On the evening of November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. A structure that, for nearly 30 years, divided the city, Europe, and the world into two opposing blocs. That was a generation ago.
During the night of August 12-13, 1961, what would become one of the physical symbols of the Cold War was erected in the heart of Berlin: the Berlin Wall. For nearly thirty years, not only the German capital but also the country, Europe, and the world itself were divided in two by the “Berliner Mauer.”
Beyond Berlin, the separation between the capitalist, so-called “free,” world and the communist world extended for hundreds of kilometers, often in the form of fences and barbed wire.
Before the Berlin Wall fell on the night of November 9-10, the communist regimes had already collapsed in these two countries of the Eastern Bloc.
The end of this physical frontier, which since 1961 had separated Berlin, Germany, and Europe between the liberal West and socialist East, marks a major geopolitical upheaval in Europe.
The Wall remains omnipresent in Berlin even though only 1.5 km of it remains: material and symbolic traces, as well as evocations of the Wall through maps, photographs, songs…
