Berlin Wall

A free exhibition of nine original graffiti-covered segments of the Berlin Wall will be on display June 15 to July 4 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Tennessee Avenue Space, 11560 Tennessee Ave., West Los Angeles. Much of the graffiti on the wall segments--eight are 5-by-4 feet, the other is 13-by-4 feet--is nonpolitical, except for English words like "freedom." The wall segments were acquired by West Berlin businessman Tobias Hausberg, who will be present during the exhibition.

Police arrested about 12 of the 300 protesters who rallied in East Berlin on the 26th anniversary of the Berlin Wall shouting "The wall must go," witnesses in West Berlin said Friday. Hours after Thursday night's protest, a young man ran up to the western side of the wall, doused it with a flammable liquid and set a 12-foot-square section ablaze. He was taken into custody by West Berlin police.

East Germany's fledgling Greens movement wants the demolished Berlin Wall replaced by a "green strip" of trees, vines and ivy, a Communist Party newspaper reported Friday. "Let's not replace the Cold War with concrete. Turn the Wall green," the Green Party and the Green League Assn. said in a statement published by the Berliner Zeitung. East Germany opened the Wall, a symbol of Cold War confrontation, on Nov. 9, allowing its citizens to travel freely to the West for the first time since 1961.

A slab of the Berlin Wall tipped over and crushed an unidentified 14-year-old boy to death as he was trying to chip souvenir pieces from it, police said Saturday. "The (concrete) segment came loose and fell over on the boy like a guillotine. He was killed instantly," a West Berlin police spokesman said of the accident Friday night. Hundreds of people have been hammering at the wall for months to take chunks of it home as souvenirs.

Three former members of East Germany's ruling Politburo went on trial for manslaughter for ordering the killings of people trying to flee the now defunct Communist state. The trial of Herbert Haeber, Hans-Joachim Boehme and Siegfried Lorenz is expected to be the last such bid by German authorities to take the regime's leaders to task for the hundreds of deaths during the Berlin Wall's 28-year existence.

A U.S. official in overalls slipped discreetly across the East-West Berlin line Friday to paint out anti-American slogans on the Berlin Wall where President Reagan will speak today. The unnamed official carried a can of white paint marked "US" to the western side of the wall and covered up slogans reading "Reagan Go Home" and "Yankees Out of Nicaragua." A third slogan, "Russians Out of Afghanistan," was allowed to stay.

Two Twin Cities radio stations say they have made deals to acquire small pieces of the Berlin Wall and will give them away to listeners. A third station called the idea "pretty tacky." KDWB-FM made the first offer Monday morning when announcer Steve Cochran invited listeners to win a piece of the wall by calling the station. The 25th caller wins. KJJO-FM expects to start its promotion Friday.

East Germany on Wednesday denied Western reports of a shooting two days ago at the Berlin Wall that local residents said appeared to be a foiled escape bid. A one-line statement issued by the official ADN news agency said: "Reports by West Berlin agencies that residents of the (district of) Luebars heard shots and the speculation arising from this are without any basis in truth."

East German leader Erich Honecker said Thursday that his country has no intention of knocking down the Berlin Wall, and he vowed that the structure will still be standing 100 years from now, East Germany's official news agency reported. The government-run agency quoted Honecker as saying recent calls by Secretary of State George P. Shultz and West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher to demolish the 102-mile wall that separates the two Germanys are "hypocritical."

While politicians call for the total destruction of the Berlin Wall, an East German entrepreneur has quietly secured rights to a section he hopes to preserve as a monument--and a lucrative billboard. Andreas Dademasch, who runs an advertising business, told the East Berlin daily Neues Deutschland today that he has bought the rights to 3,300 feet of the 13-foot-high concrete barrier from the district council.