The Berlin Wall

I was reading a piece in the New York Times about how some are trying to preserve the last remnants of the Berlin wall, when most people would rather completely eradicate them and build shopping malls in their place. My question is this: What portions of the city did the wall separate? If it was built between East and West Berlin, what stopped people from simply going around it? Or did it actually enclose the entire city of West Berlin?

Yes, it was built in East Germany, which is where West Berlin was. It completely encircled West Berlin.

Here’s a map showing how the city was divided up and where the wall was :

Map of Berlin, 1986

That site (I’m not sure if it’s duplicated in English or not) has a fair amount of information on the wall.

Also, I know that http://www.die-berliner-mauer.de has a map of what’s still available for viewing today. (the site is javascript, click near the bottom to get to the English site, then click on Maps).

Thanks! That first link is especially informative. The English version is here.

I would like to state that my husband, then new-boyfriend, was held at gun point at one of the enternces to the wall back in March of 1989. (His buddy in the car decided to take a picture of the guard, who did not find it amusing and confiscated the roll of film.)

And said group of three traveling idiots, to show their displeasure over the entire communism, trebants, et al, (much later and on the American Side, they may be stupid, but not stupid enough to piss on the other side) urinated on the wall.

That is all.

Speaking of Trabants, a buddy of mine managed to buy a “trabbie” over in europe, and I can say with complete assurance that it’s junk. I’m not sure why he wanted one, other than the fact they are so bizarre. Surprisingly, he even got it to pass strict inspection eventually.

Apparently, the roads were littered with these fine, fine examples of automobile engineering after the wall fell, once the people from GDR got over to “the other side” they abandoned them en masse.

The body (his was a lovely shade of light turd) is formed of some sort of compressed wool and fiberglass; the two or three cylinder (not sure) two stroke sounded amazingly like a lawnmower, and required pre-mixing of oil and gasoline as well. Rumor has it that acquiring even this execrable work of engineering necessitated a request when a child was born to ensure delivery within 18 to 20 years. Maybe. Gotta love those state run economies. Hm.

It wasn’t just a wall. The Russian side had a concrete-lined anti-vehicle trench, minefield, and barbed wire.

Poking around the links posted by panamajack (thanks, again!), I stumbled across this site, run by a Japanese student who walked the entire length of the wall before it fell. It includes some great photographs of the wall out in the countryside, East German workers rebuilding/repairing the wall (just a few steps from freedom!) as well as soldiers taking pictures of him while he was taking pictures of them (must have thought he was a spy). He also shows how the entire system of trenches, fences and watch towers worked.

I read some where that somebody left a Trabbie in a field and a goat started eating the bodywork. I thought the bodywork was made of compressed cardboard or something similar. The goat liked it anyway !

As a US Army Military Policeman and off-time bahn-burner on my motorcycle (a 1981 Suzuki GS1100E bored to over 1300cc with 4x42mm slidethroats and a monster V&H pipe), trabbies were the bane of my existence in 1989 and 1990. They were a menace to urban traffic and just downright dangerous to autobahn drivers. I had really hoped to hear the last of them.