Chronik der Mauer
August 14, 2017 9:27 AM   Subscribe

Chronicle of the Berlin Wall - a detailed timeline from 1961 to 1990, supported with recordings, photos, letters, transcripts of speeches, and more. (The text is available in German or English, but most of the supporting materials are German-only.)

Bonus link: Mauer im Kopf - German comedian Henning Wehn travels to Germany to examine exactly what social and political differences remain between East and West Germans and how united the county now feels.
posted by Wolfdog (6 comments total) 13 users marked this as a favorite
 
Lloyd Cole wrote an elegiac song about the Berlin Wall. Although the video doesn't seem to have anything to do with the actual song, here it is.
posted by lagomorphius at 11:17 AM on August 14, 2017


I happen to have just finished Serhii Plokhii's The Man with the Poison Gun, which tells the story of Bohdan Stashynsky, a KGB agent, assassin, and eventual defector. The story is fascinating enough, but adding to the drama is the fact that Stashynsky and his East German wife found their opportunity to escape to West Berlin, by unrelated circumstances, on August 13th, 1961, the very day the barbed wire was going up. A day later, and they would have been stuck.
posted by Kabanos at 11:57 AM on August 14, 2017


This is an interesting detail:

1990
19 JANUARY

In an article entitled "Discharged guard dogs auctioned off," the daily TAZ (Bremen edition) reports that the West German animal welfare association Deutscher Tierschutzbund intends to "resettle" in West Germany some 2,500 guard dogs that were previously deployed on the inner German border.

The association says the canine resettlement operation came about because private owners in the GDR could not be found for the majority of guard dogs. It says the GDR authorities in charge of the animals had finally been persuaded that the former guard dogs would go to "responsible animal lovers". The German Shepherds, Rottweilers and mongrels are in excellent health, are four years old on average and have had outstanding veterinary care. The article stresses that the dogs have served as guard dogs and have not been trained to attack people

posted by mandolin conspiracy at 5:37 PM on August 14, 2017


You can see one who made it to a good home here at the bottom of this article.
posted by Wolfdog at 5:46 PM on August 14, 2017


German comedian Henning Wehn travels to Germany to examine exactly what social and political differences remain between East and West Germans and how united the county now feels.

Possibly the biggest cultural divide is attitudes regarding nudity. While it is perfectly normal for prepubescent children in both East and West Germany to strip naked before taking a dip in a lake or a pool, putting on a bathing suit or so kicks in at some age in the West, but it apparently doesn't in the East. So if you are at a lakeside or a swimming pool in Germany and suddenly have a stark naked middle-aged man before you who acts as if this is perfectly normal, then it's a safe bet that he was socialized in the East.
posted by sour cream at 5:59 AM on August 15, 2017


The Berlin Wall Memorial is worth a visit if you find yourself in Berlin. Checkpoint Charlie has managed to make itself the Berlin Wall tourist attraction, so I think the memorial tends to get overlooked. ("Memorial" feels like a weird word to use in English, but that's what it's called. Don't ask me what the difference between a "visitor center" and a "documentation center" is, though. The visitor center didn't exist when I was where, I don't think.)
posted by hoyland at 6:05 AM on August 15, 2017


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