Walled in! The inner German border is a computer animation produced by Deutsche Welle and the Berlin Wall Foundation to mark the 20th anniversary of the wall’s fall.
The short movie describes the fortifications and how the border between East and West Germany was set up, and it’s an excellent resource for those who want to know more about it.
This is mainly because the Berlin Wall only exists in the memory of those who experienced it. A few preserved stretches around Berlin remain an abstract idea; sometimes, it’s hard to picture how a city as big as Berlin was split in two with a wall in the middle.
At least for me, it was a difficult concept to measure.
The Inner German Border: A Symbol of the Cold War
Walled in! – The inner German border uses two memorials as the starting point for the video. The computer-animated documentary starts at Bernauer Straße and Ackerstraße, where the Berlin Wall Memorial stands today. You can see the Church of Reconciliation, which was demolished in 1985 and replaced with the Chapel of Reconciliation after the German reunification.
Movies like this one are essential since they explain an almost distant concept like the Berlin Wall. When I was growing up in Brazil, history classes didn’t tell me what the wall was or why people were trying to jump to the other side.
My classes sound weak now, but I’ve met a few people around Berlin who were surprised when they learned more about the wall and realized that they had learned something different growing up.
Walled in! – The inner German border also shows another side of the border, a place most people don’t even remember existed. That is the border between East and West Germany in the area today known as Border Memorial Hötensleben.
This border between the two countries was 1,378km wide and filled with defenses. Some of them only existed there, like landmines, guard dogs, and automatic firing devices attached to trip wires that would make escape something almost impossible.
Today, you can visit the Border Memorial Hötensleben and stand where the border guards used to be. It must be quite an experience to be able to stand there.
Walled in! The inner German border is a fantastic documentary that shows how the Berlin Wall worked and explains, in an easy-to-understand way, how the German border used to be from 1961 to 1989.
