There will be no further construction projects at Berlin's East Side gallery, the 1.3-kilometer remaining stretch of the Berlin Wall that has been covered with art, also known as the "world's longest open-air gallery," Berlin Wall Foundation director Axel Klausmeier said at a press conference on Wednesday.
Mediaspree, one of the largest property investors in Berlin, has had the strongest impact on the area surrounding the monument. Since the beginning of the 1990s, media companies, a large concert hall as well as office buildings and a residential tower were built around the East Side Gallery, while the bank of the Spree River behind the former section of the Berlin Wall was completely modernized.
Now the property surrounding the wall section has been transferred to the Berlin Wall Foundation and all development plans have been stopped. Berlin will contribute € 250,000 ($285,000) annually to the preservation of the monument and the maintenance of the area.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990, 118 artists from all over the world were invited to paint what would become the East Side Galley. In the years that followed, some of the works of art were removed; new ones emerged. The paintings that were most damaged by erosion and vandalism were renovated. Despite international protests, one section of the gallery was removed in 2013 to create luxury apartments.
A symbol of joy and opression
The protected area is now to be expanded into an educational and artistic memorial. Every year, around three million visitors come to the East Side Gallery, but it so far lacked a professional infrastructure for tourists.
Among other things, an exhibition on the history of the section of the wall is being planned, said Klausmeier. It will commemorate it on one hand as "a symbol of how the German division was peacefully overcome and on the other hand as a testimony of the inhuman border regime." At least 10 people were killed between 1961 and 1989 trying to cross this section of the wall.
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Compelling attempts to escape the GDR
Across the Baltic in a dinghy
Not everyone in the former East Germany waited until the Wall came down to go west. In 1977, a truck driver from Dresden daringly set out with his wife and daughter in a tiny rubber boat across the Baltic Sea. Fifteen hours later, a fisherman took them on board his trawler and brought them safely to Lübeck in the West. It should be noted, however, that many others died trying to flee by sea.
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Compelling attempts to escape the GDR
The other shore
In 1974, biologist Carmen Rohrbach swam out from the GDR into the Baltic with her boyfriend, a rubber boat in tow. Before they could make it to Denmark, a search light went on. They released the boat and continued swimming. Captured by East German guards, Rohrbach then spent two years in prison. Today, she's still an adventurer, traveling far and wide for her research and book-writing.
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Compelling attempts to escape the GDR
Swimming to freedom
Axel Mitbauer, a GDR national swim team member, used pure muscle to flee. In 1969, the 19-year-old swam across the Baltic Sea from Boltenhagen to Lübeck's bay area when guards turned search lights off to allow them to cool. "I had one minute to cross both the first and second sandbanks," he recalled. He smeared himself with masses of petroleum jelly to protect himself against the icy temperatures.
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Compelling attempts to escape the GDR
Ocean escape
Over 5,000 people tried to escape the GDR via the Baltic — by boat, air mattress, swimming or even submarine. At least 174 adults and children died in the endeavor. According to Bodo Müller, who wrote a book with his wife Christine entitled "Across the Baltic Sea to Freedom," 901 people actually succeeded between the Berlin Wall's construction in August 1961 and its fall on November 9, 1989.
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Compelling attempts to escape the GDR
Up from the depths
There were the more classic escape attempts, such as by this woman, who is pictured being pulled out of a West Berlin shaft in October 1964. The shaft led to an escape tunnel connecting East to West Berlin. One of several ingenious underground border crossings, 57 people escaped through the so-called "Tunnel 57" over two days before it was discovered in an East Berlin street.
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Compelling attempts to escape the GDR
Taking the leap
19-year-old East German policeman Conrad Schumann escaped on August 15, 1961 by jumping the hastily-constructed barbed-wire fence that made up the new border erected just two days before. The image circulated around the world, with Schumann ostensibly the first of over 2,000 East German police and soldiers who made the attempt. Schumann committed suicide 37 years later in 1998.
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Compelling attempts to escape the GDR
Rear window
In September 1961, this woman first pushed her dog and then her shopping bag out of this window and into a rescue net provided by West German fire fighters. Though some people tried to pull her back into the building that stood on the border in East Berlin, she persisted and climbed out a back window to freedom in West Berlin.
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Compelling attempts to escape the GDR
Slaughterhouse 14
While most attempted escape by foot, thus risking being shot or stepping on mines, one group was exceptionally inventive. In September 1964, 14 East Germans, among them children, were smuggled across the border in a refrigerated truck as they lay under the carcasses of slaughtered pigs being transported to the West.
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Compelling attempts to escape the GDR
Up, up and away
Surely the most compelling of escape attempts was by hot air balloon. In September 1979, two daredevil families — including four children aged 2 to 15 — successfully floated across the sky from Pößneck, Thuringia to Naila, Bavaria, then situated eight kilometers (five miles) south of the Iron Curtain. They reached a height of 2,500 meters (8,200 ft.) in the homemade balloon.
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Compelling attempts to escape the GDR
Inspiring tales
That endeavor inspired both the 1982 British-American film, "Night Crossing," as well as the 2018 thriller, "Balloon," directed by Michael Herbig.
Author: Louisa Schaefer
eg/crh (with epd)
