However, what comes to everyone’s mind when the Berlin Wall is mentioned is a concrete wall that divided East and West Berlin some time during the cold war. However, was the Berlin wall actually a circle around West Berlin? This topic will be discussed and examined in order to provide the truth.
The Berlin Wall: A Brief Overview
The Berlin Wall was constructed by East Germany during 1961, to stop people from east Germany escaping to West Berlin which was under the control of western powers. This great wall was used as a divider and showed political opposition until it came crashing down in 1989.
The Wall: Its Function and Use
The major purpose of the Berlin Wall was to prevent the continuous outflow of the East Germans to West Berlin where there were best chances of living a better life. The Wall along with concrete fortifications such as smaller watchtowers, guard posts, wire fencing and watchtowers were built all along its perimeter. These steps were meant to prevent escapes and ensure very important control within the compound.
Introduction as well as brief description of the Wall’s architectural and engineering specifications
Thus the Berlin Wall was not a linear structure as well as this was a system of barriers with different peculiarities. The Wall had two main sections:
- The inner wall: This section was towards East Berlin and was structured mainly from concrete panels which were tough and hard to climb over.
- The outer wall: Situated opposite West Berlin , this section had other bunkers, trenches, alarms and lights to ensure the intruders would not get through.
Though the wall did not surround West Berlin it did border the whole of it with the exception of several points along the north which lay upon the water’s edge.
Some of them are:
It’s important to mention that there were a few places where the Berlin Wall did not entirely surround West Berlin:
- Water Boundaries: As mentioned above, the construction of parts of the wall was not continuous along the northern frontier of West Berlin because of rivers and canal presence.
- Checkpoint Charlie: This crossing point famous worldwide was not actually encapsulated by the Wall, and it is located in the heart of Berlin. It also became a formal zone of interaction for diplomats, troops and foreign nationals.
Life Within the Wall
In more than just the physical sense the Berlin Wall was a divider of the city and caused inherent changes to the day to day experience of its dwellers. The setting of west Berlin present the different if not opposite life standards as that of the east Berlin. West Berlin rapidly grew into a free and active city , while east Berlin had number of economic trials and severe political oppression .
People of East Germany living close to the actual Wall had to live under electronic and physical surveillance, they were confined to movement, basic access to the western media and forms a border wall depicting the political divide.
The Fall of the Berlin Wall
During its existence for twenty-eight years the wall acted as a divider not only of the two parts of Germany but also as evidence of the Soviet influence on Eastern Europe. But constant search for liberty and a number of political fluctuations in the course of the late 1980s led to its collapse. The so called ‘suppressed necessary for reforms protests’ together with the slowly fading away barriers or the opening of the border separating East and West for approximately 28 years has well symbolized the collapsing of the Berlin wall on November 9, 1989 a historic notion in the history of Germany as well as the entire world More on that later.
Conclusion
The Kindertransport was a remarkable proceedings that physically separated East and West Berlin during the time of the Cold War. It did not encircle West Berlin but passed through most of its border, thereby consistently presenting the residents with the divide. Learning about how and why the Berlin Wall came to be provides the necessary background knowledge of what that wall meant and how its destruction and Germany’s reunification mattered.
For more on this visit Berlin to see the remaining wall, museums and other monuments that depict this important period in history.
