The fall of the Berlin wall

Klaus Lehnartz, Engelbert Reineke, Horst Siegmann, Klaus Schutz, Julia Fasbender, Heiko Specht, Bernd Kuhler, Schwahn

At the end of the 20th century, the map of the world was drastically altered: a number of states disappeared, some new countries emerged; and all these happened without any wars and bloodshed. One of the first evident milestones of this process was the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. It was actually the fall of the concrete Iron Curtain that had divided the world into the «friends» and the «enemies» for more than a quarter of a century. The Exhibition «The Fall of the Berlin Wall» is dedicated to the twentieth anniversary of this event and presents the most interesting documentary evidence collected from various sources. The Berlin Wall is more than a tragedy of a city or a symbol of the post-war division of the world; it also implies many broken human lives, separated families, many people who were killed trying to cross the Wall into West Berlin. The Exhibition recreates the main stages in the history of the Berlin Wall.

The late 1950-s — the early1960-s The erection of the Wall was preceded by some serious political tensions concerning Berlin that, after the end of World War II, was divided into four occupation zones between the winner-countries. Both NATO and WP were irreconcilable as far as «the German question» was concerned. «The Berlin ultimatum» delivered by Nikita Khrushchev in 1958, the steadily widening gap between the living standards and rates of economic development in West and East Germany, numerous attempts to flee from GDR (on average, about 200 000 people a year, approximately half of whom were under 25 years old,? left the country through West Berlin) lead to the fact that in August 1961 the GDR State Council proclaimed the decision to close the border.

1961 — the 1980-s On August 13, 1961, at night, the erection of the Wall began. During a few hours, the police and units of the East German Army blocked the streets running alongside the border to make them completely impassable to most vehicles. The Wall tore the city in two; the Berliners’ world was literally split. For the eastern part of Berlin, the Wall became a real border with all its usual paraphernalia: the defence zone, a few rows of barbed wire, one hundred watchtowers made of reinforced concrete, dozens of bunkers; there were also frontier guards and patrol dogs and fire. However it did not stop the East Germans from running away. Governed by the desire to break into West Berlin, people tried to dig a 145-meter tunnel, fly over the Wall in a hang-glider or in a balloon, get over it on a wire stretched between the windows of two neighboring houses, smash the Wall with a bulldozer. According to different sources of information, between 125 and 1245 people were killed in their attempt to flee.

1989 As a result of Perestroika in the Soviet Union, Hungary lifts the Iron Curtain and opens its border with Austria. Thousands of people from East Germany use this channel to escape to the western part of the country. Inside GDR, mass political demonstrations begin; people demand civil rights and freedoms, including freedom of traveling, to be granted and observed. On November 9, 1989, the rules of leaving the country were announced to be considerably reduced. Hundreds of thousands of East Germans rushed to the border. In the face of the growing crowd, the border guards had to yield and open the checkpoints allowing people through. The East and the West met. What was happening there reminded of a great national celebration. The atmosphere of happiness and unity destroyed all the obstacles and barriers posed by the state. During the following three days, more than 3 million East German citizens visited West Berlin and the Federal Republic. The process of unification accelerated.

While in East Berlin it was impossible even to approach the Wall, in West Berlin it became a creative site for numerous artists, both professional and amateur. By the end of 1989, the Wall turned into a long-stretching exhibition of graffiti, some of them highly artistic. The famous images of Trabant (an automobile symbol of GDR), the «historical kiss» of Brezhnev and Honecker, the portrait of Gorbachev are well-known all over the world. After the Wall had been destroyed, its fragments quickly turned into historical objects of art that were taken to and ended up in different countries. Some small pieces of the Wall are preserved as a monument for the future generations.

The Exhibition presents numerous documentary photographs that captured both the construction and demolition of the Wall. Many of them, such as the series of images by Anthony Suau have spread all over the world. The documentary video recordings as well as the eyewitnesses’ interviews help to reconstruct the atmosphere and condition of Berlin as it was in the 1960-s — 1980-s. With the assistance of the Goethe-Institut, the demonstration of the following films is organized within the program of the Exhibition: «Wings of Desire» (directed by Wim Wenders, 1987), «Spur der Steine» (The Track of Stones by Frank Baeyer, 1966), «The Legend of Rita» (The Silence after the Shot, by Volker Schlondorff, 1999). The visitors will also see the shorts films: «The Berlin Wall» and «My Wall» (2008).

The Museum «The Moscow House of Photography» and the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany thank:
The Federal Department of Press and Information,
The Goethe-Institut, the German Cultural Centre,
The Checkpoint Charlie Museum,
The Museum and the Public Centre of A. D. Sakharov,
The German Press-Agency DPA,
RIA «Novosti»,
«Reuters» for their assistance in the organization of the project and rendering information and exhibits

and personally:
Peter Frischmuth for the series of works «Berlin Kreuzberg S036»
Anthony Suau, World Press Photo-2009 Winner, for kindly rendering a series of his works about the Berlin Wall
architect Yuri Avvakumov for the idea of reconstruction of the watchtower in Kreutzberg.