Berlin Wall

Two West Germans appear to have staged one of the most audacious escapes ever from East Berlin by swooping over the Berlin Wall in ultralight aircraft to snatch their East German brother and bring him to the West. According to Ingo and Holger Bethke's account--backed by video footage shot in the air--the two flimsy planes took off Friday night from a West Berlin sports field and flew low over the heavily-guarded wall dividing the city. One of camouflaged aircraft landed in a park near East Berlin's Soviet War Memorial to pick up their brother, Egbert, while the other ultralight circled overhead, the former East German citizens told police over the weekend.

She was born on the west side of the Berlin Wall. He was born on the east side. But artists Jasmin Siddiqui and Falk Lehmann worked side-by-side for days to paint a poignant 12-foot-tall reminder of the Cold War on a chunk of the Berlin Wall that stands next to Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. The artwork is spray-painted on the "East Berlin side" of the concrete wall that for 28 years split families, blocked workers from their jobs and prevented Germans from freely traveling inside their divided country.

With the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the tape of Ronald Reagan's famous speech at the Brandenburg Gate is likely to be played and replayed. "Mr. Gorbachev," he declared, "tear down this wall!" But how significant was the speech, really? How important was its seemingly defiant tone in reuniting Berlin and "winning" the Cold War? To many American conservatives, the answer to those questions is simple: Reagan stared down the Soviet Union. And the Berlin Wall speech stands as the dramatic symbol of Reagan's challenge and triumph.

It seems everyone has a chunk of the Berlin Wall these days. Half a century ago, the wall was underway  and soon turned into the concrete barrier dividing the German city and the world. Toppled in 1989, the wall that was a powerful symbol of repression and the Cold War has migrated to cities across the globe. Context [(800) 691-6036], based in Philadelphia, is launching a new Walking the Wall tour in Berlin that emphasizes the political and social history of the barrier.

It seems everyone has a chunk of the Berlin Wall these days. Half a century ago, the wall was underway  and soon turned into the concrete barrier dividing the German city and the world. Toppled in 1989, the wall that was a powerful symbol of repression and the Cold War has migrated to cities across the globe. Context [(800) 691-6036], based in Philadelphia, is launching a new Walking the Wall tour in Berlin that emphasizes the political and social history of the barrier.

On Saturday, Germany will mark the 50th anniversary of one of the biggest and grimmest construction projects in history — the building of the Berlin Wall. Photographs of the wall, which overnight brutally severed streets, rail lines and families, have been on display in front of Berlin government buildings for several months. On Saturday, the memorial events will last all day and include a wreath-laying ceremony honoring the victims of the former communist East German government. The 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall, in 2009, attracted a lot more attention in the U.S. It was a victory we like to claim, especially triumphalist conservatives.

She was born on the west side of the Berlin Wall. He was born on the east side. But artists Jasmin Siddiqui and Falk Lehmann worked side-by-side for days to paint a poignant 12-foot-tall reminder of the Cold War on a chunk of the Berlin Wall that stands next to Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. The artwork is spray-painted on the "East Berlin side" of the concrete wall that for 28 years split families, blocked workers from their jobs and prevented Germans from freely traveling inside their divided country.

1 Germany Stop a random handful of Berliners on the street and ask where you might still find a stretch of the Berlin Wall in this, the 20th year since communism collapsed here. A surprising number will not have a clue. Although much of the wall was razed soon after Nov. 9, 1989, sections that weren't given to museums, sold as souvenirs or ground into underlay for autobahns can be seen -- if you know where to go.

East German workers on Friday erected new reinforcements along a section of the Berlin Wall, the second major construction effort on the barrier last week.

Two East German men scaled the Berlin Wall and reached the West, police said Sunday. A spokesman said the two men evaded guards Saturday and entered West Berlin's central Kreuzberg district.

On Saturday, Germany will mark the 50th anniversary of one of the biggest and grimmest construction projects in history — the building of the Berlin Wall. Photographs of the wall, which overnight brutally severed streets, rail lines and families, have been on display in front of Berlin government buildings for several months. On Saturday, the memorial events will last all day and include a wreath-laying ceremony honoring the victims of the former communist East German government. The 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall, in 2009, attracted a lot more attention in the U.S. It was a victory we like to claim, especially triumphalist conservatives.

Berlin's got another wall. Last month, after years of hostility between the interests of capital and the communal, a concrete barrier suddenly appeared. Unlike the one that once ringed half the city, this one spans no more than 25 feet and is easily circumvented. And this time, it's the capitalists who built it. "It's the real estate war against mankind," declares Martin Reiter, spokesman for Kunsthaus Tacheles, a freewheeling art studio, performance space and gallery complex in the heart of the former East Berlin borough of Mitte.

Alight snow came down in Bucharest, covering the mounds next to freshly dug graves, open and gaping in long straight rows. "Here are the fallen," intoned a solemn priest as four men placed a wooden coffin before him on a wobbly trestle. Jacob Stetincu, shot by a sniper, lay wrapped in a thin cotton sheet, wearing a worn blue beret, snowflakes catching in his grayed mustache. After a hurried sacrament, the men nailed the lid shut, carried him to the nearest grave -- his widow struggling to keep up -- and shoveled in the heavy earth.

Re "Getting over the wall," Opinion, Nov. 8 I am the son of a Berliner who celebrated her 85th birthday this month and grew up in the Kreuzberg district. My mother is a living eyewitness to Berlin's history and the nightmare of mankind's darkest days -- World War II. We were most pleased to see the excellent coverage you gave on the destruction of the Berlin Wall, as we had relatives cemented in by the Soviets' bricks. It is our great regret that my mother's parents did not live long enough to see the wall torn down.

They each stood by, bundled in scarves and coats. Slight murmurs wafted through the air. But as the 80-foot barricade came tumbling down, cheers erupted. Berlin it wasn't. But very early Monday morning, Los Angeles paid tribute to the historic collapse of the wall that kept a city divided for 28 years. About 700 people gathered on Wilshire Boulevard near Ogden Drive to take part in the Wende Museum's "A Wall Across Wilshire," a symbolic re-creation of the wall that once separated East and West Berlin.

ANGELA MERKEL, German chancellor "Everyone today on this bridge has a story to tell of their own struggles. Sometimes people forget today how many could not leave for years, how many sat in prisons. Before the joy of freedom came, many people suffered." NICOLAS SARKOZY, French president "The fall of the Berlin Wall serves for us all today as a call to fight oppression and to tear down all the walls that still separate the world. We are brothers, we are Berliners."

Thousands of young East Germans trying to hear an outdoor rock concert by the Eurythmics just on the other side of the Berlin Wall fought with hundreds of club-wielding communist border police, witnesses said today. Chanting "Down with the wall!" and "The wall must go!" the rock fans just before midnight Sunday broke through a metal fence set up by police in front of historic Brandenburg Gate, but police drove them back, the East German witnesses reported.

The global celebrations marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall aren't entirely about commemorating the rebirth of freedom or reliving those thrilling moments when a perverse and repressive system collapsed. Listen closely to the exalted commentary recounting the events of those historic days and you're also likely to hear the subtle intonations of regret and nostalgia. I'm not speaking of ostalgie -- nostalgia for the Old East ( ost in German) -- that is still felt by a large number of residents of the former East Germany and other Eastern bloc nations.

The breaching of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago this month has become the symbol of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and, ultimately, the triumph of democracy. But sometimes I wonder if we actually know yet what we were witnessing. I didn't see the wall come down, but I was in Hungary eight months earlier for what was in retrospect the beginning of the end of the Soviet system. At the time, we didn't know what we were seeing, but on March 15, 1989, I was part of a team from the "MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour" on PBS, filming a crowd of demonstrators estimated at 100,000 who had flooded into the square that housed Magyar Televizio, Hungarian state television in Budapest.