‘The Berlin Wall along with the Great Wall of China was one of the longest structures ever built to keep people separate from one another”, said our tour guide Frank. The Wall was over 155 kilometres long and stood as a testimony to the post World War II cold war between the Soviet block and the western allies till it was brought down in November, 1989. Little is left of the Wall at its original site, which was destroyed almost everywhere. There are three sections still standing: an 80-metre piece near Potsdamer Platz; a longer section along the Spree river near the Oberbaumbrucke nicknamed east side gallery; and a third section in the north at Bernauer Strase, which was turned into a memorial in 1999.

I was in Germany during June 2007 along with 14 other professors from Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU), Karnataka, for a training programme at the Bosch Rexroth plant in Lohr, near Frankfurt. After the hectic training programme, we got the much deserved break to relax for a couple of days and the unanimous choice was a visit to Berlin. The superfast inter-city express train took just about three and a half hours for the journey of nearly 500 km. We checked into a hotel near the railway station ‘Ostbahnhof’, that is, Berlin East Railway station. Frank called on us as soon as we checked into the hotel and we decided to go for the ‘Berlin Wall tour’.
The 1.1 km stretch of the Wall near Ostbahnhof in Friedrichshain was at a walking distance from our hotel. We followed the pink umbrella held aloft by Frank in the light drizzle. This is one of the remaining sections of the 43.1 km wall that separated East Berlin from West Berlin till November 9, 1989. The Wall came up for the first time in August, 1961 in the form of a barbed wire fence. Over the years the wall went through four distinct phases of development - the basic wire fence (1961), improved wire fence (1962-65), concrete wall (1965-75) and the special border wall Grenzmauer (1975-89).

The Grenzmauer was the final and most sophisticated version of the Wall. Built during 1975-80, it consisted of 45,000 separate sections of reinforced concrete, each 3.6 metres high and 1.2 metres wide. The top of the wall was lined with a smooth pipe, intended to make it more difficult for escapers to scale it. This version of the Wall is the one that is preserved today.

The purpose of the wall was to prevent people of socialist East Germany from fleeing into the more prosperous and democratic West Germany. The Wall was constantly improved and strengthened, transformed from a normal wall into a system of impassable technical hindrances of traps, elaborate signals, concrete shooting cells and watchtowers. In June 1962, work started on a second parallel fence, about 90 metres in the East German territory in order to create a no man’s land between the two walls. This strip of land came to be known as the notorious ‘death strip’. It offered a clear field for the German guards to shoot the citizens fleeing from East Berlin to West Berlin.

Frank took us across one remaining section of the death strip, which stretched from the Wall to the Spree river towards the west. Standing in the protection of a big umbrella under a heavy drizzle and cold breeze blowing from the river, I felt chilled to the bone when Frank recounted the horrors that took away lives of hundreds of people who tried to flee from East Berlin to West Berlin. Early successful escapes involved people jumping the initial barbed wire fence or leaping out of apartment windows along the line but these ended as the barbed wire fence was replaced by concrete wall.

Later successful escape attempts included long tunnels, waiting for favourable winds and taking a hot air balloon, sliding along aerial wires, flying ultralights, and in one case, simply driving a sports car at full speed through the basic, initial fortifications.

If an escapee was wounded in a crossing attempt and lay on the death strip, he or she could not be rescued for fear of triggering engaging fire from the East German border guards. The guards often left escapees to bleed to death in the middle of this ground. Varying reports claim that around 192 people were killed trying to cross and hundreds more injured. The last person to be shot dead while trying to cross the border was Chris Gueffroy in February, 1989 and I have a vague memory of watching a clip on a TV news channel.

The imminent end of the Berlin Wall was set in motion when the East German Government proclaimed free passage for the citizens moving from East Berlin to West Berlin and vice versa on November 9, 1989. In the coming days, the new won freedom created a frenzy among the people and most portion of the wall was literally torn down by the angry masses. Many souvenir shops in Berlin sell small fragments of the wall. You can buy a piece and hope that it indeed came from the wall since most of them do not provide any authentication to prove that it indeed came from the Wall.

The Berlin Wall has become a big canvas for painters and graffiti writers. Many famous painters have painted the horrors of the totalitarian regime and the scenes witnessed during the days when the Wall was brought down. During the first few days following November 9, 1989, thousands of people converged on Berlin and took part in tearing down the Wall.

There were people from Belgium, France, Sweden, Spain, England and many other countries who have recorded their participation by scribbling names, signatures and graffiti on the Wall. There are a few vulgar graffiti ridiculing the erstwhile communist rulers of East Germany. The paintings are losing their shine and getting peeled off due to the elements of nature, but are able to express dramatically the pain and anguish of a society living under a totalitarian and oppressive regime.

Along the length of the wall, there were eight border crossings between East and West Berlin. People were allowed to cross over from the East side to the West and vice versa, provided they held the necessary permit. The most famous border crossing was through the ‘Checkpoint Charlie’ which was restricted to Allied personnel and non-German citizens.

Checkpoint Charlie features in many fictions and Hollywood movies that came out during the cold war period. We took the public transport group ticket at a good bargain and proceeded first to the Friedrichstrase station which served as an intersection between East and West from 1961 to 1990. When the Wall was erected, Berlin’s complex public transit networks, the S-Bahn and U-Bahn were divided with it. Three Western lines travelled through brief sections of East Berlin territory, passing through eastern stations, called ghost stations without stopping. We  took the U-Bahn to checkpoint Charlie

From 1961 to 1989, tourists, diplomats and the military personnel of the non German countries were only allowed to enter East Berlin via the checkpoint Charlie.

The main function of the checkpoint was to register and inform members of the Western Military Forces before entering East Berlin. The German authorities in West and East Berlin were not allowed to check any members of the Allied Military Forces in Berlin and in Germany. The checkpoint was removed soon after the demolition of the Berlin Wall. At present, a model of the original guardhouse has been placed at the original location and a couple of actors are seen masquerading as German border guards in full battle fatigue. They will pose with you for photographs if you are willing to part with few Euros as tips. The area around the checkpoint Charlie today is bustling with commercial complexes and showrooms of top automakers of Germany. In the midst of the hustle and bustle of city traffic, the significance of Checkpoint Charlie is lost to a casual tourist. I had to try hard to take my mind to the bygone era and visualise the nervous and expectant tourists crossing over from one Germany to the other.