Ghost Stations and Broken Lives, The Legacy of the Berlin Wall

Berlin, like many cities, has a city tour bus. Actually, there are four or five companies that offer pretty much the same tour. I had bought a Berlin Welcome Card and one of the many discounts was to take one of the city tours. So I went on one of them. I didn't end up on one of the ones listed in my booklet, but the one I did take offered a discount (because of the discounts offered by the other companies who were listed, I'm sure). I figured they would all be the same, so one was as good as another.

It was an interesting tour and gave me an overview of some of the history of the city, its origins as a tiny little village in the 1300's, 1362, I think. Canada hasn't anything like that. It's weird to be in places with that kind of long history. (However, there are cities in Canada that have 300 and 400 year histories, so I guess we aren't such a slouch either. But still...)

There were Hugenots from France, who were invited to escape persecution. There were monuments to victories that have long been forgotten. There was a park larger than Hyde Park in London, but don't tell the Londoners as it will get their back up. It was an interesting tour overall, but I still found it a bit of a waste of time. I wasn't really in Berlin for that kind of information, but I only realized it while I was on the tour.

When we completed the tour circuit, despite it being a hop on/hop off bus, I decided to be done with it. I wanted to head to the Berlin Wall Memorial area, and the bus wasn't going anywhere near there. I could have spent a while on an interesting street along the route, but I didn't want to miss the chance to investigate the memorial. So off I went.

I had gone to the spot the night before after visiting the Topography of Terrors Museum, but it had been close to dark and it was an outdoor site that was going to be best in the light. When I was in the subway station for the site, I noticed a bunch of signs about what happened to the subway system after the Berlin Wall was erected. And when I read of ghost stations, I knew I also wanted to spend some time in there looking at that information as well.

After the war, when Berlin was split in two, so was the subway system. It had been an integrated system serving the whole city. Now it was quickly set into two systems. Mostly, there was no particular problem. Most lines were only in one part of the city or the other. There were a number of stations that belonged to the West Berlin lines, however, that sat under the territory of East Berlin. These represented a problem for East Berlin, particularly once they were very actively seeking to prevent defections. The subway system tunnels, among other spots, represented a very real way for East Berliners to escape to the west.

The authorities of East Berlin blocked off all the entrances and exits to the stations. They placed guards in the stations to make sure nobody who wasn't supposed to be there entered the stations. They made sure that trains from West Berlin didn't stop in the stations. They placed other safeguards in the stations to prevent the guards from escaping to the west.

These stations, that still existed but were no longer used, came to be called ghost stations. They were remnants of the time when Berlin, and Germany, were whole. In East Berlin, they were hidden with their entrances covered up or changed to try and make them fade from the memories of the people of the city. If the wall had stayed up for long enough, those stations might have become myths and legends, stories of a long forgotten time. It's kind of a romantic notion actually. Except it was real.

There is an exhibition in Nordbahnhof Station showing how the stations were barricaded up, with new additions made every time someone successfully escaped, or even tried, so as to make it harder for the next one. It was an interesting and somewhat distressing presentation.

Then it was outside to the memorial area.

Initially, the Berlin Wall was intended to be a barrier between the two halves of the city. It was to prevent people from leaving the east for the west. It sometimes went just outside the doors of apartment buildings. I don't know if the authorities thought it would prevent people from wanting to leave, whether they thought the simplicity of having a wall would be completely effective. But since it was just outside buildings, that were higher than wall, people tried to escape, to be reunited with their families or friends or loved ones, by using the nearby buildings to jump over the wall.

So windows and doors were blocked up. The wall was made higher. People were made to leave their homes in those nearby buildings so they wouldn't have ready access the wall. So people used the buildings as cover (there couldn't be enough guards to cover every nook and cranny between buildings along the entire length of the wall) to bring other materials, like ladders and such, to aid them in climbing over the wall and barbed wire. So buildings were taken down to give an open space before the wall that would be easier to monitor. So people used the buildings that were left as cover to get a good opportunity to take a running start at the wall to jump/vault/otherwise get over the wall. So more obstacles were put into the cleared space before the wall so running starts were not possible, and more time was needed to get past it and over the wall. So people started digging tunnels to get under the wall from nearby buildings. So...

...and on and on it went in an unending effort on both sides (those who wanted to get away and those who wanted to keep people in) to outwit the other.

Eventually it got so ugly around the wall, it was a bad bit of public relations for the officials in East Berlin. So they put up nicer looking bits of wall and cleared out the ugliest and deadliest of the obstacles. They made it a kinder, gentler barrier between the two halves of the broken city, and of the broken families.

Then in 1989, people took it out. They broke it down and reunited the two halves of the city and of the country. But the stories remained. This park was where many of the stories have been memorialized.

Small parts of the wall remain here...,

...as well as a guard tower that was preserved. (Even though it's inside a protected enclosure and can't be seen very well.

Where the wall has been taken down, there is a representation of it in steel rebar poles along the line of where the wall used to be located.

There is a memorial wall, where the victims of the wall are remembered. These were people who died in their efforts to escape to West Berlin while trying to get past the wall.

There are incident markers showing where someone was captured or killed trying to get past the wall.

There are outlines of where tunnels were dug to try and make escapes.

And there is a memorialization of one building that was a particularly ironic blot on the efforts of the East German authorities to make it all seem reasonable, this reaving of a city in half. When the demarcation line splitting Berlin in two was finalized, the border went right through a church. The name of the church was the Reunification Church. Really.

Much of the congregation came from West Berlin, and initially they were allowed to attend church. However, when the wall was erected, those members of the congregation were no longer allowed to attend their church. They built a new place of worship inside West Berlin's area, but the former church remained standing for many years. And it served as a reminder of who Berlin had been cut in two. Only the authorities know why they allowed it to remain standing for so long, but in January of 1985, the offending reminder was finally taken down. The church was blown up.

Four years later, the wall came down and now there are only a couple of reminders of the old building. There are bells that stayed where they fell after the destruction.

There are outlines, presumably placed after the wall came down. And there is a small building for worship in the place of the old Church Nave.

It's actually a fascinating spot for just walking and reading and learning about the real effects of the Berlin Wall. It's not at all like the area around Checkpoint Charlie, with it kitchsy and crassly touristic portrayal of what the Berlin Wall was. It was a much better way to learn about it all than I had found around Checkpoint Charlie the day before.

Later that night I returned to a couple of spots from the bus tour. It was after dark. The seat of government, the Reichstag looked quite nice, lit up against the night clouds.

So did the Brandenburg Gate.

As far as a short visit to a place steeped in history, my visit to Berlin was successful.