Bernauer Strasse Today

MANY VISITORS WHO COME to Bernauer Strasse today expecting to see a brutal, terrifying, and insurmountable bulwark will be amazed to encounter instead a somewhat secluded and strangely innocuous urban landscape. A broad strip of undeveloped land runs along Bernauer Strasse like a pathway cut through the city; in the adjoining districts, meanwhile, urban life appears to go on as normal. The more attentive visitors may be puzzled by this marked schism or feel a sense of unease or wonder. When visitors come across the now weather-beaten sections of the former Berlin Wall and notice the construction work in progress on the undeveloped land, they perhaps gain a clearer sense of the historical significance of this area. Once they have arrived at the Wall Memorial — a section of the original border fortifications placed between two seven-meter-high rust-colored steel walls — or discover the unusual oval-shaped Chapel of Reconciliation (Versöhnungskapelle) located unassumingly in the background, they realize that world history casts a shadow across this area, for this was once the location of the Berlin Wall, which divided East and West Berlin for many years, and which split a country and a continent into two opposing blocs.

Between 1961 and 1989 the stretch of Berlin Wall along Bernauer Strasse divided an urban residential area that, despite war and destruction, had remained largely intact since it was established at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The construction of the wall on the orders of the SED regime had an acute impact on the everyday lives of the residents of this area. The street became the focus of public attention after 13 August 1961 (the date of the construction of the Berlin Wall) because of the unusual way that the border was drawn here — the fronts of the apartment blocks constituted the border. It was here that dramatic escape attempts occurred, where the first deaths at the wall took place, where more than two thousand residents were driven out of their homes in the buildings along the border. For many years the ghostly appearance of the walled-up houses formed the border to the West, until the construction of “Border Wall 75,” the most advanced design, in 1980.