The Berlin Wall

The Berlin Wall was a 165 km long concrete wall around Berlin from 1961 to 1989. After the German Democratic Republic was created on 7th of October in 1949, where the Soviet sector had most of the power, 3 million people escaped from Berlin. So the main reason why they built the wall was to prevent other attempts of escaping from Berlin to western blocks. The wall consisted of several parts. It was 3.6m high, made of concrete panels. Barbed wire and guard towers were on the wall and behind it. The wall was constantly modernized. During the 28 year existence of the Berlin Wall, a large number of citizens died here trying to escape, often as a result of bleeding, because the East German Border Guard had left the wounded in the guard area for several hours without help.

The well known case of escaping from Berlin was through the tunnel. Three students decided to escape to western block. They were digging a tunnel in a cellar under a factory. Over time a lot of people joined them and they were working in shifts. So there was around 30 people. The tunnel was 135m long. The final escape was in the night from 14th to 15th September in 1962. They met in a restaurant and they were waiting for some signal to go to the cellar. They were going to the cellar after 15 minutes. They had to be fast because the tunnel was filling with water. And in the end, they managed to get to the other side of the wall.

On the evening of November 9, 1989, the border guards of the German Democratic Republic stopped guarding the transition from East to West Berlin. The wall opened and began the end of the GDR and the process of unification of Germany, culminating on October 3, 1990.

edited by: KFW