The Berlin Wall: 1961-1989
The construction of the Berlin Wall did stop the flood of refugees from East to West, and it did defuse the crisis over Berlin. (Though he was not happy about it, President John F. Kennedy conceded that “a wall is a hell of a lot better than a war.”) Almost two years after the Berlin Wall was erected, John F. Kennedy delivered one of the most famous addresses of his presidency to a crowd of more than 120,000 gathered outside West Berlin’s city hall, just steps from the Brandenburg Gate. Kennedy’s speech has been largely remembered for one particular phrase. “I am a Berliner.”
In all, at least 171 people were killed trying to get over, under or around the Berlin Wall. Escape from East Germany was not impossible, however: From 1961 until the wall came down in 1989, more than 5,000 East Germans (including some 600 border guards) managed to cross the border by jumping out of windows adjacent to the wall, climbing over the barbed wire, flying in hot air balloons, crawling through the sewers and driving through unfortified parts of the wall at high speeds.
The Berlin Wall: The Fall of the Wall
On November 9, 1989, as the Cold War began to thaw across Eastern Europe, an East German Communist Party spokesman announced a series of new policies regarding border crossings. When pressed on when the changes would take place, he said “As far as I know... effective immediately, without delay.” East Berliners flocked to border checkpoints, some chanting “Tor auf!” (“Open the gate!”). Within hours, the guards were letting the crowds through, where West Berliners greeted them with flowers and champagne.
More than 2 million people from East Berlin visited West Berlin that weekend to participate in a celebration that was, one journalist wrote, “the greatest street party in the history of the world.” People used hammers and picks to knock away chunks of the wall–they became known as “mauerspechte,” or “wall woodpeckers”—while cranes and bulldozers pulled down section after section. Soon the wall was gone and Berlin was united for the first time since 1945. “Only today,” one Berliner spray-painted on a piece of the wall, “is the war really over.”
The reunification of East and West Germany was made official on October 3, 1990, almost one year after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
After the wall came down in 1989, Germany gave out pieces of the wall to American cities as a thank you for helping them in their quest for freedom. There are a bunch of cities where you can see pieces of the wall. The slab of the wall in Portland was bought by the Dimillo family in the 1990s and installed near their establishment. How lucky for us to have one in the Old Port! One of the slabs reads:
The Berlin Wall-Forget not the tyranny of this wall horrid place. Nor the love of freedom that made it fall-Laid Waste.
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