The German Democratic Republic erected the Berlin Wall in 1961 as its “anti-fascist protection barrier.” It stood as a divider between countrymen and families, East and West, until November 9, 1989. Almost 200 people died trying to get past the Wall before it toppled.
I sat on the Berlin Wall the night it fell and was one of the first few hundred to jump over the wall into no-man’s land without official permission. On that night, I was witness to the re-birth of a unified nation.
In today’s Berlin, the euphoria of those nascent hours has largely disappeared, as has the Wall. The longest stretch of the Wall that still stands, the East Gallery, is about a half-mile long.
It seems that this land exchanged one master for another: This historic site, once no-man’s land between the Wall and the River Spree, is now endangered by developers.