W/NW The Berlin Wall

[ron_breeze2]

<p>As we celebrate the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall let's post some of our photo's of The Wall taken with a Leica or not.</p><div></div>

[JDMvW]

<p>The Anti-Fascism Defense Wall in 1972</p><div></div>

[miha_golobic1]

<p><img src="http://www.shrani.si/f/c/G9/2Rr86jCj/1/dsc5147-1.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="467" /><br>

Tourists taking snaps of the Wall in 1999.</p>

[charlie_chan2]

<p>sorry pics here</p>

<p>Charlie Chan<br>

Cheltenham, UK<br>

</p><div></div>

[ron_breeze2]

<p>Charlie resize the photo to 72 dpi and 700 on the longest side (you are at 900 right now) and re submit, it will appear in your post.</p>

[peter_n1664876959]

<p>The Wall in suburbia, taken in W. Berlin in 1967.</p><div></div>

[Farkle-Mpls]

<p>Taken in 2005 during the weekend of the 60th anniversary of the end of WW II</p><div></div>

[Farkle-Mpls]

<p>Part of The Wall is left as a monument ... here is a shot from 2005</p><div></div>

[pierre_claquin1]

<p>Excellent initiative ! Please visit http://www.ventsdest.net/english/gallery/germany/index.htm<br>

Let us celebrate.</p>

 

[HarryBaker]

<p>Taken in September</p>

[HarryBaker]

<p>Sorry, here's the picture!</p><div></div>

[Farkle-Mpls]

<p>Today's newspaper said that 136 people were killed trying to cross the Wall. This is from a memorial near Checkpoint Charlie.</p><div></div>

[michael_markey]

<p>I never knew that it ran through the suburbs in such a way. Great picture. </p>

[soeren_engelbrecht1]

<p>My father is a historian and has a keen interest - as I do myself - in the GDR. He has just exhibited his personal collection of GDR items in an "Everyday Life in the GDR" exhibition here in Denmark. It opened on October 7 (the 60th anniversary of the foundation of the GDR) and closed on November 9. About 2.000 people came to see it - not bad for a town of 50.000 :-) Anyway, on his desk he has the following Triptych that I made for him from a series taken with my M3 on my last visit in october 2007.<br>

<img src="http://www.imagepro.dk/upload/photodotnet/Triptych.jpg" alt="" /></p>

[Farkle-Mpls]

<p>I noticed that suburban wall photo too and thought it looked relatively easy to get over ... a tall step ladder and you're good to go. However, I know I'm missing some important feature/aspect which prevented that. I doubt it would be guarded that closely in suburban areas so I'm assuming the GDR wasn't relying solely on guards' eyes and ears ... any one have any insight?</p>

[frederick_muller]

The rounded top of the wall was coated with some kind of synthetic surfacing that made it impossible to grip. The wall itself was built from a series of prefabricated slabs. There were motion sensors all along the wall and regular patrols. It doesn't look that imposing, but it was pretty secure.<div></div>

[frederick_muller]

<p>'</p><div></div>

[frederick_muller]

<p>''</p><div></div>

[frederick_muller]

<p>'''</p><div></div>

[rogerwb]

<p>I spent the better part of two years patrolling the E/W border in Fulda. Never got to Berlin, and never close enough to the zonal border for anything meaningful.. Here's a fragment on display locally.</p><div></div>

[michael_dimarzio]

<p>I don't have a photo, though I was a Cold War fighter under Reagan. I have a friend that went East to West over the wall, he was hung up on top and while he hung upside down he was shot. He made it West, but the sister he left behind he never saw again.</p>

[ron_breeze2]

<p>My friend and I were walking along The Wall, on the West side, on the morning of 1/26/89 when we came upon this hole at the same time this guard, on the East side, did. He looked at us warily and I smiled and stuck my hand through the hole and my friend snapped this pic when he broke out in a big grin and shook my hand. We never found out who he was as neither she or I spoke German and he spoke no English.</p><div></div>

[peter_n1664876959]

<blockquote>

<p>I never knew that it ran through the suburbs in such a way. Great picture.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Thanks Michael! It ran everywhere, even through the woods. I'm not quite sure where the pic below was taken or how I got there but here is a nice illustration of the wall, the shooting gallery strip, the observation hut, and the oval lights which always looked rather incongruous stuck on the telegraph poles. Deadly though... Those oval lights were everywhere the Wall was, you'll see them in the suburb pic above too.</p><div></div>

[peter_n1664876959]

<p>I'm not quite sure how I managed to get this picture as I'm obviously leaning out of a window in a building at Checkpoint Charlie. Anyway you can see the Stadtmitte U-Bahn entrance fairly clearly, and the maze of barriers you have to go through on the E. Berlin side to get there from the Checkpoint, including a concrete barrier that is mostly hidden by the low-slung building in the center of the picture. There's a wrecked building on the left, actually there were wrecked buildings along the length of Friedrichstrasse, left since WWII. The wall is in the foreground with barbed wire on top, and an observation platform was built so that people could peek over into E. Berlin. Then the East Germans tried to obstruct the view with the somewhat threatening notice "Beneficial for Westberlin: Normal relations with the DDR!". You can just see the lower case "b" in Westberlin - suggesting that West Berlin wasn't really part of the city of Berlin as a whole - but a completely different place...</p><div></div>

[peter_n1664876959]

<p>This one isn't really Wall-related but it gives you a look into the GDR. It was taken on Friedrichstrasse at the junction with Mohrenstrasse, just a few blocks from Checkpoint Charlie. Most of this part of Friedrichstrasse was in very bad shape and it was here that it was explained to me that the wrecked buildings were left as memorials. Whether this was the case or not I don't know but the juxtaposition of some of these buildings with new construction and neatly kept lawns and green spaces lent credence to it.</p><div></div>