Berlin--With its (Abominable) Wall
9 Nov. has been called one of Germany's "Fateful Days" (Schicksalstag), and to celebrate the end of the city's partition, we'll look across Checkpoint Charlie
I once posted a “then and now” piece about partitioned Berlin:
Today, since it’s 9 November, here are some more postcards from Cold War Berlin.
Mailed on 4 Sept. 1969, the above postcard shows the Brandenburg Gate from the Western side of the infamous Wall.
The below postcard, mailed in 1982, shows the partitioned city quite well:
Basically, the same motif was printed on the below postcard from 1969:
Of course, there were also other postcards with no maps but the main sights (plus the flags of the four occupying powers), such as the one shown below from the mid-1970s:
By then, the US Checkpoint Charlie had already become quite an institution:
And this concludes today’s posting, which serves as a timely introduction for Marcus Colla’s guest posting. Stay tuned!
Nostalgia.
Cheap döner at a kebab-restaurant on Oranienstrase. THe punks begging for money at Kottbusser Tor. Gedächniskirchen, the nearby Arcade at night, the fugly Olof Palme-platz, eating a whole meal including a 1 Liter tankard of beer for 4:50 Mark in the city center, Schnell-imbiss, Karl Marx-Allee looking like the world's slowest racing track when the Trabbis were putt-putting along.
And getting the business-end of an AK-47 almost-but-not-quite pointed at me when the Border Guard at Sassnitz took my passport and handed it off to a colleague for a closer look (or to make me nervous).
Thanks for that. November 9th was the only day I can recall my mother ever cursing me. I had just watched the legendary Schabowski presser and yelled to my mom „I think the wall has just fallen!“. Her reply? „Ja ja“. If you know, you know.