“The wall was the unmistakable sign of an injustice state that was neither sovereign nor legitimate in the eyes of its own citizens. Basically the beginning of the end – which was, however, still too long in coming.” Words from Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on the 60th anniversary of the construction of the Berlin Wall.
On August 13, 1961, the GDR government began to cordon off the country, and the construction of the Berlin Wall sealed the division of Germany. The bulwark was around 155 kilometers long and enclosed the western part of Berlin. The wall ran 45 kilometers across the city. Only after more than 28 years did the division come to an end with the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989. In Berlin alone, according to scientific research, at least 140 people died as a result of the GDR border regime after the Wall was built. According to the federal government, at least 260 fatalities were to be mourned at the inner-German border.
Wall was an admission of failure
Steinmeier recalled the sentence “Nobody has the intention to build a wall” of the then GDR state and SED party leader Walter Ulbricht in June 1961. This was “one of the most brazen lies in German history”. “In the beginning there was a lie – and it continued in the word of the ‘anti-fascist protective wall’,” said the Federal President. “Who has ever believed this propaganda lie? The wall was not built to prevent a movement of conquest from west to east, but was built by a state that had to lock up its own citizens in its country in order to function at all for a while to be able to. “
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