Berlin Wall

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• Remains of the wall can also be seen at Postdamer Platz - albeit only a few pieces of concrete.

• East Side Gallery

• Archive - 18.08.1961, GDR, Berlin: Under the watchful eyes of armed People's Police officers, East Berlin construction workers have been building a wall along the sector border since Friday morning (18.08.1961).

For 28 years, the massive barriers of the Berlin Wall were the most important symbol of divided Germany.

Today, the Wall has disappeared from the cityscape, but original parts still stand in a few places.

Probably the most famous quote by Walter Ulbricht, GDR Council of State Chairman and party leader of the SED, dates from 15 June 1961: "No one intends to build a wall." Less than two months later, construction work began along the Berlin sector and zone border. For 28 years, the massive barriers were to be the most significant symbol of the divided Germany until 1989. Today, the Wall has almost completely disappeared from the Berlin cityscape.

Dismantling the Berlin Wall

Between July 1990 and November 1991, around 155 kilometres of the Berlin Wall, 43 kilometres of which were the inner-city border between East and West Berlin, 302 observation towers, 20 bunkers and several border crossings were gradually dismantled. Some of the Wall segments can now be found in various places around the world, such as the Imperial War Museum in London.

Remains of the Berlin Wall

In Berlin, there are few remains of this "famous structure" that shaped the cityscape for decades. The longest preserved section of the Wall is located on Bernauer Strasse and is integrated into the Berlin Wall Memorial. Another segment stands at the exhibition site of the Topography of Terror on Niederkirchnerstraße. This roughly 200-metre-long remnant of the Wall was listed as early as 1990. A third part of the actual border wall still stands in Liesenstrasse in Mitte.

East Side Gallery

Longer sections of the so-called "Hinterland Wall", i.e. the part of the Wall that closed off the East Berlin side, have survived. The best-known sections are the East Side Gallery in the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district and the remains in Mauerpark. Of the 302 watchtowers and observation towers, five still remain today, with only three on Berlin territory. The watchtower at Kieler Eck, the observation tower on Erna-Berger-Strasse and at Schlesischer Busch on Puschkinallee.

Information

• Address:
  Niederkirchnerstrasse 8
  10963 Berlin
  City map
• Internet: Further information on the Berlin Wall can be found on the official Wall page of the State of Berlin at www.berlin.de/mauer.