CHECKPOINT CHARLIE IS DISMANTLED IN BERLIN IN 1990

Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin

Today, The Grandma is reading about Checkpoint Charlie, the best-known Berlin Wall crossing point between East Berlin and West Berlin during the Cold War.

This place in Berlin was witness of terrible stories during the years of the Cold War (1947-1991) and it was dismantled on a day like today in 1990. One of the most terrible events that The Grandma remembers is the story of Peter Fechter, a German bricklayer who was killed at the Berlin Wall when he was shot by East German border guards while Fechter was trying to cross over to West Berlin.

This story was only one of thousands that happened because of the existence of the Berlin Wall, a construction that separate families and friends and that broke hopes and dreams. The Grandma remembers a Spanish song named Libre sung by Nino Bravo, a Valencian singer who died in a car accident at 28 years old.

Checkpoint Charlie or Checkpoint C was the name given by the Western Allies to the best-known Berlin Wall crossing point between East Berlin and West Berlin during the Cold War (1947–1991).

Peter Fechter (14 January 1944-17 August 1962) was a German bricklayer who became the twenty-seventh known person to die at the Berlin Wall. Fechter was 18 years-old when he was shot and killed by East German border guards while trying to cross over to West Berlin.

Peter Fechter was born on 14 January 1944, in Berlin, Germany, during the final years of World War II. Fechter was the third of four children, and raised in the Weißensee district of Berlin. His father was a mechanical engineer and his mother was a saleswoman. Fechter finished school at the age of 14, and graduated as a bricklayer.

Peter Fechter

After World War II had ended, Weißensee was located in the Soviet occupation zone of Berlin when the city was divided during the Allied Occupation, with the Soviet zone later becoming East Berlin in East Germany. Fechter's eldest sister had married and now lived in West Berlin, where she was regularly visited by her parents and siblings.

On 13 August 1961, the East German authorities abruptly closed the border and began construction of the Berlin Wall, effectively separating Fechter and his family from his sister in West Berlin. 

Fechter's colleague, Helmut Kulbeik, later stated that he and Fechter had been contemplating defecting to West Berlin for a while, and that they had also explored the border installations, but no concrete planning was ever made at the time. Shortly after, Fechter was denied a legally sanctioned trip to West Germany by his company, despite receiving good judgement.

On 17 August 1962, around one year after the construction of the Berlin Wall, Fechter and Helmut Kulbeik attempted to flee from East Germany. The plan was to hide in a carpenter's workshop near the wall on Zimmerstrasse and, after observing the border guards from there, to jump out of a window into the death-strip, a strip running between the main wall and a parallel fence which they had recently started to construct, run across it, and climb over the two metre wall topped with barbed wire into the Kreuzberg district of West Berlin near Checkpoint Charlie.

More information: Checkpoint Charlie-Crossing the Recent History

Their plan was initially successful as both Fechter and Kulbeik reached the final wall, but as they began to climb the East German border guards fired at them. 

Although Kulbeik succeeded in crossing over the wall, Fechter was shot in the pelvis while still climbing, in plain view of hundreds of witnesses. He fell back into the death-strip on the East German side, where he remained in view of West German onlookers, including journalists.

Peter Fechter Memorial, Berlin

Despite his screams, Fechter received no medical assistance from the East German side, and could not be tended to by those on the West side. West Berlin police threw him bandages, which he could not reach, and he bled to death after approximately one hour.

As a result of his death, hundreds in West Berlin formed a spontaneous demonstration, shouting Murderers! at the border guards.

The lack of medical assistance for Peter Fechter was attributed to mutual fear: Western bystanders were apparently prevented at gunpoint from assisting him, although according to a report in Time magazine, a second lieutenant of the US Army on the scene received specific orders from the US Commandant in West Berlin to stand firm and do nothing.

It also emerged during the trial that any aid attempt from the West had indeed been made impossible, but according to a report from forensic pathologist Otto Prokop, Fechter had no chance of survival. The shot in the right hip had caused severe internal injuries.

More information: The Berlin Wall 

Likewise, the head of the East German border platoon stated that he was afraid to intervene, because of an incident just three days earlier when an East German soldier Rudi Arnstadt had probably been shot by a Western federal policeman. Nonetheless, the East German border soldiers did retrieve Peter Fechter's body an hour after he had died.

In March 1997, seven years after the reunification of Germany, two former East German guards, Rolf Friedrich and Erich Schreiber, faced manslaughter charges for Fechter's death, and admitted to his shooting. They were both convicted, and sentenced to 20 and 21 months' imprisonment on probation.

Peter Fechter ...er wollte nur die Freiheit

Due to a lack of conclusive evidence, the court was unable to determine which of three gunmen, one of whom had already died, had fired the fatal bullet. After pleading guilty to the crime, during sentencing, both guards apologized for killing Fechter, adding that they would forever live with the guilt of their crime.

A cross was placed on the western side near the spot where Fechter was shot and bled to death. At the invitation of Willy Brandt, the then-mayor of West Berlin, the Yale Russian Chorus sang a German translation of Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus near the site in the week following the shooting.

On the first anniversary, a wreath was placed there by Willy Brandt and US major general James Polk. The story of Peter Fechter was the headline of American news magazine Time in August 1962. In this article was used the noun Wall of Shame, Mauer der Schande, and this became a synonym for the wall.

More information: The Guardian

After German reunification in 1990, the Peter-Fechter-Stelle memorial was constructed on Zimmerstrasse, at the precise spot where he had died on the Eastern side, and this has been a focal point for some of the commemorations regarding the wall.

The shooting has also been the subject of documentaries on German television. Cornelius Ryan dedicated his book The Last Battle to the memory of Fechter. Composer Aulis Sallinen wrote an orchestral work Mauermusik to commemorate Fechter.

In 2007, artist Mark Gubb was commissioned by the Institute of Contemporary Arts to create a performance based on the death of Peter Fechter. The performance was a one-hour live piece that was later recorded and screened at the ICA with a discussion panel at the end consisting of the artist, and actor Dominik Danielewicz who played the part of Peter Fechter.

The 1972 ballad Libre, -Free- a recording famous in all Ibero-America- by Spanish singer Nino Bravo, remembers this event. 

In 2012 Canadian playwright Jordan Tannahill's play Peter Fechter: 59 Minutes, a poetic re-imagining of the final hour of Fechter's life, was produced in Canada and Berlin.

More information: Cold War Sites

The Berlin Wall wasn't the only barrier 

to fall after the collapse of the Soviet Union 

and the end of the Cold War. 

Traditional barriers to the flow of money, 

trade, people and ideas also fell.

Fareed Zakaria

CHECKPOINT CHARLIE: CROSSING THE RECENT HISTORY

Checkpoint Charlie in the 50's.

Checkpoint Charlie or Checkpoint C was the name given by the Western Allies to the best-known Berlin Wall crossing point between East Berlin and West Berlin during the Cold War (1947–1991).

GDR leader Walter Ulbricht agitated and maneuvered to get the Soviet Union's permission to construct the Berlin Wall in 1961 to stop Eastern Bloc emigration westward through the Soviet border system, preventing escape across the city sector border from communist East Berlin into West Berlin. Checkpoint Charlie became a symbol of the Cold War, representing the separation of East and West. Soviet and American tanks briefly faced each other at the location during the Berlin Crisis of 1961.

More information: Mauer Museum

On August 13, 1961, a barbed-wire barrier that would become the Berlin Wall separating East and West Berlin was erected by the East Germans. Two days later, police and army engineers began to construct a more permanent concrete wall. Along with the wall, the 830 mile zonal border became 3.5 miles wide on its East German side in some parts of Germany with a tall steel-mesh fence running along a death strip bordered by bands of ploughed earth, to slow and to reveal the prints of those trying to escape, and mined fields.

American sector of Checkpoint Charlie

The name Charlie came from the letter C in the NATO phonetic alphabet; similarly for other Allied checkpoints on the Autobahn from the West: Checkpoint Alpha at Helmstedt and its counterpart Checkpoint Bravo at Dreilinden, Wannsee in the south-west corner of Berlin. The Soviets simply called it the Friedrichstraße Crossing Point, КПП Фридрихштрассе or KPP Fridrikhshtrasse. The East Germans referred officially to Checkpoint Charlie as the Grenzübergangsstelle, Border Crossing Point.

On 17 August 1962, a teenaged East German, Peter Fechter, was shot in the pelvis by East German guards while trying to escape from East Berlin. His body lay tangled in a barbed wire fence, and he bled to death, in full view of the world's media. American soldiers could not rescue him because he was a few metres inside the Soviet sector. East German border guards were reluctant to approach him for fear of provoking Western soldiers, one of whom had shot an East German border guard just days earlier. More than an hour later, Fechter's body was removed by the East German guards. A spontaneous demonstration formed on the American side of the checkpoint, protesting the action of the East and the inaction of the West.

More information: History.com

Although the wall was opened in November 1989 and the checkpoint booth removed on June 22, 1990, the checkpoint remained an official crossing for foreigners and diplomats until German reunification during October 1990 when the guard house was removed; it is now on display in the open-air museum of the Allied Museum in Berlin-Zehlendorf. 

The Bonds ready to cross Checkpoint Charlie

The course of the former wall and border is now marked in the street with a line of cobblestones. A copy of the guard house and sign that once marked the border crossing was later built where Checkpoint Charlie once was. It resembles the first guard house erected during 1961, behind a sandbag barrier towards the border. Over the years it was replaced several times by guard houses of different sizes and layouts. The one removed during 1990 was considerably larger than the first one and did not have sandbags.

After the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc and the reunification of Germany, the building at Checkpoint Charlie became a tourist attraction. It is now located in the Allied Museum in the Dahlem neighborhood of Berlin.

More information:  The Guardian

 The horrors of the Second World War, 

the chilling winds of the Cold War and the crushing weight 

of the Iron Curtain are little more than fading memories. 

Ideals that once commanded great loyalty are now taken for granted.

Jan Peter Balkenende

THE BRANDENBURG GATE: A WONDERFUL SIGN OF PEACE

Brandenburg column and Parisian place, 1930

The Brandenburg Gate, Brandenburger Tor in German, is an 18th-century neoclassical monument in Berlin, and one of the best-known landmarks of Germany. It is built on the site of a former city gate that marked the start of the road from Berlin to the town of Brandenburg an der Havel.

It is located in the western part of the city centre of Berlin within Mitte, at the junction of Unter den Linden and Ebertstraße, immediately west of the Pariser Platz. One block to the north stands the Reichstag building, which houses the German parliament, the Bundestag. The gate is the monumental entry to Unter den Linden, the renowned boulevard of linden trees, which led directly to the royal City Palace of the Prussian monarchs.

It was commissioned by King Frederick William II of Prussia as a sign of peace and built by architect Carl Gotthard Langhans from 1788 to 1791. 

More information: Berlin.de

The Brandenburg Gate was not part of the old fortifications, but one of 18 gates within the Berlin Customs Wall erected in the 1730s, including the old fortified city and many of its then suburbs. The gate consists of 12 Doric columns, six to each side, forming five passageways. Citizens originally were allowed to use only the outermost two on each side. Atop the gate is a Quadriga, a chariot drawn by four horses. 

Napoleon in Berlin by Charles Meynier

The gate's design is based upon the Propylaea, the gateway to the Acropolis in Athens, Greece, and is consistent with Berlin's history of architectural classicism, first, Baroque, and then neo-Palladian. The gate was the first Athens on the River Spree by architect Carl Gotthard von Langhans. The capital Quadriga was sculpted by Johann Gottfried Schadow.

The Brandenburg Gate has played different political roles in German history. After the 1806 Prussian defeat at the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt, Napoleon was the first to use the Brandenburg Gate for a triumphal procession and took its Quadriga to Paris.

After Napoleon's defeat in 1814 and the Prussian occupation of Paris by General Ernst von Pfuel, the Quadriga was restored to Berlin. It was now redesigned by Karl Friedrich Schinkel for the new role of the Brandenburg Gate as a Prussian triumphal arch; the goddess, now definitely Victoria, was equipped with the Prussian eagle and Iron Cross on her lance with a wreath of oak leaves.

More information: History.com

When a much larger Berlin was partitioned after World War II, the central borough of the city fell into the Soviet sector, adjoining the British sector at the Brandenburg Gate.

The fall of the Berlin Wall, 1989

Following Germany's surrender and the end of the war, the governments of East Berlin and West Berlin restored it in a joint effort. The holes were patched, but were visible for many years following the war.

Vehicles and pedestrians could travel freely through the gate, located in East Berlin, until the Berlin Wall was built, 13 August 1961. Then one of the eight Berlin Wall crossings was opened on the eastern side of the gate, usually not open for East Berliners and East Germans, who from then on needed a hard-to-obtain exit visa. On 14 August, West Berliners gathered on the western side of the gate to demonstrate against the Berlin Wall, among them West Berlin's governing Mayor Willy Brandt, who had spontaneously returned from a federal election campaigning tour in West Germany earlier on the same day.

More information: Remarks at the Brandenburg Gate

Under the pretext that Western demonstrations required it, the East closed the checkpoint at the Brandenburg Gate the same day, until further notice, a situation that was to last until 22 December 1989. The wall was erected as an arc just west of the gate, cutting off access from West Berlin. 

During the post-war Partition of Germany, the gate was isolated and inaccessible immediately next to the Berlin Wall. The area around the gate was featured most prominently in the media coverage of the tearing down of the wall in 1989, and the subsequent German reunification in 1990.

Throughout its existence, the Brandenburg Gate was often a site for major historical events and is today considered not only as a symbol of the tumultuous history of Europe and Germany, but also of European unity and peace.

Ich habe es noch in diesem Sommer: Berlin wird leben, 

und die Mauer wird fallen.

I wrote it down again this summer: Berlin will live and the Wall will fall.

Former major of Berlin and chancellor or Germany Willy Brandt at the West Berlin city hall Rathaus Schöneberg, on November 10th 1989, one day after the first East-Berliners passed the border between East and West-Berlin.

THE BONDS ARE IN BERLIN: ICH BIN EIN BERLINER!

Spittelmarkt, Berlin (1909)

After having a pleasant flight from Barcelona and had listened all the security instructions, The Bonds have arrived to Berlin this afternoon. They're hosted in the Adlon Kempinski Hotel near the downtown of the city. They are visiting the city in this moment and enjoying the night life.

Berlin is the capital and the largest city of Germany as well as one of its 16 states. With a population of approximately 3.6 million people, Berlin is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany on the banks of rivers Spree and Havel, it is the centre of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Region, which has about 6 million residents from more than 180 nations.Due to its location in the European Plain, Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one-third of the city's area is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes. 

More information: Red Town Hall

First documented in the 13th century and situated at the crossing of two important historic trade routes, Berlin became the capital of the Margraviate of Brandenburg (1417–1701), the Kingdom of Prussia (1701–1918), the German Empire (1871–1918), the Weimar Republic (1919–1933) and the Third Reich (1933–1945). Berlin in the 1920s was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a de facto West German exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961–1989) and East Germany territory.

Following German reunification in 1990, Berlin once again became the capital of a unified Germany.

John F. Kennedy in Berlin, 1963

Berlin is a world city of culture, politics, media and science. Its economy is based on high-tech firms and the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, research facilities, media corporations and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail traffic and has a highly complex public transportation network. The metropolis is a popular tourist destination. Significant industries also include IT, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, clean tech, biotechnology, construction and electronics.

More information: Rare Historical Photos

Modern Berlin is home to world renowned universities, orchestras, museums, entertainment venues and is host to many sporting events. Its urban setting has made it a sought-after location for international film productions. The city is well known for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts and a high quality of living. Over the last decade Berlin has seen the emergence of a cosmopolitan entrepreneurial scene.

Berlin is still going through a transition since the Cold War, both in 

what used to be East and West Berlin. I can still sense the confusion and the struggle for identity there in the streets. There's a pulse to it. 

Diane Kruger