Bringing down barriers: The Berlin Wall Around the World
Built in 1961 and spanning 155 kilometres, the Berlin Wall was designed to completely cut West Berlin off from East Germany and East Berlin and protect the country from fascist elements, according to those in the Eastern Bloc.
It was a physical division and the symbolic boundary between democracy and communism during the Cold War. The wall was so effective that emigration was essentially halted until 1989 – 5000-plus people tried to escape to “the other side”; many were killed in the process. A series of radical political changes in 1989 saw politicians announce, on November 9, that East Germans could visit the West, and vice versa. Thousands of people scaled the wall, gradually chipping away at the structure, which officially toppled in 1990 and paved the way for German reunification.
To mark the 25th anniversary of the fall of the wall, Berlin will host a parade of commemorative events throughout November, the highlight being a dazzling light show that will see thousands of illuminated, helium-filled balloons strung up to form a 12-kilometre border running from the city centre, along Bernauer Straße, past the Berlin Wall Memorial and Checkpoint Charlie, and finally to Kreuzberg and along the River Spree to the Oberbaum Bridge.
Take a look at images of segments of the wall, which are kept as monuments in many countries from Taiwan to South Africa and Costa Rica:
Germany will celebrate the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. To mark the event we take a look at images of segments of the wall, which are kept as monuments in many countries from Taiwan to South Africa and Costa Rica.
A segment of the Berlin Wall is seen between trees in Yokohama, south of Tokyo
A section of the Berlin Wall stands in the carpark of the German Club in Canberra, Australia
People walk past a segment of the former Berlin Wall at Potsdamer Platz square in Berlin
Ten segments of the Berlin Wall, which constitute the longest stretch outside of Berlin, are seen on display in Los Angeles, California
A piece of the Berlin Wall is seen in a park in central Moscow
A section of the Berlin Wall is surrounded by a display in the Cold War exhibition at the Royal Air Force Museum in Cosford, England
A woman walks by a piece of the Berlin Wall near the European Parliament in Brussels
A visitor looks at a section of the Berlin Wall painted with a mural of Jamaica’s Olympic champion Usain Bolt in Kingston
People walk near a piece of the Berlin Wall in Porte de Versailles in Paris
A piece of the Berlin Wall is seen in the front yard of the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy in Taipei
A piece of the Berlin Wall is seen at a garden inside San Martin palace, headquarters of Argentina’s Foreign Ministry in Buenos Aires
A piece of the Berlin Wall is seen in a garden at the Alexander Von Humboldt German School in Mexico City
A segment of the Berlin Wall is seen in a park in central Sofia
A piece of the Berlin Wall is seen in the artists’ village of Ein Hod near Haifa in Israel
A segment of the Berlin Wall is pictured at The Wende Museum and Archive of the Cold War in Culver City, California
