20 Years On, a Street Recalls the Berlin Wall

BERLIN (Nov. 6) -- Astrid Kaiser still trembles when she remembers being frisked as a child by Red Army guards at the fortified border on Bernauer Strasse, where communist East Germany first began erecting the Berlin Wall on Aug. 13, 1961. "They even searched my doll carriage," says Kaiser, now 58. "I still feel uneasy walking on the eastern side."

As Germany celebrates the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9, 1989, this street in its former shadow sums up the mix of pain, hope and nostalgia the wall still inspires. Urban change has erased many of the last vestiges of the Wall, but here a battle still rages between preservationists and real estate developers.


The images from the Bernauer Strasse's past are both iconic and tragic. It was here that the famous "wall jumper," an East German border guard, leaped over barbed wire to freedom in the West. When the wall first went up, people suddenly trapped in the East jumped from the windows of Bernauer Strasse apartment blocks into the West -- or in some cases to tragic deaths. The East German authorities boarded up the windows and finally demolished a row of houses along the Bernauer Strasse to prevent escapes, including storied tunnels dug under the Wall to freedom. It is estimated that about 165 people were killed trying to overcome the Berlin Wall and escape into the West, eight of those along Bernauer Strasse.

Kaiser was one of the lucky ones. As Russian soldiers were upstairs searching her apartment around the corner from the Bernauer Strasse, she cowered in the basement with her family. The Wall hadn't yet been built, but fearing that it could be their last chance for freedom, the family sneaked over the border after nightfall, leaving Kaiser's aunt behind.

"We came here every Sunday to wave to her from the street because she couldn't cross over to us and we couldn't go to her," Kaiser says.

The neighbors who once stared at each other across the Cold War frontier now walk freely back and forth across the old border, which has become almost invisible to those who don't recall its menacing appearance.

"Berlin is one city now, and we don't think of it in terms of east and west," says Niels Kern, a 13-year-old student on a field trip to the Berlin Wall Documentation Center on Bernauer Strasse.

Many visitors -- those old enough to remember the Wall and many too young to recall it -- are astounded at how swiftly Berliners cleared their streets of the gray concrete fortification. Bernauer Strasse is one of the few places in the city where a substantial section of the Wall still stands in its original place.

"I was amazed at how completely they swept it away," says Robert Monaghan, a professor at Northumbria University in the United Kingdom, who was leading a class trip to Berlin. "This is really the only place in the city where you can see the real Wall. It's a dramatic statement."

Though many people are still obsessed with the Berlin Wall's past, the future of the land it once occupied is a burning issue, too. Throughout the city, new buildings have gone up on land where the Wall once stood.

Not everywhere, though. After the Wall fell, a wide swath of the former "death strip" -- an intentionally open expanse within East Germany's elaborate border fortifications -- was transformed at the Bernauer Strasse into a public park. The aptly named Mauerpark, or Wall Park, has become a thriving mecca for artists, street merchants and New Age disciples. It hosts weekly free concerts and several urban beach bars where guests can sip caipirinhas in the sun while a DJ spins techno and house records.

An expatriate American there runs the outdoor "Bear Pit Karaoke", which attracts hundreds of people every weekend. And at the flea market -- Berlin's biggest -- shoppers can buy a variety of goods such as old East German furniture, bicycle parts, rare LPs, grilled sausages and beer.

But this nearly permanent Volksfest could soon be verboten if local real estate developers have their way. There is a plan to clean up the park, chase out its colorful denizens and build a row of neatly tailored townhouses. Finely manicured lawns would flourish where wild grass now grows on the former death strip.

"It would be hard for me if they close the flea market," says Sahin Ilhan, a Turkish merchant sitting behind a table full of trinkets. "The other flea markets are too expensive for me to register a booth, and here is where all the tourists come."

For the countercultural types who are attracted to Berlin by the lingering lure of cheap rent and a vibrant urban vibe, the gentrification of the Mauerpark is emblematic of a larger issue: the death of hipness as Berlin becomes just another European city two decades after the fall of the Wall.

Singing "Ring of Fire" as she strums along on a ukulele, Kim Boekbinder, an American songwriter living in Berlin, worries that the city could even lose its attraction for the globe-trotting bohemians.

"The more they shut down spaces for artists and for people to express themselves freely, the more they destroy the reason why people come here," she says.

Still, it's too soon to give up on the vibrancy that has typified Berlin for centuries. After all, even a Wall right through its center wasn't enough to do it in.