Pieces of the Berlin Wall
Dr Paul Maddrell
The 鈥淏erlin Wall鈥� is the name given to the border wall erected between East and West Berlin and between West Berlin and the so-called 鈥淕erman Democratic Republic鈥� (GDR) in the night of Saturday 12 to Sunday 13 August 1961. It stood for just over 28 years, until Thursday 9 November 1989, when mass demonstrations in the GDR forced the opening of the Wall. These pieces of concrete come from the section of the Wall in Bernauer Strasse, which separated Prenzlauer Berg in the East from Wedding in the West.
The Wall’s opening initiated the collapse of GDR’s Communist dictatorship. This in turn accelerated the collapse of the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe, which had begun in August 1989, when a government led by a non-Communist Prime Minister came to power in Poland. The collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe forced the withdrawal of the Soviet armed and nuclear forces from Eastern Europe and permitted the transformation of Europe into a community of democratic, free-market and integrating states. Armed hostility gave way to peaceful cooperation. The Wall’s fall led to the greater freedom and greater happiness which the people of Europe now enjoy.
I bought these pieces of the Wall in Berlin in August 1990. I witnessed then the fusion of East and West Berlin and East and West Germany, which culminated in the unification of the two German states, the GDR and the Federal Republic of Germany, on 3 October that year. It was thrilling the witness a moment of transformation in European and German history, one which led to a freer country and continent.
