The Berlin Wall may well be one of the most emotion-charged structures built in the 20th century. Not only did it cleave one of Europe‘s great capitals in two – the Wall stood as a concrete symbol of the world’s division into two opposing blocs. Today its remnants remain as a memorial against violence, tyranny and the abuse of power, and as a warning to future generations never to forget the price Europe paid for its Cold War division. In this book, Michael Cramer provides a guided tour along the entire length of the Wall that encircled West Berlin. He tells its history, and recounts many of the incidents and anecdotes that have become the Wall’s legacy. The result allows the visitor to combine a trip along one of the frontlines of 20th century European history with a pleasant bicycle tour in one of modern Europe’s most exciting cities.
Follow the precise 1:20,000-scale maps and detailed descriptions of the 160-kilometer
trail for an unforgettable tour along the “Iron Curtain” that sealed
West Berlin from East Germany.
Michael Cramer was born June 16, 1949 in Gevelsberg/Westphalia. He studied
music and physical education at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz,
where he earned degrees in teaching physical education (1972) and music (1974).
In 1977 he passed the teachers examination and became a secondary-school teacher.
He taught at the Albrecht Dürer High School in the Neukölln district
of Berlin until 1995.
Since 1989 Cramer has served as spokesman for transportation issues for Alliance90/The
Greens in Berlin. He is a member of the Berlin city parliament, and chaired
its transportation committee from 1989 to 1990. He has also worked as a lecturer
at the Otto Suhr Institute of the Freie Universität Berlin, teaching urban
and transportation policy in the political science department. Cramer regularly
publishes articles and reports in various written media.
For more than 20 years Cramer has practiced automobile-free living in Berlin.
He gets around the city by bicycle or with buses, trains and taxis. He has detailed
knowledge of the conditions bicyclists face in Berlin, and has also enjoyed
bicycle vacations on cycling routes in Switzerland, Austria, France and other
parts of Germany.
Photographer Peter Trzeciok was born in Berlin in 1930. He studied at the Freie
Universität and was a public school teacher until 1995. As a life-long
Berliner, he lived with the Berlin Wall from its construction in 1961 to its
fall in 1989. In 1986 he began exploring the Wall and documenting it with photographs.
He continued to do so after the “Wende.”
The Wall was one result of the division of Germany after its defeat in World War II. Following the surrender of Nazi Germany on May 8, 1945, the victorious Allies agreed to divide the country into four zones of occupation: one American, one British, one French and one Soviet.
Initially the allies intended to jointly administer the four sectors in the capital Berlin. That plan failed, however, as the confrontation between the three western powers and the Soviet Union became more aggravated.
The deepening hostility of the Cold War led to the formation of
two separate, rival German states. The “Federal Republic of Germany”
(FRG) was established on May 23, 1949, with its provisional capital in the city
of Bonn. Less than five months later, on October 7, the “German Democratic
Republic” (GDR) came into being. Its capital was in the Soviet sector
of Berlin.
Because Berlin lay deep in the center of the Soviet-occupied zone of Germany,
its western inhabitants were surrounded on all sides by East Germany. Agreements
between the four wartime allies provided for overland transit routes and air
corridors that connected West Berlin with West Germany.
The Soviet Union repeatedly attempted to consolidate its hold on the western
part of the city. In 1948 the USSR imposed a blockade, closing all road, rail
and river transportation links to West Germany. The three western sectors of
the city were able to survive only by means of the Berlin Airlift. A year later
the USSR ended its blockade. Today one of the “raisin-bombers” that
brought food and fuel to the cut-off city hangs suspended in front of Berlin’s
Deutsche Technikmuseum (German Museum of Technology) as a reminder of those
desperate times.
Many East Germans who were dissatisfied with the political and economic conditions
in the GDR escaped to the more prosperous west through West Berlin. Until the
Wall was built, it was relatively easy to move freely among Berlin’s four
sectors. East Berliners could take the S-bahn, the city’s commuter rail
network, to the western sectors and then board an airplane bound for West Germany.
Many people lived in one sector of the city and held jobs in another. Kurt Neubauer,
for instance, a member of the Bundestag, the West German parliament, and later
a minister in the city government of West Berlin, lived in the eastern district
of Friedrichshain until the Wall was built. He commuted to the Rathaus Schöneberg,
in the American sector, where the city’s western parliament met.
About 3 million East Germans fled the GDR as refugees before the Wall was built.
In 1958 the Soviet Union again attempted to cut this escape route, when it issued
the “Khrushchev Ultimatum” demanding the United States, France and
Britain withdraw from the city. The western Allies refused to back down, and
East Germans continued to “vote with their feet.”
Unwilling to allow political freedom and incapable of solving East Germany’s
economic problems, the leaders of the USSR and the GDR came up with an absurd
solution to the exodus of East Germans. On August 13, 1961 construction began
of a wall encircling West Berlin. At the same time, the GDR began to fortify
the inner German border between East and West Germany.
Where did the Wall actually stand?
Many visitors to Berlin today ask, “Where did the Wall actually
stand?” Immediately after the Wall fell in 1989, Berliners dismantled
the hated structure so thoroughly that almost all traces of the border were
erased from the cityscape. Today most people agree that was a mistake.
In the years since the “Wende” – the word means “turn-around”
and is how Germans refer to East Germany’s peaceful 1989 revolution –
the face of Berlin has changed so dramatically that even many Berliners can
barely remember the exact location of the wall. Teenagers know of the years
before 1989 only from their history books. That is why it is all the more important
to preserve some reminders of the scar that divided Berlin into two parts for
28 years. Today a double-row of cobblestones, marked at regular intervals with
metal plaques that bear the words “Berliner Mauer 1961-1989” can
be seen along about 8 kilometers of the 40-kilometer border that ran through
the middle of the city. A three-piece segment of the “inner Wall”
that faced East Berlin remains visible only at Leipziger Platz, where the double
row of cobblestones and a green strip help define the former border.
The Wall around West Berlin was a total of 160 kilometers long. Its exact location changed repeatedly over the years, as the two governments traded small pieces of territory to improve security or transportation links. The Wall’s appearance also evolved over the years. In the late 1970s and early 1980s the original barbed-wire fencing was replaced with pre-fabricated concrete segments and, in some areas, chain link fences. The initial “outer Wall” facing the West was soon complemented by an “inner Wall” to the East. Between the two lay the notorious “Todesstreifen” (death strip) with the “Kolonnenweg” patrol road on which GDR border troops guarded the frontier. Only selected people were allowed to live in the neighborhoods directly behind the Wall. Their friends and relatives could visit only if they registered in advance and obtained a permit. More than 300 guard towers, flood light systems, signal and alarm fences, dog runs, automatic machine-gun installations and tank traps were installed to prevent people from escaping to West Berlin.
At least 230 people died attempting to escape over the Berlin
Wall. The first was Günter Litfin, 24, shot to death on August 24, 1961
as he attempted to swim to the western side of the Humboldthafen. The last victim
was Chris Gueffroy, 20, killed in a hail of bullets on February 6, 1989, as
he attempted to swim across the Britzer canal to Neukölln.
Trials of border guards involved in Wall shootings
East German guards involved in the deaths of people at the Wall,
and the political leaders responsible for giving the orders, were put on trial
after the “Wende.” On December 1, 1990 justice authorities in Berlin
issued a warrant for the arrest of Erich Honecker, the former leader of the
GDR who had been removed from power just before the “Wende.” In
March 1991, the Soviet government smuggled Honecker out of the hospital where
he was staying and secretly flew him to Moscow. After a months-long diplomatic
tug-of-war, Russian authorities decided to expel Honecker. On December 11, 1991
he and his wife Margot sought asylum in the Chilean Embassy in Moscow, which
was led by a man who had once found political asylum in East Germany. But Chile
also was reluctant to give their unwelcome guest a safe haven.
On February 19, 1992 Foreign Minister Vargas of Chile declared that his country
would admit Honecker if Russia agreed. Instead, Russian authorities returned
Honecker to Germany after Berlin prosecutors presented an indictment charging
the former East German leader with 49 counts of manslaughter. On July 29, 1992
Honecker boarded an airplane and returned to Berlin.
The trial of former members of the East German National Defense Committee began
November 12, 1992. The defendants included Honecker, State Security Minister
Erich Mielke, Minister President Willi Stoph, Defense Minister Heinz Kessler,
his deputy Fritz Streletz, and the head of the Socialist Unity Party in Suhl,
Hans Albrecht. Soon after the proceedings began, the court found Stoph and Mielke
to be too ill to face a trial.
Honecker told the court he was willing to take the political responsibility for the deaths at the Wall, but he denied any “juristic or moral guilt.” A short time later Honecker was diagnosed with cancer, and on January 12, 1993 a Berlin court determined that he was unlikely to live to the end of the trial. The court ordered the trial be abandoned. When Honecker was released, he flew into exile in Chile, where he died May 29, 1994.
On September 16, 1993 the Berlin court found Albrecht and Kessler
guilty and sentenced them to prison terms of four-and-a-half years and seven-and-a-half
years respectively. On November 12, 1996, Germany’s highest constitutional
court ruled that judgments against top GDR political leaders and border guards
were legal. In its ruling, the court wrote that the killing of unarmed people
was an “obvious and intolerable violation of internationally protected
human rights,” and that the trials had not been in violation of the German
constitution. The accused border guards were sentenced to probation.
On November 13, 1995 the surviving members of the East German Politburo were
put on trial for the deaths of 66 GDR refugees. The proceedings against the
defendants Horst Dohlus, Erich Mückenberger and Kurt Hager were dropped
because of their poor health. Former FDGB Chairman Harry Tisch was already dead.
That left only Egon Krenz, Günter Schabowski and Günter Kleiber to
take responsibility for the shooting deaths of Michael-Horst Schmidt (20), Michael
Bittner (25), Lutz Schmidt (24) and Chris Gueffroy (20). The defendants denied
any guilt. Schabowski was the only one to acknowledge a “moral responsibility,”
and ask the victims’ families for forgiveness. All three defendants claimed
they had not had the power to impose more humane practices on the inner-German
border, because policies on guarding the border had been dictated by the leaders
of the Soviet Union.
After 116 days of testimony, the Berlin court in August 1997 found Krenz guilty of manslaughter in four cases, and sentenced him to six-and-a-half years imprisonment. Kleiber and Schabowski were both sentenced to three years. The federal court in Leipzig upheld the rulings on November 8, 1999, saying all three had been indirect perpetrators in the killings of refugees and were therefore legally and politically responsible.
When the government of the GDR built the Wall in 1961, it confiscated private
property and evicted residents in neighborhoods along the border from their
homes. Some people received compensation. Others did not. A provision to return
confiscated property to the former owners was allegedly “forgotten”
in the Unification Treaty agreed by the two German states on September 6, 1990.
While it established the principle that restitution should take precedence over
compensation, this rule was not applied to properties confiscated when the Wall
was built.
After a long and drawn-out debate in the German parliament, a provision that
would have allowed former owners to unconditionally reclaim their property was
defeated by the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union. Today the
former owners may re-purchase their properties for 25 percent of market value
– unless the government claims eminent domain for urgently-needed public
improvements, or if it is in the public interest to sell the property to third
parties. In that case, former owners can claim as compensation payment of 75
percent of the market value.
The fall of the Wall in 1989 sparked an impassioned debate over what to do
with the hated edifice. Most Berliners wanted to erase all evidence of the Wall
as fast as possible. Among those few who fought to preserve parts was Willy
Brandt. He had been mayor of Berlin between 1957 and 1966, and went on to become
the first Social Democrat to serve as German chancellor (1969 – 1974).
On December 10, 1971 he received the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to defuse
tensions between East and West.
In a speech in front of the Schöneberg Rathaus (city hall) the day after
the Wall fell, Brandt proposed that Berlin should “let part of that dreadful
thing stand ... as a reminder of a historic monstrosity, as we did years ago
when, after stormy debate we made a conscious decision to leave the ruins of
the Gedächtniskirche,” (the bombed out shell of a church that became
one of West Berlin’s best-known landmarks after World War II).
Michaele Schreyer (Greens) who from 1989 to 1990 served as Berlin’s top official for urban development and the environment (and who later joined the European Commission) defied popular opinion at the time and designated the Wall in Niederkirchnerstraße a historic monument.
The establishment of the Mauermuseum that now stands in Bernauer Straße
also generated angry debate. It owes its existence in large part to the efforts
of Chancellor Helmut Kohl (CDU), who supported the museum in the face of resistance
from members of his own party, who wanted to build a six-lane road in Bernauer
Straße.
A number of initiatives have been launched to promote artworks to mark and commemorate
the Wall. In March 1996 a competition entitled “Crossings” was launched
to generate proposals for monuments at the former border crossing points. (There
were eight crossing points in 1961.) Another project is the “Geschichtsmeile
Berliner Mauer” (Berlin Wall History Mile) – a permanent exhibition
which at present consists of 16 plaques that provide information about the Wall
in English, French, German and Russian. The plaques use photos and short texts
to describe events that occurred at specific locations along the Wall.
One such plaque, for instance, can be seen in Bernauer Straße. It documents
the escape of Conrad Schumann, the East German policeman whose leap across the
barbed wire on August 15, 1961 was recorded on film by Peter Leibing. The photo
became one of the best-known images from the construction of the Wall. Another
plaque recalls Ida Siekmann, the 58-year-old woman who died of injuries she
received jumping from her third-floor apartment to the sidewalk below, which
was in West Berlin. Other plaques mark successful escapes through secret tunnels
under the Wall. The first plaque was erected on November 9, 1999 – the
tenth anniversary of the fall of the Wall. A total of 25 plaques are to be built.
Two patrol roads followed the course of the Wall. The road on the West Berlin side was known as the “Zollweg” and was open to the public. It was used by Berlin police, patrols from the three western Allies, as well as West Berlin citizens. It remains intact in many places today.
The East German border troops used another road to patrol the Wall. It was
called the “Kolonnenweg” and usually ran between the “inner
Wall” and the “outer Wall.”
When the Wall fell, many environmental and civic organizations proposed turning
the former border into an unbroken bicycle trail. To promote their demands,
they erected signs with a pictogram of a bicycle along much of the Kolonnenweg.
Unfortunately, GDR border guards, who were responsible for the Wall until October
2, 1990, removed many of the signs and tore up the paved road.
After German unification, the governments of the states of Berlin and Brandenburg
failed to take steps to preserve the right-of-way. As a result, parts of both
the Zollweg and the Kolonnenweg have been lost – in part to the railroad-right-of-way
for the line to Dresden, in part to the sale and commercial or residential development
of land in the former death strip. Even so, today a bicycle trail follows much
of the former Wall, with short detours around some of the sections that have
been closed.
When people talk about the Berlin Wall, they usually mean the border that ran through the middle of the city, dividing it into East Berlin and West Berlin. In fact, the Berlin Wall is much longer, because it also includes the 120-kilometer long border between West Berlin and the surrounding state of Brandenburg. Far from the bustle of the big city, this stretch winds through pleasant countryside and woods, and can easily be explored by bicycle. It takes one past oddities like “Eiskeller” (ice cellar) in Spandau, an enclave surrounded on three sides by the Wall, or the border crossing at Staaken. Feel a breath of Cold War intrigue at the Glienicker Bridge, where the occupying powers traded captured spies on fog-shrouded nights, or examine the remains of the largest border crossing complex, the Dreilinden Autobahn entrance to Berlin, which is now preserved as a historic site.
The Berlin Wall Trail is one achievement of the Social Democratic/Green coalition that governed Berlin from June 16, 2001 until January 17, 2002. In the summer of 2001, the author of this book organized and conducted seven guided “bicycle rides along the Wall” to commemorate the 40th anniversary of its construction. The public response to these tours was very positive, and prompted the city government to put all remaining traces of the Wall under historic preservation status and to build a bicycle-friendly marked trail along the one-time border. When completed, the entire 160-kilometer route will be accessible to bicyclists, skaters, and hikers as well as wheel-chair users and baby carriages.
Even in its current condition, the Berlin Wall Trail presents an excellent
combination of history workshop and bicycle tourism, recreation and culture.
The central section between Bernauer Straße and the Oberbaumbrücke
offers so much information that a bicycle ride through the city is soon transformed
into an expedition into the city’s turbulent political history.
The Berlin Wall Trail serves as a reminder of the city’s division, and
its reunification. This tour consists of 14 stages, each of which begins and
ends at an S-bahn station. With the exceptions of the Wollankstraße, Potsdamer
Platz and Warschauer Straße stations, the stations are barrier free and
accessible by wheel chair. Bicycles may be transported in all regional trains,
S-bahn and subways. Information about train schedules and departure times for
the BVG ferry between Wannsee and Kladow is available 24-hours a day at the
BVG call center hotline at (030) 19449.