REMEMBRANCE IN TIME - Index of

60
Remembrance in Time
The overall length of the Berlin wall amounted to 155km. On the border from East- to
West-Berlin the wall was 43.1km long [5]. At the beginning the Berlin Wall was just a
barbed wire fence and was replaced successively by a 3.60m tall concrete wall.
Fig. 1: Our backyard in 1975: The first generation of the Iron Curtain was no more than a fence
3. The wall in our garden
In 1967, my parents – along with my two sisters – moved in to Neuruppiner Straße 91,
a semi-detached house in the outskirts of West-Berlin directly at the German-German
border. The construction of these buildings just 20 meters away from the wall was
promoted by the government of West-Berlin in order to demonstrate the non-acceptance
of the wall.
I was born in 1976 and my room was in the attic with two windows allowing a constant
view on the wall and even above where I could see and especially during the nights also
hear the patrolling frontier guards.
Fig. 2: View on the "Todesstreifen"
In Kleinmachnow, on the other side of the border there were several single-family
houses in a restricted area, where very faithful and privileged supporters and members of
the GDR regime lived. They even possessed a telephone – a rare relict in GDR times.
For me, our house felt like the safest place on earth. On the “west-side” there were the
US-American patrols and on the “eastern-side” the members of the heavily armed
People's Police along with their constantly barking dogs. My sisters and me we were
taught to avoid any contact with the (East-German) neighbor`s children beyond the wall.