60 years of building the wall: “Testimony to hopeless failure”

According to Federal President Steinmeier, August 13, 1961 was a “fateful day for the world”. At a memorial event in Berlin, the beginning of the construction of the Wall 60 years ago was commemorated.

Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier described the construction of the Berlin Wall 60 years ago as “a testament to a hopeless failure”. “The wall was the obvious 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,” said Steinmeier at the central commemoration in Berlin .

August 13, 1961 was a “fateful day for us Germans and for the world”. At that time, “the division of the Cold War world was literally cemented,” said the Federal President.

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”. The regime in East Berlin had long had the clear intention of stopping the flight of so many people from the GDR at its most sensitive point, namely in Berlin. “In the beginning there was a lie – and it continued in the word of the ‘anti-fascist protective wall’,” said the Federal President.

“Freedom and democracy must be defended”

On August 13, 1961, the construction of the Berlin Wall, which sealed the division of Germany, began. 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.

Steinmeier called for people not to stop at looking back when remembering the Wall. It is a constant challenge. “Freedom and democracy are never given by nature, never achieved once and for all. Freedom and democracy must be fought for, but then also protected, defended and maintained. Freedom and democracy need decisive commitment and passion.” That starts with participation in democratic elections. “Remember everyone when a new Bundestag is elected soon,” said Steinmeier.

Merkel remembers the victims

Chancellor Angela Merkel also remembered the many victims of the Berlin Wall. “If it marks the 60th anniversary of the construction of the Wall, then our thoughts are primarily and primarily with the people who lost their lives in the shadow of the Wall,” said Merkel’s government spokesman Steffen Seibert.

One also thinks of those who, after a failed attempt to escape in prisons like Berlin-Hohenschönhausen, suffered imprisonment, abuse and degradation, according to Seibert.

“Today’s anniversary is also an opportunity to remember the courage of all those GDR citizens who did not allow themselves to be deprived of the dream of a self-determined life behind walls and barbed wire and who finally made the Peaceful Revolution possible in 1989.” Coming to terms with the dictatorship in the GDR and remembering its victims “is our task and duty for the future,” emphasized Seibert.

Müller: “Brutal Barrier”

Berlin’s governing mayor Michael Müller spoke at the memorial event of the wall as a “brutal barrier that separated the free from the unfree world”. Today Berlin is considered the “City of Freedom”, but one should not forget that Berlin’s freedom had to be fought hard for and defended again and again. In doing so, Müller drew attention to the city’s efforts to preserve the memory of this time with memorials, for example.

The former President of the Bundestag Wolfgang Thierse remembered in the tagesschau24-Interview on August 13, 1961, which he experienced in Thuringia. At that time he was 17 years old and since that day had lived with a feeling of powerlessness and being locked in. Thierse also spoke of the GDR as an “unjust state”. He would reply to anyone who asserted the opposite that they were glossing over them. “There was judicial arbitrariness, the omnipotence of the SED, everything that is the opposite of a constitutional state.” But in addition to the “misguided ideological educational authority”, the GDR was also a “community of solidarity among its citizens against the intrusiveness of the state.” Even today – especially in times of a pandemic – the need for solidarity is great, said Thierse. One answer to this is a functioning welfare state.