The Wall Falling Still

Actually, there isn't much left of the Berlin Wall. These two photos are from the Gedenkstaette (=place that makes you think/remember) called Topographie des Terrors, built on the site of the Gestapo buildings where people (especially, but not only, political opponents to the Nazi regime) were held and interrogated (and tortured). What remains is a large hot field of stones, with the foundations of the building and the stretch of the wall that ran along the Niederkirchner Str. There is a modern exhibit hall on the site (not pictured) that contains a truly excellent exhibit of the rise of the Third Reich and the history of the site. The traditional building at the end on the left in the second picture is the Martin Gropius Bau, which currently houses a wonderful Frida Kahlo exhibit.

What does remain of the wall in other parts of Berlin is small strips of cobblestones with the words "Berliner Mauer 1961-1989" embedded in them.

Of course, there are other "pieces" of the wall. There's the East Side Gallery (google it for good pictures of world-famous "graffiti") and there is also the Gedenkstaette Berliner Mauer in the Bernauer Strasse. (See next post.) This was the street that was split lengthwise down the middle by the wall. People jumped out of windows of buildings that were in the "east" (actually on the south side of the street) to hit the sidewalk in the "west" (north of the buildings) in the days immediately following the initial laying out of the wall. As the building of the wall progressed, the destruction of those houses on the Bernauer Strasse proceeded as well. First people were made to wall up the windows facing the street. Later, the buildings were demolished above the ground floor and their facades served to double the wall. Finally even those portions of the buildings were carried off. A church (the Reconciliation Church, a protestant congregation) was walled off from those in the "west" who were part of the congregation, and eventually, the GDR government demolished the church. What remains are open fields along the street. A chapel has replaced the Versoehungskirche on the site, and holds daily memorial services for the over 160 documented deaths resulting from attempted escapes.

The last place you'll see the wall is on the many postcards being sold in tourist souvenir stores. Can those really contain a small fingernail-sized piece of the wall? Well, they've got a piece of some wall or other, but I wouldn't bet that it's from the original. We are already 21 years past the fall of the wall, and looking at 20 years of unified Germany. You'd be lucky (?) to get dust from the real thing at this point.