GDR history
Prime Minister Ramelow remembers the construction of the Wall 62 years ago
Workers increase the sector barrier on Bernauer Strasse in Berlin. Construction began on August 13, 62 years ago. photo
© dpa
It stretched around 155 kilometers through the middle of the capital. On August 13, 1961, the construction of the Berlin Wall began – and also separated families and friendships.
On the occasion of the anniversary of the building of the Wall, Thuringia’s Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow commemorates the victims of the GDR border regime. “The wall tore families and friendships apart, it uprooted people and led to an incredible amount of suffering,” said the left-wing politician, according to a statement from the Thuringian State Chancellery on Sunday. One is also thinking of everyone “whose striving for freedom led to spying, persecution and exclusion or imprisonment”.
The construction of the Berlin Wall began on August 13, 1961 and sealed the German-German division. The leadership of the GDR wanted to stop the mass exodus of people to West Berlin and the Federal Republic, which was slowing down the GDR economy and destabilizing the state. The bulwark, around 155 kilometers long, divided Berlin for more than 28 years. According to the Berlin Wall Foundation, at least 140 people were killed at the Wall during this time or lost their lives in connection with the GDR border regime.
In the GDR regions bordering West Germany, the German-German border had been sealed off earlier. In the early summer of 1952, the GDR security organs set up a 500 meter wide “protection strip” and a five kilometer wide restricted area along the border with West Germany. It was hardly accessible to people who did not live there permanently.
Ramelow also recalled the peaceful revolution of 1989: “It was the citizens of the GDR who brought down the wall again almost 30 years later. On November 9, 1989, they pushed the door wide open to German and European unity,” said he. The painful experience of “a Germany divided by walls and barbed wire” warns us to do everything “so that we can continue to live in our country in freedom, diversity and democracy in the future”.