The Berlin Wall's 50th...

I came across an article that noted August 13, 2011 as the 50th anniversary of the Berlin Wall going up. It’s a subject and occasion that I can’t let pass without a moment to pause and reflect; I see over on Facebook that a few of my colleagues are also making note of the day.


In the MSNBC.com article I mentioned, Chris Rodell opens with the quote:

“Fifty years ago, the Soviet-controlled German Democratic Republic began to build what it euphemistically called its “Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart,” better known as the Berlin Wall.”

By the time I arrived in Berlin, as an Air Force Russian linguist, in October 1981, that structure was a concrete establishment, not just a symbol anymore, and not just propaganda anymore either, as so many had died by then trying to escape from East Germany by crossing it. My friends and I went to work every day at locations in full view of the Wall, and for those of us at the Air Force Marienfelde site, with two guard towers about a kilometer away with views of us coming and going from the security gate.

I’ve got a couple of photos here of the Wall – these were taken on a November day in the Nuekolln district (sorry, purists, no umlauts on my keyboard) when a friend and I set out to track down where David Bowie might have stood by the wall in the Heroes era. Also, some of my mementos, including a couple of pieces of the Wall, one given by a good friend and the other sent to me by my sister, who was there in the late ‘80’s, after my time had ended in April 1986.

Memories of Wall encounters are for another day – there are too many to recount in a blog post. But I do I share the sentiment that Rodell’s commenters offer - that Wall wasn’t something to celebrate. The fact that it is long down now, that is something to make a note of.

I’ve managed to get back to Berlin twice since the fall of the Wall and the reunification, once in 1996 and again in 2001; I’m sure I will get back again sometime, and hopefully more than once.

That’s because on my last visit, the sentiment that overwhelmed me is the same one that Burkard Kieker expresses in Rodell’s piece:

“What’s really astounding is today people from 180 nations live peacefully together in a formerly divided city,” he says. “The wall affected the fate of many Berliners but they found a unique way to cope with it. You see wall memorials on the one hand and colorful painted wall remains on the other. And this mixture attracts even more visitors, especially on occasions like the 50th anniversary of the building of the wall.”