What’s Left of the Berlin Wall?

(Last Updated On: November 9, 2015)

Seeing Where the World Really Changed

Portions of the Berlin Wall remain near the Topography of Terror in Berlin. Photo credit: M. Ciavardini

Portions of the Berlin Wall remain near the Topography of Terror in Berlin.
Photo credit: M. Ciavardini

It seems almost unimaginable now that for so many years, between 1961 and November 9, 1989, a wall divided East and West Berlin and tourists couldn’t cross easily beneath the Brandenburg Gate, and East Germans couldn’t easily get to the West, and this major city and this major country were divided: West, East. The Berlin Wall was a very real symbol of the figurative Iron Curtain representing Communist countries aligned, however voluntarily or not, with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Brandenburg Gate, Berlin Photo credit: M. Ciavardini

Brandenburg Gate, Berlin
Photo credit: M. Ciavardini

Remnants of the wall remain near Berlin’s Topography of Terror, a museum chronicling the very bad years in Germany before and during World War II. What’s left of the wall, now crumbling, isn’t as intimidating as it surely once was; but crossing beneath the Brandenburg Gate is still a marvel even if there is a Times Square-like element in the form of costumed characters posing for pictures with tourists. I can’t quite decide how I feel about postcards and souvenirs featuring little pieces of the wall although, I suppose, this tourist trade couldn’t be more emblematic of the victory of capitalism over communism.

A portion of the Berlin Wall Photo credit: M. Ciavardini

A portion of the Berlin Wall
Photo credit: M. Ciavardini

The wall itself, and Berlin, of course, are worth a visit and a moment of reflection

—Lori Tripoli

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