The ninth of November, nineteen eighty-nine,
just look at the nines in that series would you,
That day the dividing wall came down in old Berlin
Not just any old carelessly built dividing wall,
A frost-hearted schism splitting east from west,
Keeping families and lovers apart at 3.6 metres tall!
One hundred and six chilling kilometres long,
Then five days after 500,000 people protested,
The Berlin wall fell, as right was pulled from wrong.
Freed at last they came, cheeks wet with tears,
And watched the hammers chip the wall away,
Joyful and reunited, after twenty-eight painful years.
A. McTiernan
“The Berlin Wall was a guarded concrete barrier that divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. It encircled West Berlin, separating it from East German territory.” I crossed the wall from West to East Berlin in the summer of 1971 in on my way to the old Berlin Schönefeld Airport to take a flight to Sofia in Bulgaria, it was a nerve-racking experience. I was just coming up to my 21st birthday. Glorious Technicolour on one side of the wall and monochrome on the other.
This image of the Berlin Wall was taken in 1986 by Thierry Noir at Bethaniendamm in Berlin-Kreuzberg.
