Berlin Wall

30 Years fall of the Wall

2019: Berlin celebrates 30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall: The Wall fell on 9 November 1989. And that marks the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall - if that is no reason to celebrate, but also to commemorate. Numerous events and exhibitions are taking place in Berlin around the anniversary, for which it is definitely worth coming to Berlin.

As early as 2014, the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall was duly celebrated with a light border on the former Wall strip. This year Berlin has planned a big festival, which will take place from 4th to 10th November 2019. An open-air exhibition and event area will thus be created at seven locations in the city. These locations were important scenes of the 1989/90 events - follow the Berlin Route of the Revolution. The highlight of the festival week will be a concert on the evening of 9 November, during which national and international artists will perform. Their stories and music are closely linked to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

All events during the fall of the Wall anniversary

9 November 1989: The Berlin Wall comes down

On 9 November 1989 the Berlin Wall came down after more than 28 years. Follow the events that ultimately led to the fall of the Wall in our timeline. To mark the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Berlin is celebrating for seven days in seven symbolic places around the city with an open-air festival.

7/10/89

The beginning of the end: The final anniversary of the GDR

The 40th anniversary of the GDR was long in the planning and meticulously prepared by the SED leadership. Despite Monday demonstrations and a mass exodus, the anniversary of the GDR was celebrated with a military parade. While the citizens demonstrated and demanded reforms, Erich Honecker invited numerous foreign state guests to the Palace of the Republic.

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4/11/89

Demonstration at Alexanderplatz: "We are the people"

A few days before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the largest demonstration in GDR history took place. Artists and functionaries gathered at Alexanderplatz, demanding a fresh political start. No-one was thinking of reunification at this point, as the belief in socialism still remained. But the GDR politicians were booed by the people at the rally.

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9/11/89 7 p.m.

A slip of the tongue opens the border

It was just before 7pm on November 9, 1989 and Günter Schabowski, the "Secretary for Information", put on his glasses at the International Press Centre of the GDR and read out a statement with which he was supposed to announce solely the new travel law, but instead opened the wall. The extended freedom for GDR citizens to travel applied "immediately, without delay". This certainly attracted the attention of everyone in the room.

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Fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989: Bösebrücke

9/11/89 11.30 p.m.

The night of the fall of the Wall

The German-German border ran through the middle of the Bösebrücke in Berlin between Wedding and Prenzlauer Berg. Here – on the east side of the border – a huge crowd gathered on the night of 9 and 10 November 1989. The new travel regulations had brought people here – and more and more were coming. Finally the border guards opened the border barrier and the jubilant people streamed over the bridge to the west.

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Nov. 89

"Wallpeckers" at the Brandenburg Gate

Knocking, hammering, clanking, rattling and crumbling: shortly after the fall of the Wall, the "wallpeckers" set to work. Among them were souvenir hunters, tourists and traders, but also GDR opponents. Little by little, piece by piece, they removed the façade of the Berlin Wall – not even the loudspeaker announcements of the West Berlin police could stop them, since here souvenirs of freedom were to be found.

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And then?

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How did the people feel the night the Berlin wall fell?

It was my first big party and the best party of my life - never have I celebrated more relaxed, boundless. Squeezed among strangers who were as close to me that night as my parents were. It was November 9, 1989. We heard about the party of the decade from the news. I was only 10 years old at that time, but I remember these pictures of people dancing in the neon light of the border fortress (Berlin Lichtenrade) as if it had been yesterday. That night everything was unique. Unforgettable.
Sophia, 39 years old

On November 9th I visited my grandparents in Berlin (I lived with my parents outside Berlin at that time). In the early evening my grandmother took me to the cinema (Arielle the Mermaid). After that we went straight home. My grandmother had been surprised that so many people are in the city, but since we neither listened to the radio nor watched television, we didn't notice the opening of the borders. But the next morning, of course, we did. I immediately called my mother. She told me that my brother had called her in the middle of the night. She - totally sleepy - answered the phone: "Mummy, Mummy, guess where I am", Kay asked. My mother: "Kay, I don't care where you are! It's the middle of the night and we were asleep!" Kay: "Man, mum, I'm on the Ku'damm!" My mother: "Kay, how many times have I told you not to drink so much beer!!!" Well, the rest of the night she couldn't sleep anymore. My parents hung spellbound in front of the television.
Joyce, 40 years old

We had to work till just before midnight. But my wife and I had already received the unbelievably good news in the course of the evening: The wall was open. East Berlin was now empty. So you could get a taxi. We drove to the station Friedrichstraße: the divided station with the huge so far almost insurmountable steel plate between the platforms. We go into the palace of tears. A border guard takes a look at our identity cards. The path leads through an unadorned tunnel. Neon light flickers. Goose bumps. An ambience like the way to Stasi hell. But the opposite is the case. We can hardly believe it. The suburban train leaves. Experienced a thousand times; but this time in a different direction. Shortly before entering the Lehrter Bahnhof (today the main station): pure emotions and lots of tears of joy, the most beautiful day of our lives.
Kerstin, 51 years old & Oliver, 54 years old

Unfortunately we did not come from the West to East Berlin on 9 November. But we could welcome the East citizens at the border crossing Bornholmer Straße. In order to really celebrate, we had to go to Breitscheidplatz - there was really something going on!
In the morning on November 10th I accompanied my girlfriend to school - but nobody could think of school at all. We tried to walk from Schöneberg to the Brandenburg Gate. On the Straße des 17. Juni, about 100 meters, in front of the Brandenburger Tor, we saw two cars in the distance. We tried to stop them. The cars stopped and someone opened the back door of the first Mercedes: "My voice failed me when I recognized Willy Brandt. He shook my hand, looked around and said, "Come, let's go to the wall together." At that moment I understood: "Man, that was Willy Brandt! Man, the wall's really going down!" We all hugged each other euphorically!
Marcelo, Porto Alegre, Brasil

Discover the history of the Berlin Wall

The East Side Gallery is the longest surviving section of the Berlin Wall. In 1990, more than 100 artists from over 20 countries decorated this stretch of the hinterland wall with their art works. The most famous is undoubtedly the work known as the “Fraternal Kiss”, depicting a kiss between Russian leader Leonid Brezhnev and East Germany’s SED Party Chairman Erich Honecker.

But Potsdamer Platz, Checkpoint Charlie and the Brandenburg Gate are also key sites in the history of the Berlin Wall.

East Side Gallery

Once it was the Berlin Wall. Now it’s the longest open-air gallery in the world.

Berliner Mauer Gedenkstätte — © visitBerlin, Foto: Dagmar Schwelle

Cold War Guided Tour

East Side Gallery - Theodor Tehzik "Big Kremlin's Wind" — © visitBerlin, Foto: Philip Koschel

Berlin Wall bike tour

Cycle along the former Berlin Wall

Berlin Wall Memorial in Summer — © visitBerlin, Foto: Dagmar Schwelle

The Berlin Wall and the “Cold War”

Handshape Berlin — © visitBerlin, Foto: Lea Kim Binger

Berlin HANDSHAPE

The Monument to Human Connection

Traces of the Berlin Wall

Berlin was a divided city for nearly thirty years – a city with a wall running through its very heart. From 13 August 1961 until 9 November 1989, the Berlin Wall divided the city into East and West Berlin.

Today, all across the city you can find traces of the Wall, its remains and memorial sites – the East Side Gallery, the Berlin Wall Memorial in Bernauer Strasse, the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial, a former Stasi remand prison, and the green Mauerpark.

The route of the Berlin Wall is even marked along some of Berlin’s streets by a double row of cobblestones.

The Berlin Wall Cycle Route also offers a great way to trace the route of the Wall by bike. The route crosses the city following the path of the Berlin Wall. The entire cycle route covers over 160 kilometres along the former GDR border encircling West Berlin.

Where the Wall once stood

From Potsdamer Platz to East Side Gallery

The Berlin Wall Memorial

What was once the border strip is now a place of remembrance. The Berlin Wall memorial gives you a moving insight into the division of Berlin.

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East Side Gallery

1.3 kilometres of amazement: take a walk along the East Side Gallery and rediscover art and the history of the Berlin Wall.

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Checkpoint Charlie

From Octopussy to The Spy Who Can In From The Cold: the history of espionage in Berlin at Checkpoint Charlie.

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Tränenpalast

Parting tears. This is what the partition of Germany meant for many Berliners and their personal stories can be found in the Tränenpalast (Palace of Tears).

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Topography of Terror

Remembering terror and persecution – the documentation centre Topographie des Terrors is one of the most-visited places of remembrance in Berlin.

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Reichstag and Gouvernment buildings in Berlin

The Parliament of Trees

16 federal states, 16 trees, one memorial site: the Parliament of Trees is an inconspicuous yet poignant symbol of German unity.

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Mauerpark

Amble through the flea market, a drink from the off licence on the lawn and singing along to open air karaoke – your Sunday afternoon in Mauerpark.

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East Side Gallery

The East Side Gallery is the longest surviving section of the Berlin Wall. In 1990, more than 100 artists from over 20 countries decorated this stretch of the hinterland wall with their art works.

The most famous is undoubtedly the work known as the “Fraternal Kiss”, depicting a kiss between Russian leader Leonid Brezhnev and East Germany’s SED Party Chairman Erich Honecker.

But Potsdamer Platz, Checkpoint Charlie and the Brandenburg Gate are also key sites in the history of the Berlin Wall.

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The fall of the Berlin Wall

On the evening of 9 November 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. It was a night when innumerable East and West Berliners made history.

They climbed over the concrete walls, crowded through the narrow border crossing points, went at the Berlin Wall with hammers, and retook their city in its entirety. The images of this historical event were shown around the world.

Today, almost 30 years on, Berlin is no longer a walled city, but a world city. Since those days, millions of visitors have come to Berlin, Germany’s capital city, to see this change for themselves.

What have the Berliners made of their city since 1989? A creative location, a lifestyle metropolis and a place where history happened.

The fall of the Wall left unused spaces in the urban landscape. Residents and visitors adopted these abandoned areas as creative spaces – from the art scene in Brunnenstraße to the Berlin start-ups at Moritzplatz – or simply enjoyed the new access to the River Spree.

The Berlin Wall: Museums, sites and memorials

In the night from 12 to 13 August 1961, the East German army began sealing off the streets and railway lines providing access to West Berlin. Then the East German regime erected a wall along the sector border.

The border encircling West Berlin was 167.8 kilometres long. In the years of the Berlin Wall, present research shows that between 136 and 206 people died trying to cross from East to West.

The Berlin Wall finally fell on 9 November 1989. The city recalls the victims of the division of Germany at many Berlin Wall sites, museums and memorial sites, such as the Tränenpalast (Palace of Tears), the Berlin Wall Memorial in Bernauer Strasse, and the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial, a former Stasi remand prison.