Stories of Escape and Tragedy around the Berlin Wall

The division of Berlin into East and West has left scars in the city‘s landscape that will remind us of the atrocious Berlin Wall for a very long time. On this walking tour, you‘ll follow the former patrol path that guards used to prevent people from fleeing from the East side into the West. You‘ll also hear stories of how people tried, with some making it and others not.

The tour starts at the Berlin North Station, formerly Stettiner Bahnhof. You‘ll hear how the station was demolished after WWI because its exits led from East to West, and how some people found a way to get to the Western train tracks anyway.

You‘ll walk part of the so-called death strip, the area between the outer and inner walls which were heavily patrolled. You‘ll hear tales of people who attempted to jump over to the other side despite the threat of being arrested or even shot. The tour ends at Bernauer Strasse subway stop, where you‘ll hear how the photo of Conrad Schumann jumping the wall became one of the world’s most famous Cold War symbols.

On this hour-long tour, you‘ll also have the opportunity to:

• Stop at the Window of Remembrance at the Victims of the Berlin Wall memorial to see photographs of 140 people who died trying to flee into the West
• Climb the Dokumentationszentrum Berliner Mauer (Documentation Center) tower to get a view of the only place where both parts of the wall still stand
• Find Bergstrasse, the only street cut off by the wall that was never reopened
• Hear about tunnel 57 which was dug by volunteers 12 meters below the wall and enabled 57 people to flee
• See pictures of kids, five and six years old, who drowned after falling into the River Spree because the wall prevented people from rescuing them
• Discover the cross from the Chapel of Reconciliation that was rescued and hid for many years after the church‘s demolition

After this tour, you‘ll have a deeper understanding of what the wall meant to the people of Berlin, and why it‘s important never to forget what this historical chapter meant for them.