Berlin Wall Coming Back
Sort of. It was 45 years ago today that building began on what would be the Cold War’s biggest, and saddest, monument. And although monuments are generally treated with the greatest of care and respect here, the natives couldn’t rip this one down fast enough.
Understandably so, you might say. In the euphoria that followed the implosion of communist East Germany, no one bothered to think about the wall as a monument to history or, heaven forbid, a tourist attraction. It is both, of course. Or what remains of the wall is, that is.
It’s been nearly 17 years since the Berlin Wall effectively disappeared overnight on November 9, 1989. Its physical demise took a bit longer perhaps, but it was done so with typical German efficiency. Wherever developers weren’t tearing down vast stretches of it to build New Berlin as fast as they could, tourists and other Mauerspechten (wall-peckers as in woodpeckers) were chipping away at a piece of the wall for themselves. Only a strip or two of the structure now remain.
And now, after the Cold War has cooled down a bit so-to-speak, Germans have begun asking themselves what they often ask themselves whenever they consider their history: Were we being too efficient again? The answer here is yes. So that’s why Berlin officials are now making a $51 million proposal to protect these few remaining parts of the wall.
The planed project will include an information booth at the Brandenburg Gate U-Bahn station now under construction. There will also be a clearly marked path that will trace former West-Berlin’s 96-mile perimeter, where the wall stood, in other words. And should everything go as planned, the project should be competed by August 13, 2001, the 50th anniversary of the wall’s building.
This is all too late, I suppose. But better late than never.