Cecilia Rundberg
 Hello!
My name is Cecilia Rundberg. This September our class went to Halle, Germany. As a final work in International Communicatio we were suppose to
wright a paper.
We are studying this subject that is called International Communication. This course is in English, only. It gives us 100 points, this paper represent
75% of the whole course. When we were in Halle, we got the chance to interview some German school children, to get their view on the Berlin Wall.
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These are some of the questions that I will answer in this paper.
Why did I make the choice of writing a paper on the Berlin Wall? Isn’t that easy to answer.
How could such a tragic incident, make me so interested, that I wanted to write a whole paper about it?
Well, I have a few questions, which I want to have the answer to, and this is an excellent opportunity for
me to share the thoughts and answers that I have on the Berlin Wall.
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The Berlin Wall Till sidans topp
East Germany started, the 13th of August 1961 earlier in the morning, to build a big stone wall through the country with a barbwire and mines. Straight through the country soldiers with theirs rifles ready to fire on those how tried to escape from east. 23rd of August 1961 the 111km long and nearly 4 meter high stonewall was ready.
They said that the wall should be protections for East Germany if the West was planning to attack them, but everyone knew that the wall was build to stop the East Germeny to flee over to the western side. About 190 people were killed on theirs attempt to escape from East Germany.
West Berlin Till sidans topp
The life on the western side was good compared to the east side. When Germany had been split apart, USA began to build up the western side. Everywhere in West Berlin you could see traces after the war and bombs which destroyed Berlin’s structure.
West Berlin isn’t one city, it is several smaller cities, but the Americans put them all together, and created one big city.
The West Germans were free. They had democratic elections, unlike the other half.
East Berlin Till sidans topp
In East Berlin there was a lack of everything. They lived under oppression, and the East Germans had to be very careful about what they said about the Germen government.
It was the East Germans who wanted to build the wall, and it was they who got to pay the high price.
As they requested democratic elections, the result was that the workers got lower salaries. You could say that it was a crime to say what’s on your mind. That is one of the reasons why the development was going forward so slowly.
East Berlin was cold and gloomy. The government constantly guarded all the people. East Berlin had in comparison to west, all of the historical monument, all the older buildings were repaired; that was what all the money went to.
East Germany wanted the west to think they were better than East, so they spent a lot of money on different things like hotels instead of their population.
The reasons for the wall to be built? Till sidans topp
There were two reasons to why the wall was built.
One was the economical reason: There were to many well educated people that moved from East Germany. Some worked in West Berlin and lived in East Berlin, where it was much cheaper to live. 36 765 people escaped to West Germany.
The second reason was politics: The west side interfered in East Germany. After the Second World War, Berlin was split in four pieces. The Soviet Union had the Eastern part, while USA, France and Great Britain had the western side which was much bigger than the East side.
The education was free in east, but in west you had to pay quite a lot of money to get an education. Students from west went to east just for the school, and when they were finished they returned home to west, were they could earn more money.
Demolition of the Wall Till sidans topp
Günther Schabowski, who was the government’s official spokesman in the year 1989, did send the message that the 9th of November a new ordinance had come out. That meant that all the inhabitants in GDR had the right to leave East Germany and go into neighbouring countries. The inhabitants who saw this on television, walked right away towards the borders. In a couple of hours thousands of people had marched in to West Germany. All of the people who streamed over to the West side worried the frontier guards. It was a unbelievable pressure and they had to find a solution. The solution was that only they who were most provocative were allowed to cross the border, but they weren’t allowed to return home to East Germany again. The pressure increased by every minute, and the newly arrived were allowed to go back. At 10:30 pm, Major Manfred Sens, gave the order that the border on Bornholmer Strabe should be opened. This was his last command. The last command from Manfred Sens was the end for GDR and the cold war.
The stream of refugees was the cause of the building of the wall, but it was also the same reason why it was opened again.
GDR Till sidans topp
GDR stand for, German Democratic Republic.
Wilhelm Pieck was GDR’s first president. He was re-elected two times during his time in GDR. It was GDR’s demand that made the trouble in East Berlin. The economical changes in East Berlin were followed by political, and the government couldn’t control the situation. The Soviet troops were called in to help, and it ended in a cold-blooded way.
The only way that GDR’s government could stop stream of refugees to West, was to seal off all the possible ways to go from East Germany to, West Germany. In the morning the 13th of August, they began the building of the big stonewall, through the whole Berlin, at the same time that DDR continued with all the hard checking on every approaching roads to West Berlin.
All the workers were watched by the police or soldiers, which would prevent the workers to escape over to the western side.
The Berlin Wall is now the symbol for GDR’s government. It was their way to lock up their citizens in East Germany. The background to the peaceful revolution in GDR began with Hungary 1989 opening the boundaries towards west. Thousands of people took use of this possibility, between August- November. Others took their escape to West Germanys’ embassy in others eastern countries, and could from there continue in to West Germany. It was now clear that, the government had lost the grip of the citizens. When the demonstration continued, the government couldn’t do anything to go towards the new politics and the people who invented it.
Stasi Till sidans topp
Stasi was the Secret Security Service, in East Germany.
Stasi stands for Ministerium für Staatssicherheit. This can be shortened to MfS. MfS was formed 1950 and worked as a Secret Security Service for the government in GDR, East Germany. Stasi used a rather big network of secret agents to check the population in GDR.
It wasn’t unusual that members in the same family spied on each other in fear of being badly treated. By the end Stasi had almost 175 000 official informants.
Stasi did all from tailing to tapping the telephone conversations.
Many of the agents were people who had moved from East Germany. When East Germany and West Germany were reunited, a lot of the people who had been forced to work for Stasi, searched through the court compensation for all the suffering and sometimes for the death, that Stasi was responsible for. According to a German court order 1995, no one can be officially prosecuted for being in the former MfS, and took part in the spying during the cold war.
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The Berlin Wall was demolished 9th of november 1989
That the Berlin Wall was built for the same reason that it was demolisher
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