the city from the air. This effort, known as the Berlin Airlift, lasted for more than a year and delivered more than 2.3 million tons of food, fuel and other goods to West Berlin. The Soviets called off the blockade in 1949.

After a decade of relative calm, tensions flared again in 1958. For the next three years, the Soviets-emboldened by the successful launch of the Sputnik satellite the year before and embarrassed by the seemingly endless flow of refugees from east to west (nearly 3 million since the end of the blockade, many of them young skilled workers such as doctors, teachers and engineers)-blustered and made threats, while the Allies resisted. Summits, conferences and other negotiations came and went without resolution. Meanwhile, the flood of refugees continued. In June 1961, some 19,000 people left the GDR through Berlin. The following month, 30,000 fled. In the first 11 days of August, 16,000 East Germans crossed the border into West Berlin, and on August 12 some 2,400 followed-the largest number of defectors ever to leave East Germany in a single day.

The Berlin Wall: Building the Wall

That night, Premier Khrushchev gave the East German government permission to stop the flow of emigrants by closing its border for good. In just two weeks, the East German army, police force and volunteer construction workers had completed a makeshift barbed wire and concrete block wall -the Berlin Wall-that divided one side of the city from the other.

Before the wall was built, Berliners on both sides of the city could move around fairly freely: They crossed the East-West border to work, to shop, to go to the theater and the movies. Trains and subway lines carried passengers back and forth. After the wall was built, it became impossible to get from East to West Berlin except through one of three checkpoints: at Helmstedt ("Checkpoint Alpha" in American military parlance), at Dreilinden ("Checkpoint Bravo") and in the center of Berlin at Friedrichstrasse ("Checkpoint Charlie"). (Eventually, the GDR built 12 checkpoints along the wall.) At each of the checkpoints, East German soldiers screened diplomats and other officials before they were allowed to enter or leave. Except under special circumstances, travelers from East and West Berlin were rarely allowed across the border.

The Berlin Wall: 1961-1989

The construction of the Berlin Wall did stop the flood of refugees from East to West, and it did defuse the crisis over Berlin. (Though he was not happy about it, President Kennedy conceded that "a wall is a hell of a lot better than a war.") Over time, East German officials replaced the makeshift wall with one that was sturdier and more difficult to scale. A 12-foot-tall, 4-foot-wide mass of reinforced concrete was topped with an enormous pipe that made climbing over nearly impossible. Behind the wall on the East German side was a so-called "Death Strip": a gauntlet of soft sand (to show footprints), floodlights, vicious dogs, trip-wire machine guns and patrolling soldiers with orders to shoot escapees on sight.

In all, at least 171 people were killed trying to get over, under or around the Berlin Wall. Escape from East Germany was not impossible, however: From 1961 until the wall came down in 1989, more than 5,000 East Germans (including some 600 border guards) managed to cross the border by jumping out of windows adjacent to the wall, climbing over the barbed wire, flying in hot air balloons, crawling through the sewers and driving through unfortified parts of the wall at high speeds.

The Berlin Wall: The Fall of the Wall

On November 9, 1989, as the Cold War began to thaw across Eastern Europe, the spokesman for East Berlin's Communist Party announced a change in his city's relations with the West. Starting at midnight that day, he said, citizens of the GDR were free to cross the country's borders. East and West Berliners flocked to the wall, drinking beer and champagne and chanting "Tor auf!" ("Open the gate!"). At midnight, they flooded through the checkpoints.

More than 2 million people from East Berlin visited West Berlin that weekend to participate in a celebration that was, one journalist wrote, "the greatest street party in the history of the world." People used hammers and picks to knock away chunks of the wall-they became known as "mauerspechte," or "wall woodpeckers"-while cranes and bulldozers pulled down section after section. Soon the wall was gone and Berlin was united for the first time since 1945. "Only today," one Berliner spray-painted on a piece of the wall, "is the war really over."

The reunification of East and West Germany was made official on October 3, 1990, almost one year after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

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On August 13, 1961, the Communist government of East Germany began to build a barbed wire and concrete "Antifascistischer Schutzwall," or "antifascist bulwark," between East and West Berlin. The official purpose of the Berlin Wall was to keep Western "fascists" from entering East Germany and undermining the socialist state, but it primarily served the objective of stemming mass defections from East to West.

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The Berlin Wall enclosed West Berlin from August 13, 1961 to November 9, 1989, cutting a line through the entire city center.

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25th Anniversary of the Fall of the Wall

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25th Anniversary of the Fall of the Wall

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ABC News Online article from November 9th, 2014

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Updated November 09, 2014 11:10:50

November 9, 2014, marks the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The 155km, 3.6-metre-high wall separated East and West Berliners for 28 years, from August 1961 until November 1989.

Along its length were more than 300 watchtowers and 20 bunkers, thousands of soldiers, guard dogs, alarms, ditches to trap vehicles, and a no man's land that varied in width from around 300 metres to the width of a street.

Despite these preventative measures, many attempted to cross the wall. Exact numbers are uncertain but it is understood that around 5,000 people crossed the wall successfully and more than 130 died in the attempt.
Motorcycle police watch workers lay bricks during the construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961.(AFP) East German tanks assemble in front of the Friedrichstrasse train station with their guns pointed west, August 1961.(AFP) Gunter Litfin, the first person to be shot whilst attempting to escape across the Berlin Wall, is moved by East German guards, August 24, 1961.(AFP) Four-year-old Michael Finder of East Germany is tossed by his father, Willy Finder, into a net held by residents across the border in West Berlin, October , 1961. Mr Finder then made the jump himself. (AFP) East German guard Conrad Schumann leaps over barbed wire into West Berlin days after construction began on the wall. (CIA photo) West Berliners wave to friends and family across the Berlin Wall, September 1961. (CIA photo) A car drives between US tanks across the famous Berlin Wall crossing point at Checkpoint Charlie, October 1961. (AFP)
Men on the western side of the Berlin Wall talk to their girlfriends behind a fence at the train station Stettiner Bahnhof in Berlin, Germany, August 1961. (AFP: Gunter Bratke/DPA)
The Berlin Wall at the Bernauer Strasse in East Berlin (Soviet sector), June 1968. (AFP) A section of no man's land, marking the border between East (Soviet sector) and West Berlin (American sector), April 1984. (AFP: Joel Robine) People in West Berlin (American sector) look over the Berlin Wall, October 1976. (AFP) West Berliners continue their vigil atop the Berlin Wall in front of the Brandenburg Gate, November 10, 1989. (Reuters) West Berliners crowd in front of the Berlin Wall and watch as East German border guards demolish a section of the wall near the Potsdamer Square in order to open a new crossing point, November 11, 1989. (AFP: Gerard Malie) A section of the Berlin Wall is lifted by a crane as East Germany starts to dismantle the Berlin Wall near the Brandenburg Gate. (AFP) Celebrations in front of the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate after the fall of the wall. (AFP: Gerard Malie) People from East Germany greet West German residents at the Berlin Wall in front of the Brandenburg Gate. (AFP: Patrick Herzog) East and West Berliners meet at Potsdamer Platz after the Berlin Wall was torn down to make way for a new border crossing, November 12, 1989. (Reuters) An East German border guard stamps the passport of an exiled East German woman after the Berlin Wall fell. (AFP: Patrick Hertzog) An East German border soldier looks at a man hammering a section of the Berlin Wall near Checkpoint Charlie. (Reuters: Fabrizio Bensch) People look through a preserved segment of the Berlin Wall near the memorial site at Bernauer Strasse in Berlin, August 2010. (AFP: Johannes Eisele) The photos of some of those killed as they tried to cross the Berlin Wall are displayed at memorial site at Bernauer Strasse in Berlin. (AFP: Johannes Eisele)
First posted November 08, 2014 20:38:39

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In pictures: 25 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall

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Updated November 09, 2014 11:10:50 November 9, 2014, marks the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The 155km, 3.6-metre-high wall separated East and West Berliners for 28 years, from August 1961 until November 1989.

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Email isn't working at all, so here it is.

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Recent interview with Anna Krien...another Australian creative non-fiction writer 

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Recent interview with Anna Krien...another Australian creative non-fiction writer 

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When faced with situations like Tasmania's logging industry in action, do you feel that you have to remain objective in order to bear witness, or do you think it's important to put yourself in the story?
I think it's a mixture of the two, if that makes sense. Objectivity is crucial and it's also impossible. My way of dealing with that minor conundrum is to declare myself - to state my uncertainties and alliances up-front and then start unravelling the issues (and myself!) to get to the core of the story.
You originally went to Tasmania to write an essay and it turned into a book. What happened?
My dad was a newspaper editor and one of his favourite pearls of wisdom that he likes to share with me is his response to journalists when they asked how many words he wanted them to file on a story: 'What's the story worth'?' he liked to reply cryptically.

This came to mind when I found the story of Tasmania's forests to be much larger than I'd expected. Initially I had gone down to the island and thought - 2000, 3000 words maximum - only to end up writing quadruple that without even touching the core of the issue. And, unfortunately for me, once I've waded into a story, there is no going back. I'm mentally stuck in the story until it's finished.

So, in a sense, the ongoing nature of the issues in Tasmania, the sausage string of bizarre political decisions and free kicks to forestry, the entrenched hate and division between the two sides, gave me little choice but to write a book about what I discovered there.
Three years after the publication of Into the Woods, what's your connection to that place?
To be honest, I was exhausted after writing Into the Woods and needed a break from the island and its politics - which is tough because when your book is getting traction and attention, that is the time to really drive the issues home.

Also I got the sense from some of the locals who had enjoyed the book that they expected me to become a kind of advocate or activist on the forest issues - but I'm a writer, not a spokesperson - and in a sense I'd said everything I wanted to say in the book.

But that said, I recently met a Tasmanian who reminded me of the uniqueness of the people I'd met and spent time with on the island - he was ferociously engaged, vivid in every way and quite wonderful. It was good to be reminded of that.
You've said in the past that it's not the job of the writer to make friends. Is it difficult to get to know people and places so intimately knowing they might not like what you write about them?
Yes! It causes many sleepless nights I'm afraid. But my obligation is to the truth of the story and that's what I have to remind myself over and over when I start worrying about people's reactions and feelings.

That's not to say that a journalist should therefore stomp all over those sorts of sensitivities - but it must never restrain them from telling it as it is.
There's been a resurgence of creative long-form non-fiction recently. What are some of the qualities of the format that you recommend emerging writers strive for?
I think narrative is important - you're taking your reader into a dark place where they may know nothing and narrative is like giving them a rope to hold onto and follow.

Another quality I've noticed in the creative long-form non-fiction writers that I enjoy is their seemingly contrary mix of uncertainty and confidence - voices that are unafraid to question themselves and everything they stand for.
Do you think creative non-fiction is a useful tool to help engender social change?
On my good days, I'd say yes. For example, with my most recent book Night Games, I've received many emails from community club football coaches thanking me for writing it and that they've been demanding the players and other officials at their club to read it. From a grassroots level, I couldn't ask for a better response.

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Notes - What's the Story Worth?: Anna Krien on Non-Fiction

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In her award-winning 2010 book Into the Woods, Anna Krien immersed herself in the battle for Tasmania's forests, a situation described (by Georgia Claire in Overland) as a sort of 'catastrophe in motion'.

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This is a documentary about the text that we will watch in class after we complete our close reading of the text. You are welcome to watch it before then.

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Watch Former Stasi Agents Defend Their Deeds

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Stasiland (2006): Everyone knows about the Nazi camps of Auschwitz and Dachau. But few are aware of the systemic oppression that went on under the Stasi. Now some ex-Stasi agents are trying to re-write history. For downloads and more information visit http://journeyman.tv/57040/short-films/stasiland.html "I won't apologise for anything.

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The Lives of Others (2006) is a German feature film that may be worth watching if you want to be able to visualise some of the ways in which the Stasi operated. Anna Funder has also discussed this film in some of her interviews in quite insightful ways.

The trailer is below. I will see if I can locate a copy of the film itself for interested indivuiduals.

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At once a political thriller and human drama, THE LIVES OF OTHERS begins in East Berlin in 1984, five years before Glasnost and the fall of the Berlin Wall and ultimately takes us to 1991, in what is now the reunited Germany.

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I have no idea if any of you are using this Padlet but I will continue to post useful links up here nonetheless. I would also encourage you all to use it to post your own responses to some of the links that are up here. For example you could pinpoint interesting elements of any of the articles or clips and explain to your fellow classmates what is significant about them in terms of the development of your own understandings of the text.

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Studying a book or film can be a short-cut to consigning it to boredom. But our Texts in the City series - a gift to students, their teachers and lifelong learners - brings the VCE English and Literature lists to life. In this instalment, Lili Wilkinson and Melinda Harvey look at Anna Funder's Stasiland.

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The nation seen in Stasiland is difficult to reconcile with people in Germany today.

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An article about publishing Stasiland in Germany

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An article about publishing Stasiland in Germany

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Makes some really interesting points about a writer's right to write whatever he/she wants

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Silent fury for author who lifted stones of Germany's past - Books - www.smh.com.au

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After 23 publishers' rejections and a warning to 'wear a flak jacket', Anna Funder was understandably apprehensive - actually 'scared senseless' - about launching her book Stasiland in Germany this year. - Sydney Morning Herald Online

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Interview with Anna Funder by Jessa Crisp

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Interview with Anna Funder by Jessa Crisp

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Jessa Crispin talks to Australian author Anna Funder about her 2003 book. on Slow Travel Berlin

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Take particular notice of the critical review titled 'Private Lives in the Shadow of the Secret Police' by

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Helen Garner in conversation with Jennifer Byrne (p2)

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Part 1 | Part 2 In conversation with Jennifer Byrne at the Wheeler Centre, author Helen Garner speaks with great insight and honesty about her world of writing. She discusses her...

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Helen Garner on her own writing: Part One

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Helen Garner on her own writing: Part One

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She starts talking about her non-fiction work from about 9.30 minutes

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Helen Garner in conversation with Jennifer Byrne (p1)

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Part 1 | Part 2 In conversation with Jennifer Byrne at the Wheeler Centre, author Helen Garner speaks with great insight and honesty about her world of writing. She discusses her...

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Includes clips and notes

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National Socialist German Workers ' Party

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20th Century Historical Context of Stasiland

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20th Century Historical Context of Stasiland The Beginning of Communism 1848- German philosophers, Marx and Engels, publish their groundbreaking political text 'The Communist Manifesto' in Britain during the Industrial Revolution. It was published in German.

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Find out more about the history of Berlin Wall, including videos, interesting articles, pictures, historical features and more. Get all the facts on HISTORY.com