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The Berlin Wall • 1969

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		The Wall \| Summer 1969. This young family pays its regular Sunday visit to a platform overlooking the Berlin Wall. Waving to grandparents on the eastern side, mother calls attention to the children (their daughter is almost hidden behind mom) whom the East German grandparents have only seen from a distance. It was illegal for East Germans to have these across-the-Wall visits or to wave to people on the western side, prohibitions that were often ignored. > View Photo

		The Wall \| Checkpoint Charlie 1969. This historic Berlin landmark has now vanished. This checkpoint on Friedrichstraße was the Allied crossing point between what had been the American Sector and the Soviet Sector of the divided city. This shot was taken in 1969 during the author’s first visit to Berlin. The last Checkpoint Charlie gatehouse (1989) is now in a museum. A replica now stands at the checkpoint site on Friedrichstraße. > View Photo

		The Wall \| Summer 1996. This is the other side, the less attractive if not less interesting side, of the East Side Gallery. The area between this section of the old Berlin Wall and the Spree River has become an eyesore and an environmental problem. > View Photo > East Side Gallery Article

		The Wall \| Looking at this historical photo from 1969, it is difficult to imagine this barren no-man's-land was once Berlin's most busy intersection. After 1989, Potsdamer Platz became one of Berlin's biggest and busiest construction sites. Today it is once again a living part of Berlin. > View Photo

Berlin in 1996

The Wall | Summer 1996. These white crosses bear the names of the victims of the Berlin Wall, some of them killed just months before the Wall came down. Until recently, this informal monument was located between where the Wall stood and the Reichstag parliament building, next to the Spree River. It has been replaced by a more modern installation next to the Bundestag complex on the Spree river bend. View photo.

BERLIN 1996 | Public transportation: A graffiti-laden S-Bahn commuter train in Berlin. Graffiti is a growing problem all over Germany, but some have termed Berlin the “graffiti capital of Germany.” > View Photo

		BERLIN 1996 \| An all-too-familiar sight: Construction cranes clutter the Berlin skyline. In anticipation of the move of the German government from Bonn to Berlin, the city's building boom turned the new German capital into one huge construction site. > View Photo

		BERLIN 1996 \| Public transportation: German taxis, here in Berlin, are often Mercedes or another luxury car. Berlin's cab drivers work for over 300 different taxi companies, even though all of the cabs are the same color. To see which group a taxi belongs to, you can check the symbol on the rear window - a red dot, a green triangle, etc. > View Photo

		BERLIN 1996 \| A wedding party gathers after the civil ceremony at the Berlin-Köpenick city hall. In order for a marriage to be legal, a civil ceremony is required in all the German-speaking countries. Many couples also have a church wedding. > View Photo

Related German Way Pages
• Photo Contents - All our photo pages
• East Side Gallery Photos - More photos of the Berlin Wall (1996, 2000, 2008)
• Berlin Airlift Article and Airlift Memorial Photos
• Photos of Germany - Contemporary and historic views
• Good-bye, Tempelhof (Expat Blog)

Photos © Hyde Flippo