Berlin Wall

Berlin Wall. A remnant of our dark past that has long since been gone. The main symbol of the divide between the so-called "Capitalist" and "Communist" worlds, a representation of the idea that even people who were once considered brothers of the same faith, culture and statehood, in this case, the people of Germany, could be separated by something that has constantly plagued us since the dawn of humanity, war.

First off, you will most surely be wondering why I'm writing about this particular structure, which aren't, whether in terms of structural beauty or function "amazing" and is in fact, on the contrary, might be considered as something that is very much the opposite of the notion of "beauty" or "amazingness" itself. Well, you're right, but it's not the structure itself that I'm going to mainly talk about. I am very much aware that the Berlin Wall, which was obviously only a series of ugly and bland walled fortifications made of nothing but concrete and barbed wire cannot at all be considered as something "amazing". It doesn't at all matter though, because as I've said I'm not going to talk about the building itself, much of what I'm going to say here is about the history of the Wall itself, the idea that it represents, and how peace, love and freedom finally prevailed and brought down this infamous icon of oppression and war. That, on the other hand, is indeed amazing.

A quote on found a section of the eastern side of the Berlin Wall.

Before moving on further, it's of course necessary to talk about the historical background which led to the construction of this Wall, and to understand that, let's first take a quick glimpse at what happened shortly after the bloodiest war in the history of mankind, WW II, ended. The political landscape of Europe was then rapidly changing. Countless regimes had fallen down due to the effect of war and had been replaced by newer ones, which aren't necessarily better. Control of Europe had essentially been divided between the two main powers in WW2, on one side there was the Soviet Union with its communist ideology, which then had control of most of Eastern European countries such as Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria. On the other side there was the USA/UK/France, who had the backing and support of most of Western Europe. This divide is often termed as the "Iron Curtain" which was coined by then Prime Minister of the UK, Winston Churchill. It is nowhere else other than Germany, where this artificial divide was most visible and apparent. In the aftermath of the war, control of Germany had essentially been divided into two, in the West there were the US/UK/France, and in the East, the Soviet Union took complete control of the area. The Western Powers also controlled the western part of Berlin which was located deep inside East Germany's territory.

An accurate map of Europe after the end of WW II.

Originally, Germany was to eventually be reunified again under a common flag and sovereign government, but as things unsurprisingly turned out, the Western Powers and Soviet Union became embroiled in a series of conflicts because of the fact that those two had a completely different and contradictive set of ideologies and beliefs which directly led to eventual hostility between those two powers. The Western Powers in particular favored a free market with minimal intervention from the government and full protection its citizens' individual rights while Soviet Union on the other hand preferred a system of centralized command economy with the government as the main actor in the country's economy and a political system which supported full control of the government upon the lives of its citizens. As a result of those hostilities Germany's wish to become one again seemed to be an unrealistic hope, and its people had to wait for decades before they can again consider themselves as part of a unified, sovereign country. Eventually, the part of Germany that was occupied by the Western Powers became a separate, sovereign country called the Federal Republic of Germany with its capital in Bonn in 1949 and was quickly followed with the formation of the German Democratic Republic with its capital in East Berlin by the portion of Germany occupied by the Soviet Union. The German Democratic Republic, although legally sovereign, was essentially a puppet country controlled from Moscow.

Germany divided.

It immediately became obvious, however, that life in East Germany were not as free nor prosperous as it was in the West. One-party control of the state apparatus in East Germany meant there was effectively no sort of political freedom at all and everyone was expected to remain silent and to not criticize the government however disastrous or harmful their policies and actions might be. This, coupled with the fact that the economy in East Germany was not as developed as it was in West Germany, caused hundreds of thousands of people to migrate to West Germany with hopes of getting a better quality of life than they did in their former country. From 1950 to 1953, it was estimated that 900,000 East Germans had crossed the border to settle in West Germany. The government of East Germany saw it necessary to put a halt to this as they had caused a massive brain drain and lack of manpower hugely critical for the development of the state. Thus, in the year 1953, the first border fences were erected. These border fences were hundreds of kilometers in length starting from the Baltic Coast to the southern border between Germany and Czechoslovakia. These massive border fences didn't fully manage to deter people to seek a better life in West Germany, however. Many people traveled to East Berlin and after that, cross the border into West Berlin as the border fences which were constructed elsewhere weren't available in Berlin for several reasons.

View of the border fence which was once part of the "Iron Curtain" - today.