Closing the gap

In 1989, the Berlin Wall came down. It was an astonishing development, which caught world politicians entirely by surprise. The division between East and West, though constantly condemned, had come to seem eternal.

When the Wall did come down, the change was accompanied by a real sense of euphoria. However, people have begun to accept that the physical wall was only part of the problem. All the polls show that the "wall in the heads" - differences in perception between West and East Germans - remains. Only with the change of generations is that beginning to alter.

Few fragments of the Wall survived. One East Berlin pastor has preserved a stretch of the Wall to encourage people not to forget the nature of this terrible barrier. A chapel of reconciliation has been rebuilt on the death strip so called because it was guarded by armed soldiers. Here the original church was blown up with dynamite by the East German authorities.

Bärbel Franz, a balloon pilot, was a secretary in the old East Germany. Every working day, she goes up in her balloon over Potsdamer Platz, at the very heart of the new Berlin, in what used to be the most notorious death strip along the Wall in 1961. It is, she says: "an impressive feeling - to sway back and forth, between East and West". Potsdamer Platz - described before the Second World War as "Berlin's Piccadilly Circus" - is now full of life once again. It contains some of the most important new buildings in Berlin, and the work is still continuing.

Another stretch of the Wall that has been preserved is at the so-called East Side Gallery - a kind of paradise for graffiti artists. Volker Hassemer, who has been directly involved in the planning of the new Berlin, talks of the oddity of being in areas like this which remain, even now, suspended between two worlds: "But it is also an advantage. In Berlin, we have both parts of the new united Europe. We have the experience of both parts."

Links:

The Berlin Wall
Everything about the Berlin Wall. Basic facts, a timeline, Checkpoint Charlie, Potsdamer Platz, photographs. In English.

Church of reconciliation
Today there's a chapel of reconciliation where the church stood before it was blown up by the Communists. In English.

Potsdamer Platz
Find out about the history of Potsdamer Platz and watch it grow through the lens of a very sophisticated webcam. Archive-images taken by the webcam dating back to 1994. In German.

East Side Gallery
The Berlin Wall East Side Gallery is a 1.3km-long section of the wall. Approximately 106 paintings by artists from all over the world cover this memorial to freedom, making it the largest open-air gallery in the world. In English and German.