East Berlin - Then and Now

[Glenn A]

The famous pictures of Potsdamer Platz and the tramlines running into the Berlin Wall were of course a bit misleading as those lines to the West hadn't been used after 1953.

I visited Berlin two years ago and made a special trip to Potsdamer Platz, or rather to a point on a small side street about 200 metres to the west of where the wall once was. A plaque in the pavement marked the site of the entrance to the Volksgerichtshof (People's Court of Justice). A photo display in the Sony Centre showed the site as being piles of rubble in 1945, barren wasteland in 1949 (in which state it remained until 1989) and since then a frenzy of modern building with the Sony Centre being just one of many buildings.

My own interest was to visit the place where my father was sentenced to six years imprisonment in January 1943 as a "traitor" (to the Nazi Reich).

I was in Berlin in 1988 and the Western side, Wilhelmstrasse, which contained the bulk of the Nazi government offices, was rgrassed over, and more sinisterly, I happened upon Prinz Albrechstrasse, which had been renamed, which was the infamous headquarters of the SS and Gestapo.( The building was devastasted in an air raid in 1945 and then demolished, although the cellars are now The Topography of Terror Museum).

[Glom]

Just to the North of Potsdamerplatz is the road to where the Führerbunker was. Now, it is the site of a number of Landesvertretungen, missions of the German states, such a symbol of federalism being a major rebuke to totalitarianism. But along the main street on front of the Hessen Landesvertretung is a display showing what the view was like when the Wall was there.

Also at Potsdamerplatz, outside one of the station entrances is a section of wall placed back on its original spot. Notice if you look along the pavement, the course of the wall is memorialised in a small paving touch. Of course, now cars and people move over while not noticing.

Then there's Checkpoint Charlie. A mockup of the 1960s cabin is there with actors pretending to be American guards. It's quite corny but interesting because you have this normal looking street (aside from all the businesses using their location next to Checkpoint Charlie as a marketing device) with this strange anachronism in the street. It is bizarre and out of place, which is the point.

[Glenn A]

Another oddity, Unter den Linden, the main drag through East Berlin, which I think was wide S4 in 1988, was as quiet as a country lane and no surprises being near the Wall was mainly police cars. It seemed the Volkspolizei thought little of East German cars and used Lada Rivas, possibly the most powerful car they could obtain.

[Derek]

Another oddity, Unter den Linden, the main drag through East Berlin, which I think was wide S4 in 1988, was as quiet as a country lane and no surprises being near the Wall was mainly police cars. It seemed the Volkspolizei thought little of East German cars and used Lada Rivas, possibly the most powerful car they could obtain.

No, Unter Den Linden was always a dual carriageway. I first went there in 1981 and stood looking through the Brandenburg gate from the east, we couldn't get too close though. There weren't that many private cars around but there were a few, mostly Trabbies and there was a distinct smell from the fuel they burned. There were loads of police, probably more than we realised as well.

Derek

[bothar]

Another oddity, Unter den Linden, the main drag through East Berlin, which I think was wide S4 in 1988, was as quiet as a country lane and no surprises being near the Wall was mainly police cars. It seemed the Volkspolizei thought little of East German cars and used Lada Rivas, possibly the most powerful car they could obtain.

No, Unter Den Linden was always a dual carriageway. I first went there in 1981 and stood looking through the Brandenburg gate from the east, we couldn't get too close though. There weren't that many private cars around but there were a few, mostly Trabbies and there was a distinct smell from the fuel they burned. There were loads of police, probably more than we realised as well.

Unter den Linden was D2 near the Brandenburg gate and then S4 over the bridge further away.

With the recent atrocity in Berlin there was some discussion about crash barriers disguised as flower pots and so on. The East Berlin authorities had some expertise in this regard, especially in the area of the Unter den Linden close to the Brandenburg gate.

[mikehindsonevans]

Another oddity, Unter den Linden, the main drag through East Berlin, which I think was wide S4 in 1988, was as quiet as a country lane and no surprises being near the Wall was mainly police cars. It seemed the Volkspolizei thought little of East German cars and used Lada Rivas, possibly the most powerful car they could obtain.

No, Unter Den Linden was always a dual carriageway. I first went there in 1981 and stood looking through the Brandenburg gate from the east, we couldn't get too close though. There weren't that many private cars around but there were a few, mostly Trabbies and there was a distinct smell from the fuel they burned. There were loads of police, probably more than we realised as well.

Derek

I recall driving from Brussels to Copenhagen in very early 1990 - about two months after the Wall finally came down. (The wife flew home to visit her parents in CPH, I had been teaching in Brussels so won the long drive past Hamburg).

On the long boring bit of the A1 north of Koln, I had a perfect view up the hard-shoulder. My attention was drawn to a sight which still, over 25 years later, summed up for me the failure of the Communist system. An East German Trabant had broken down (natch!) and been left on the hard shoulder. Someone had subsequently come along and tilted the Trabbie onto it side, so that it was clear of the hard shoulder.

It was to my everlasting regret that I couldn't grab a camera!

But I agree with many other contributors; Berlin has changed out of all recognition and continues to change every time we visit. In 2013, sitting in the restaurant of the (post-1989) Marriott, I was able to point out to the nephews that we were sitting in the West and they were in the East; the twin-line of markers which marks the position of the former Wall bisects the corner of he hotel and gives an idea of just how disruptive the 1961 construction of the Wall must have been for the Berliners.

Mike

[fras]

There was once a tram route that crossed the Unter den Linden in an underpass, presumably so it didn't interfere with military parades and other processions.

[Vierwielen]

The famous pictures of Potsdamer Platz and the tramlines running into the Berlin Wall were of course a bit misleading as those lines to the West hadn't been used after 1953.

I visited Berlin two years ago and made a special trip to Potsdamer Platz, or rather to a point on a small side street about 200 metres to the west of where the wall once was. A plaque in the pavement marked the site of the entrance to the Volksgerichtshof (People's Court of Justice). A photo display in the Sony Centre showed the site as being piles of rubble in 1945, barren wasteland in 1949 (in which state it remained until 1989) and since then a frenzy of modern building with the Sony Centre being just one of many buildings.

My own interest was to visit the place where my father was sentenced to six years imprisonment in January 1943 as a "traitor" (to the Nazi Reich).

I was in Berlin in 1988 and the Western side, Wilhelmstrasse, which contained the bulk of the Nazi government offices, was rgrassed over, and more sinisterly, I happened upon Prinz Albrechstrasse, which had been renamed, which was the infamous headquarters of the SS and Gestapo.( The building was devastasted in an air raid in 1945 and then demolished, although the cellars are now The Topography of Terror Museum).

I also visited the Topography of Terror Museum and found the staff there very helpful when I requested directions to the site of the Volksgerichtshof (People's Court of Justice) where my father was sentenced - see above.

[roadtester]

The famous pictures of Potsdamer Platz and the tramlines running into the Berlin Wall were of course a bit misleading as those lines to the West hadn't been used after 1953.

I visited Berlin two years ago and made a special trip to Potsdamer Platz, or rather to a point on a small side street about 200 metres to the west of where the wall once was. A plaque in the pavement marked the site of the entrance to the Volksgerichtshof (People's Court of Justice). A photo display in the Sony Centre showed the site as being piles of rubble in 1945, barren wasteland in 1949 (in which state it remained until 1989) and since then a frenzy of modern building with the Sony Centre being just one of many buildings.

My own interest was to visit the place where my father was sentenced to six years imprisonment in January 1943 as a "traitor" (to the Nazi Reich).

Another one to send a shiver down the spine, but still extant, is the headquarters of the Stasi, now a museum:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi_Museum

http://www.stasimuseum.de/en/enindex.htm

It's away from the main tourist sites and when I went there a few years ago, it was making no attempt to dumb the subject down for casual visitors - no friendly English-language explanatory displays for example - which made it all the more chilling.

[measterbrook]

Another oddity, Unter den Linden, the main drag through East Berlin, which I think was wide S4 in 1988, was as quiet as a country lane and no surprises being near the Wall was mainly police cars. It seemed the Volkspolizei thought little of East German cars and used Lada Rivas, possibly the most powerful car they could obtain.

No, Unter Den Linden was always a dual carriageway. I first went there in 1981 and stood looking through the Brandenburg gate from the east, we couldn't get too close though. There weren't that many private cars around but there were a few, mostly Trabbies and there was a distinct smell from the fuel they burned. There were loads of police, probably more than we realised as well.

Derek

I recall driving from Brussels to Copenhagen in very early 1990 - about two months after the Wall finally came down. (The wife flew home to visit her parents in CPH, I had been teaching in Brussels so won the long drive past Hamburg).

On the long boring bit of the A1 north of Koln, I had a perfect view up the hard-shoulder. My attention was drawn to a sight which still, over 25 years later, summed up for me the failure of the Communist system. An East German Trabant had broken down (natch!) and been left on the hard shoulder. Someone had subsequently come along and tilted the Trabbie onto it side, so that it was clear of the hard shoulder.

It was to my everlasting regret that I couldn't grab a camera!

But I agree with many other contributors; Berlin has changed out of all recognition and continues to change every time we visit. In 2013, sitting in the restaurant of the (post-1989) Marriott, I was able to point out to the nephews that we were sitting in the West and they were in the East; the twin-line of markers which marks the position of the former Wall bisects the corner of he hotel and gives an idea of just how disruptive the 1961 construction of the Wall must have been for the Berliners.

Mike

To be pedantic, you may have been on different sides of the Berlin Wall, but probably both West Berlin. The wall was build inside East Berlin so the construction and maintanence workers didn't need to step onto West Berlin ground. The distance inside East Berlin varied, but not as much as the Border Wall between East and West Germany. I remember seeing a picture with the Staatsgrenz sign and the wall in the far distance behind it.

[Bryn666]

Yes, most probably you'd have been sat in the dreaded 'death strip'.

The amount of effort spent on preventing defections surely showed just how flawed East Germany was.

[wibble]

There was once a tram route that crossed the Unter den Linden in an underpass, presumably so it didn't interfere with military parades and other processions.

By coincidence I watched the following video about this a few days ago .
Gibt es den Straßenbahntunnel unter der Straße Unter den Linden noch? [German].

Short answer - the tunnel is still there, it is used for storage by a neighbouring theater - but the part of the exactly under the road is due to be back-filled as the strength of the tunnel can not be trusted anymore.

[roadtester]

There was once a tram route that crossed the Unter den Linden in an underpass, presumably so it didn't interfere with military parades and other processions.

By coincidence I watched the following video about this a few days ago .
Gibt es den Straßenbahntunnel unter der Straße Unter den Linden noch? [German].

Short answer - the tunnel is still there, it is used for storage by a neighbouring theater - but the part of the exactly under the road is due to be back-filled as the strength of the tunnel can not be trusted anymore.

Thanks for that - fascinating!

[WHBM]

the part of the exactly under the road is due to be back-filled as the strength of the tunnel can not be trusted anymore.

This is true of a number of the structures which were built "so impressively quickly" for the 1930s regime. The north-south U-Bahn U2, and the parallel S-Bahn tunnel both suffer from this. In addition there were post-war restorations, also done quick and cheap, and complete neglect of structures/routes which crossed the wall for 30 years.

My attention was drawn to a sight which still, over 25 years later, summed up for me the failure of the Communist system. An East German Trabant had broken down (natch!) and been left on the hard shoulder. Someone had subsequently come along and tilted the Trabbie onto it side, so that it was clear of the hard shoulder.

It was to my everlasting regret that I couldn't grab a camera!

I wrote above about, also in Berlin in 1991, "heaps" of Trabants at the end of cul-de-sacs, etc in East Berlin. That was no exaggeration, they were piled three-high, must have been lifted up there with a fork lift. Presumably they had a negative scrap value so nobody wanted to dispose of them; I guess the city authorities eventually had to do it.

Trabant ownership must have been quite widespread by the end, for the numbers that were like this. Many people took their new Deutschemarks, after the 1:1 conversion was done with the old DDR Mark, and went to Frankfurt or Hamburg and stripped the secondhand car dealers there of mid-life Opels, VWs, etc.

[rhyds]

The problem with trabants was there was little of scrappable value in them. The bodies were made of Duroplast, a non rusting, long lasting fibreglass-like material that was notoriously difficult to get rid of.

[bothar]

The problem with trabants was there was little of scrappable value in them. The bodies were made of Duroplast, a non rusting, long lasting fibreglass-like material that was notoriously difficult to get rid of.

Just put the in the bin, of course

[roadtester]

Trabant ownership must have been quite widespread by the end, for the numbers that were like this. Many people took their new Deutschemarks, after the 1:1 conversion was done with the old DDR Mark, and went to Frankfurt or Hamburg and stripped the secondhand car dealers there of mid-life Opels, VWs, etc.

There was quite a scare at the time - I'm not sure whether this was borne out statistically - about East Germans who were used to puny Wartburgs and Trabants getting into far more powerful second-hand western cars and writing themselves off. Very good business for West German car dealers.

[firefly]

Trabant ownership must have been quite widespread by the end, for the numbers that were like this. Many people took their new Deutschemarks, after the 1:1 conversion was done with the old DDR Mark, and went to Frankfurt or Hamburg and stripped the secondhand car dealers there of mid-life Opels, VWs, etc.

Savings above a threshold of 2000, 4000 or 6000 Marks (depending on ones age) per person were converted 2:1 though. It was still enough to flood a car market and not just for second-hand cars. Nissan apparently delayed deliveries indefinitely to the Belgian car dealer my father and some of his co-workers bought their cars from. She alone must have sold an exceptionally amounts of cars and Nissan couldn't cope with the demand from her and other dealers.

[WHBM]

The West German dealers also did well at the time from those further east. I recall driving to Poland in 1991 and the autobahns had plenty of Polish-registered Transit-type vans with trailers, who were coming west to the junkyards of Hamburg or Amsterdam and buying up vehicles which had sufficient accident damage, like a crushed wing etc, to just write them off in the West, and hauling them back to fix them up (sort of) at Polish labour rates. A lot of cannibalisation took place - one business contact there said his car was a 3-way cut-and-shut.

Curiously, our local Asda supermarket car park here in London's Docklands is today something of a departure point on Sunday afternoons for Lithuanian-registered Transits + trailers, doing just the same today, although not with damaged vehicles any more.

[exiled]

In all these cases where there is an economic incentive on a freely available this will happen. The British plated Transits in the hypermarket car parks in Calais are evidence to this, that the Garda has checkpoints in the Republic for suspicious use of NI registered plates given the tax differential.

In the Russian Far East it is not uncommon for government vehicles to be RHD, as buying second hand Japanese was better value. So in the case of the GDR, and you get 1:1 transfer of the savings, and you've been waiting for a Trabant or a Wartburg, almost any nearly new Western European or Japanese car would have been value for money.