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

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1) The GDR’s need for foreign exchange,

2) the Wall is public property and, therefore

3) any profit made by the sale would go to the entire GDR population, Social projects, for example, would therefore benefit from such a sale.

Irrespective of any further reservations about the sale of the Wall, the border troops in Berlin-Mitte – whose job had been to protect the Wall and prevent anyone penetrating the border until December 1989⁷ – began work on dismantling the Wall in January 1990. It started with particularly sought-after parts, which had been painted by mural artists. The majority of the concrete sections were crushed and used, amongst other things, for road and motorway construction.

In less than a year, that which once had once separated people along a 156-kilometres-long border and was made up of 54,000 concrete segments – each 2.6 tonnes in weight and 3.2 metres in height – had all but disappeared from the city landscape. Other objects to disappear included hundreds of kilometres of barbed wire and strips of lighting, equipment used to harness guard dogs and 186 watch towers from which guards had shot live-ammunition.