The Berlin Wall 1961-1989

Director: Eric Steel

December 13, 2010 | 6.00 pm
Goethe Hall, Max Mueller Bhavan, Mumbai

On August 13, 1961, the German Democratic Republic divided Berlin in two with a 95-mile-long wall which also isolated the three Western sectors from the surrounding area of Brandenburg. The Berlin Wall was officially referred to as the “Anti-Fascist Protection Wall” by GDR authorities, implying that neighbouring West Germany had not been fully de-Nazified. The West Berlin city government referred to it as the “Wall of Shame” while condemning the Wall’s restriction on freedom of movement. Along with the separate and much longer Inner German border (IGB) that demarcated the border between East and West Germany, both borders came to symbolize the “Iron Curtain” between Western Europe and the Eastern Bloc. It became a symbol of the Cold War and the division between communism and capitalism.

The documentary film, ‘The Berlin Wall 1969-1989’ has the original film sequences covering the period from the building of the Berlin wall in 1961 to its fall in 1989. The date on which the Wall fell is considered to have been November 9, 1989 but the Wall in its entirety was not torn down immediately. Starting that evening and in the days and weeks that followed, people came to the wall with sledgehammers or otherwise hammers and chisels to chip off souvenirs, demolishing lengthy parts of it in the process and creating several unofficial border crossings. New border crossings continued to be opened through the middle of 1990, including the Brandenburg Gate on December 22, 1989. Several sections of the wall stand as memorials today.