West Berlin

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.

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.

Two East Germans using a ladder scaled the Berlin Wall under fire from Communist guards before dawn Wednesday and fled safely to West Berlin, police and residents reported. The escapees then went to a bar before reporting to police. The unidentified men, ages 20 and 23, suffered only abrasions, a police spokesman said.

The following are five facts about Germany's "Love Parade" festival, where at least 19 people were killed on Saturday after a stampede. • The Love Parade has been called the world's largest techno dance party. It started in West Berlin in 1989 just four months before the Berlin Wall collapsed as a demonstration for peace, tolerance and understanding through love and music. • The event is now held against a backdrop of electronic dance music such as House, Trance and Techno, flamboyant outfits and energetic dance moves.

For Americans old enough to remember the Berlin airlift and the erection of the infamous wall between the eastern and western sectors of that divided city, it is a bit shocking to hear what a large minority of West Berliners are saying these days. What they are saying is that they no longer need nor want the protecting presence of troops from the United States, France and Britain.

A West Berlin woman Friday used a ladder to scale the Berlin Wall into East Berlin where Communist border guards detained her, police said. West Berlin police said they spotted the woman, whom they described as "apparently intoxicated," climbing up a ladder braced against the wall at about 4 a.m. in the southern part of the city. East Berlin border guards immediately took the woman into custody and escorted her away, police said.

A 41-year-old East German sailor defected to the West when his tugboat docked in the customs area of West Berlin to load some goods, authorities said Wednesday. The sailor jumped off his boat last Friday and said he wanted to leave his Communist homeland on "political grounds," said spokesman Hans F. Birkenbeul of the West Berlin municipal government. The defector was identified only as "Wolfgang P."

Six Iranian consular officials left West Berlin under heavy police escort Monday, ordered out of the divided city by the Western Allies because of fears of planned terrorist attacks. Escorted by two police cars and two police vans, the Iranians drove to the Staaken border point for the four-hour trip to Hamburg along a transit highway cutting through East German territory. The West Berlin police escort ended at the border point. The six were heading for Tehran's consulate in Hamburg.

Electronic "bugs" have been found in two public telephone booths in West Berlin near crossing points in the Berlin Wall, the city's counterintelligence chief said Monday. Manfred Ganschow said it is not clear who installed the listening devices but the fact that they had a short range and the booths were in sight of East German watchtowers "allows certain suspicions."

The Allied Command on Saturday ordered several Iranians out of West Berlin, including members of Iran's consulate, "in the interests of public order and security," a U.S. spokesman said. The Iranians were given an unspecified number of days to leave the city, said Thomas A. Homan, a spokesman for the U.S. diplomatic mission in West Berlin. He declined to say how many Iranians were affected.

A shopkeeper recently hung huge German flags in front of his apartment building in this cosmopolitan capital only to have them ripped down by people accusing him of inspiring Nazi sympathies. He is a big fan of Germany's national soccer team, which faces the mighty Spanish team Wednesday in a World Cup semifinal. Yet some in his neighborhood, teeming with a mixture of Muslim migrants and educated German elites, think such symbols of nationalism are uncouth. Here's the twist: The flag-bearer is an Arab immigrant to Germany, more willing to show off the national colors than his native German neighbors.

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.

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.

One thing does lead to another. Last spring, I was obsessed with cleaning my garage; a week later, I had scheduled a trip to Berlin. As I admired my handiwork, I eyed an old cedar chest along one wall, and I realized I hadn't looked inside since 1988. I hadn't wanted to. After all, it was filled with mementos of my husband, Jerry, who died in 1987 when he was a reporter for the Los Angeles Times. But now I was curious; I couldn't remember what was in it. Surely, it was long enough to brave the memories.

In what government and arts officials are calling the most ambitious commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall outside of Germany, a symbolic re-creation of the wall that once separated East and West Berlin will be erected across Wilshire Boulevard in November. The Wall Project, painted by professional and amateur artists, will close Sunday afternoon traffic on one of the city's busiest thoroughfares for three hours on Nov. 8 beginning at 3 p.m. The project involves the Culver City's Wende Museum and Archive of the Cold War, the city of Los Angeles, the German Consulate General in Los Angeles and other partners, and will be officially announced Thursday.

More than 20 years after making his first splash with "She's Gotta Have It," Spike Lee is finally going to make it to Sundance. His belated debut -- in the 25th year of the Sundance Film Festival -- comes as director and co-producer of the film version of "Passing Strange," the stage musical by Los Angeles indie rockers Stew (Mark Stewart) and Heidi Rodewald that took an unlikely passage from New York's nonprofit Public Theater to Broadway in February. It ran for 165 performances at the Belasco Theatre, with Stew nabbing a Tony Award for best book of a musical before it closed July 20. Among those captivated was Lee, who said Friday that he saw the show several times at the Public, then came back for repeat viewings at the Belasco -- even before producers approached him about capturing it on film before it closed.

The coach of the Romanian women's fencing team applied for political asylum in West Germany during a seven-nation fencing tournament in West Berlin, city police said Sunday. Stefan Haukler, 45, left the team on Friday and has been staying at the city's refugee center since Saturday, said a police spokesman. Haukler was believed to have left a wife and daughter behind in his Soviet-bloc homeland, the police official said.

Re "Plumpy bombing," editorial, June 16 I was 13 and growing up in occupied Berlin when the Soviets cut off West Berlin from supplies coming from West Germany. I lived through the blockade and didn't have to be reminded where help was coming from -- help that kept us supplied with food, medicine and coal, including the deliveries from selfless American Air Force Lt. Gail Halvorsen, who dropped sweets to give children a glimmer of hope. Today, like 60 years ago, we don't need government initiatives to reestablish the United States as a kind and humanitarian nation.

Open to anything and closed to no one, Richard Stein's cafe made the skittish wince. Sexually eclectic and politically charged, it was in the vanguard of a queer power movement in the 1990s, a place where homosexuals, cross-dressers, AIDS activists, lesbians, immigrants and some who preferred to just remain mysterious pushed for wider civil rights in a newly unified city wholly free after four decades of communism.