Facts about the Berlin Wall

Archival footage from the history of the legendary Berlin Wall, the beginning of the construction of which was started August 13, 1961. Read and look further.

Aerial view of a divided Berlin, overlooking the Church of St. Thomas in the western part of the city the Berlin Wall in the East in 1981.





During its existence from 1961 to 1989 Wall stopped almost all emigration and separated East Germany from the West more than a quarter century. In this image, the police in West Berlin is behind barbed wire in a large concrete wall at the Brandenburg Gate 23 November 1961. The Communists had just smashed screen, closes the wall. In the picture you can see how the material used for the construction of the wall, loaded on the other side of the concrete barrier.



Before the erection of the walls 3, 5 million people in East Germany escaped the restrictions on emigration and escaped into West Germany, across the border between East and West Berlin. While in West Berlin was a real economic boom, part of which would be the residents of East Berlin. In the photo people get on the bus to look for the newly built Berlin Wall.



Due to the closure of the east-west border in Berlin a large number of East Germans could no longer travel or emigrate to West Germany. Many families were separated; East Berliners who worked in the western part, were cut off from their work places, and the people of West Berlin became isolated on hostile ground. Two girls on the streets of West Germany talk to their grandparents in the house in the eastern zone, separated barricade of barbed wire, August 14, 1961.



After the erection of walls around 5,000 people attempted to escape. As a result, died from 98 to 200 people. In this photo of a dying Peter Fechter carry soldiers Border Service of East Germany, who shot him when he tried to escape to the West 17 August 1962. Two former Border Guard soldiers accused of murder. Fechter 50 minutes spent on neutral territory, after which he was taken to the hospital, where he died.



American soldiers in a jeep equipped with a machine gun, while patrolling the Berlin Wall along the River Spree in Kreuzberg, Berlin, circa 1981..



In this photo you can see the 1981 segment of "deadly strip" between the inner and outer parts of the Berlin Wall. On the segment used guards, spotlights, hedgehogs and more than 100 km of electric wires to isolate East Berlin from the west.



A completely different scene at the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, when the East German government announced after weeks of uprisings that all GDR citizens could visit West Germany and West Berlin. The crowd celebrates the fall of the Berlin Wall.



Women from East Germany crying with joy, crossing the border in the west to the checkpoint Charlie on the night of November 9, 1989, during the fall of the Berlin Wall.



Demonstrators on the western side of the Berlin Wall are trying to tear down part of the wall near the Brandenburg Gate, 11 November 1989.



Border Service of East Germany used water cannon to disperse the inhabitants of West Berlin, near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin November 11, 1989. Residents of the western part of trying to tear down the wall.



Soldiers of the Border Service of East Germany stand at the open part of the Berlin Wall, which the protesters are trying to take down at the Brandenburg Gate 11 November 1989.



Soldiers of the East German border guard at Ostpreussendamm the morning of 14 November 1989, where the workers of East Germany set pass through the wall. Hundreds of East Berliners flooded through the gates in the western part of the divided city.



A resident of West Berlin, trying to break the Berlin Wall with a hammer near the square Potsdamer 12 November 1989.



Border Guard soldiers in East Germany distributes the barbed wire, which he cut with the Berlin Wall aisle Ostpreussendamm in Berlin November 14, 1989.



The young East Berliners shout for joy, running through the passage into West Berlin at the Brandenburg Gate 23 December 1989. Then the new government of East Germany has promised to fully open the gate for Christmas.



Employee Steven Rogers of Oakland. California, talking with the soldier Border Service of East Germany Mike Staapsom that peeps out of the hole in the eastern part of the Berlin Wall 26 March 1990.