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Tear Down This Wall

di  Silvia Chini, Leonard O’Shea

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155 km
14 border crossings
302 observation towers
20 bunkers
105 km anti-vehicle trenches
124 km border patrol roads

These are some of the numbers of the wall that for 28 years divided not only the city of Berlin but also the Eastern and Western world. The 9th November 2024 marks the 35th anniversary of an event that has changed the world forever: the fall of the Berlin WallThe Berlin wall divided neighborhoods, streets, roads, even cemeteries and churches. Of course it affected the lives of people living in Berlin and in Germany but its consequences reached villages and countries far from the German city.

Here you can read and watch the impressions of some of those who were affected by the construction of the wall. 

IMPRESSIONS OF THE BERLIN WALL

 

Of course the Berlin Wall has played an important role in the political speeches of the time. Probably the most famous speech about it is the one by Ronald Reagan known as “tear down this wall” speech.

ACTIVITY 1

Tear down this wall R.Reagan

Peter Robinson, the presidential speechwriter who helped writing Reagan’s speech “Tear down this wall” went to Berlin before the presidential visit and described the city behind the wall with adjectives like silent, colorless, quiet. 

 

After writing the speech for the President, he realized that nearly everyone in a position of authority wanted the “tear down this wall” words removed. After seven alternative speeches without the controversial words were drafted, Robinson said Reagan, with a twinkle in his eye, told White House Chief of Staff Ken Duberstein that the words would stay. “I am the president, aren’t I?” Reagan asked. The rest is history. On the 9th November 1989, five days after almost 500.000 people participated in a mass protest in East Berlin to ask for more freedom, the Berlin wall came down. This event reshape the modern Europe and the modern world.

ACTIVITY 2

Margaret Thatcher Remarks on the Berlin Wall (fall thereof) [“a great day for freedom”]

Divide the students into small groups.
Give each group 1question+1answer of the speech.
Focus on the attitude of the Prime Minister towards the sudden future changes in Europe.

ACTIVITY 3

§Unfortunately the lessons of history have not been learned…nowadays there still are many walls that divide our world.

Our walled world

THE WALL IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

A NIGHT DIVIDED by Jennifer A.Nielsen

With the rise of the Berlin Wall, twelve-year-old Gerta finds her family divided overnight. She, her mother, and her brother Fritz live on the eastern side, controlled by the Soviets. Her father and middle brother, who had gone west in search of work, cannot return home. Gerta knows it is dangerous to watch the wall, to think forbidden thoughts of freedom, yet she can’t help herself. She sees the East German soldiers with their guns trained on their own citizens; she, her family, her neighbors and friends are prisoners in their own city.

But one day, while on her way to school, Gerta spots her father on a viewing platform on the western side, pantomiming a peculiar dance. Then, when she receives a mysterious drawing, Gerta puts two and two together and concludes that her father wants Gerta and Fritz to tunnel beneath the wall, out of East Berlin. However, if they are caught, the consequences will be deadly. No one can be trusted. Will Gerta and her family find their way to freedom?

 

SEKTION 20 by Paul Dowswell

Alex lives in East Berlin. The cold war is raging and he and his family are forbidden to leave. But the longer he stays the more danger he is in. Alex is no longer pretending to be a model East German, and the Stasi has noticed. They are watching him. Alex is told that further education will be blocked to him. His summer job is mysteriously cancelled, and friends begin avoiding him. His parents start to realise that leaving the East may be the only option left to them, but getting across the Wall is practically impossible. And even if Alex and his family make it to the other side, will they be able to escape the reach of the Stasi? This is a tense, page-turning thriller that builds towards a terrifying showdown as powerful forces from the East and West converge.

 

THE GIRL BEHIND THE WALL by Mandy Robotham

A city divided.
When the Berlin Wall goes up, Karin is on the wrong side of the city. Overnight, she’s trapped under Soviet rule in unforgiving East Berlin and separated from her twin sister, Jutta.
Two sisters torn apart.
Karin and Jutta lead parallel lives for years, cut off by the Wall. But Karin finds one reason to keep going: Otto, the man who gives her hope, even amidst the brutal East German regime.
One impossible choice…
When Jutta finds a hidden way through the wall, the twins are reunited. But the Stasi have eyes everywhere, and soon Karin is faced with a terrible decision: to flee to the West and be with her sister, or sacrifice it all to follow her heart?

 

NIGHTFALL BERLIN  by Jack Grimwood

In 1986, news that East-West nuclear-arms negotiations are taking place lead many to believe the Cold War may finally be thawing. For British intelligence officer Major Tom Fox, however, it is business as usual. Ordered to arrange the smooth repatriation of a defector, Fox is smuggled into East Berlin. But it soon becomes clear that there is more to this than an old man wishing to return home to die – a fact cruelly confirmed when Fox’s mission is fatally compromised. Trapped in East Berlin, hunted by an army of Stasi agents and wanted for murder by those on both sides of the Wall, Fox must somehow elude capture and get out alive. But to do so he must discover who sabotaged his mission and why… Nightfall Berlin is a tense, atmospheric and breathtaking thriller that drops you deep into the icy heard of the Cold War.