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3: THE MATERIALITY OF THE BERLIN WALL
Figure 9: The course of the former wall is today marked through much of central Berlin, even in
this restaurant near Potsdamer Platz. Photo: Anna McWilliams.
This wall changed appearances several times in what is often referred to as
‘four generations’ of the wall. The first wall was hastily assembled in August
1961 and consisted of large square breeze blocks normally used for
residential architecture. Tall Y-shaped iron rods were holding barbed wire
in place on top of the wall. After some attempts at ramming the wall with
heavy vehicles the breeze block wall was replaced in some areas with heavy
concrete slabs. This is referred to as the second generation wall. From 1965
onwards the wall was replaced with a third generation wall of inserted concrete
slabs into an H-shaped post structure of reinforced concrete. Sewage
pipes were placed at the top of the wall to make it harder to climb. In the
mid-1970s the co called ‘Border Wall 75’ was built. The result of several
studies and tests, this wall was put together from prefabricated concrete
sections, the L-shaped element UL12.41 (Klausmeier and Schmidt 2004:15–
16). This is the wall that has received the most attention and that corresponds
with most peoples’ idea of what the Berlin Wall looked like. It is
this wall we are used to seeing in media footage, the wall that Reagan
demanded Gorbachev to move as well as the wall that hordes of tourists
have had their photograph taken with since it’s erection in 1975. It is also
the wall that eventually came down, the wall that we have seen images of
being hacked down by crowds (Figure 10).
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