Читать книгу Where in the World is the Berlin Wall?. 170 Sites around the World онлайн

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The fate of the barrier was sealed with the Fall of the Berlin Wall. In the city centre, between Bernauer and Eberswalder Straße, sections of the Wall had already been removed on the night of 10–11 November 1989 to make way for a border crossing point. The Wall was open at many points within a very short period of time.

People danced joyously on the Wall, delighted that the hated construction had finally been made redundant. Equipped with tools, numerous Berliners and visitors to the city began destroying the Wall and securing reminders of the historic event. Around the same time plans to dismantle the rest of the border installations were being made. As early as December 1989, the decision to tear down the Wall had been made by the provisional GDR government and the East Berlin authorities. Any traces of the brutal border should be vanquished from the city landscape. The demolition affected not only the 45,000 Wall segments, but also other elements of the border security system. On the 1^st July 1990, controls at the remaining border crossings ceased and the official economic and monetary union came into effect. By this stage, more than 100 cross-boder streets had been reopened and were now back in use. The last sections of the inner-city Wall were removed in November 1990.