In 1961, the East German communist leaders were tired of their top scholars and wealthy businessmen escaping to the West for better opportunities. They built a barrier of barbed wire as checkpoints to monitor people coming in and out. Eventually a wall was built, right through the middle of Berlin and around the entire western ½.

Video: Berlin wall is built

• Families were separated as city was split in ½

• West – helped by US Marshall Plan

• East – controlled by communists & ultimately the USSR

August 15 1961. Two days after East Germany sealed off its border with the Berlin Wall. The 19-year old Hans Conrad Schumann was guarding the construction of Berlin Wall, then in its third day of construction, at the corner of Ruppinerstraße and Bernauerstraße. 

At that stage of construction, the Berlin Wall was only a low barbed wire fence. As the people on the Western side shouted Komm rüber! (“come over”), Schumann jumped the barbed wire and was driven away at high speeds by a waiting West Berlin police car. Photographer Peter Leibing captured a photograph of his escape as Schumann was throwing away his rifle, and it became an enduring image of the Cold War. It won the Overseas Press Club Best Photograph award for 1961.

Schumann later settled in Bavaria and after the fall of the Berlin Wall he returned to his birthplace in Saxony. Unwelcomed by his parents and brothers and sisters and shunned by his hometown for what he had done, Schumann eventually hanged himself in 1998. 

 The Berlin Wall was built -- or rather, laid out in barbed wire -- on August 13, 1961 in the space of just a few hours. It stood until 1989, the defining symbol of the Cold War and of Communist might and inflexibility.

Kids playing in the streets,West Berlin 1960s

Creative methods of escapeIN A WELL-AGED TUNNEL

In May 1962, a dozen people escaped from the East by way of Der Seniorentunnel, otherwise known as “the Senior Citizens’ Tunnel.” Led by an 81-year-old man, a group of senior citizens had spent 16 days digging a 160-foot-long and 6-foot-tall tunnel from an East German chicken coop all the way to the other side of the wall. According to one of the diggers, the tunnel was so tall because the old men wanted “to walk to freedom with our wives, comfortably and unbowed.”

DOWN A ZIP LINEOn March 31, 1983, friends Michael Becker and Holger Bethke climbed to the attic of a 5 - story building on the eastern side of the wall and fired an arrow tied to a thin fishing line over a building in West Berlin. An accomplice grabbed the arrow and reeled in the line, which was connected to a slightly heavier fishing line, then to a ¼ - inch steel cable. Once the steel cable was attached to a chimney on the western side of the wall, Becker and Bethke zipped across the quarter-inch cable using wooden pulleys.

The little boyescaped and found his family.The soldier wasseen helping and punished by theEast Germans.

Bricking up awindow in an apartment thatfaced EastBerlin.

Bride in West BerlinHer family in East Berlincould not attend.

Troops are trying to pull this woman back into herapartment which isIn East Berlin. She is trying toDrop out herwindow onto a WestBerlin street.

136 were killed at the wall trying to escape

• Some people even tried to fly over the wall. The families of Wetzels and Strlzycks bought small amounts of nylon cloth. The buying of the cloth secretly and in small amounts didn't raise any suspicion. When they had enough cloth they sewed it together to form a hot air balloon. They had just enough fuel to get in the air and just floated over the wall. They reached West Berlin in a few hours. Due to this attempt the purchase of light weight cloth was strictly controlled.

US President RonaldReagan,

“Mr. Gorbachev,tear down this wall.”

June, 1987 speechAt the Berlin Wallspeaking to the

leader of the USSR

• 2 years later, under intense pressure from East Germans, East Germany decided to open the wall. When the Berlin Wall was torn down, it represented the end of communist control over the countries in the region.

famous Brandenburg gate was left standing as a memorial