50 Fun Facts About Berlin Wall

East Germany sealed off West Berlin in August 1961 with the backing of which Soviet leader?

Nikita Khrushchev backed the plan, and East German police and troops began closing the border at midnight, so by Sunday morning, 13 August, it was shut.

What did the East German authorities officially call the Wall?

The Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart name claimed the Wall shielded East Germany from Western aggression; in practice it kept East Germans from escaping west.

Before the Berlin Wall went up, roughly how many East Germans had already left for the West?

About 3.5 million had gone since 1945, a fifth of the population, and they tended to be young and well educated, a brain drain East German officials feared.

Which East German leader declared 'No one has the intention of erecting a wall' two months before construction?

Walter Ulbricht was answering a journalist who had asked only about a state border, so he was the first to use the word 'wall' in this context.

Which West Berlin mayor called the Berlin Wall the 'Wall of Shame'?

Willy Brandt went on to become West German chancellor and won the 1971 Nobel Peace Prize for improving relations with East Germany, Poland and the Soviet Union.

What was the cleared, raked ground between the inner and outer walls known as?

The death strip's raked sand or gravel showed an escaper's footprints, and its open ground offered no cover from the guards' fire.

What was the nickname of the 'beds of nails' laid under balconies overhanging the border zone?

Stalin's Carpet, called Stalinrasen or 'Stalin's lawn' in German, was a steel mat of upright spikes meant to stop escapers who jumped or climbed down.

Which New York pop artist painted a long mural of linked figures on the Berlin Wall's western side?

Keith Haring painted it beside Checkpoint Charlie in October 1986, on its western face, three years before the Wall fell.

Including its ring around West Berlin, roughly how long was the Berlin Wall in total?

About 150 km: less than a third of it ran between East and West Berlin, and the rest cut West Berlin off from the East German countryside around it.

Checkpoint Charlie took its name from what?

Charlie is the letter C in the phonetic alphabet: it was the Allies' third checkpoint, after Alpha at Helmstedt and Bravo at Dreilinden.

Checkpoint Charlie was the only crossing designated for which groups?

Foreign tourists, dignitaries and Allied forces crossed here, and in October 1961 US and Soviet tanks faced each other across the checkpoint.

Where was Checkpoint Charlie's original guardhouse displayed after its 1990 removal?

The Allied Museum in Dahlem displays the hut, which was dismantled on 22 June 1990, a little over three months before Germany reunified.

What were the sealed East Berlin stops that Western trains passed through without halting called?

Ghost stations lay on three western lines running under East Berlin; trains stopped only at Friedrichstrasse, which doubled as a border crossing.

Which East German border guard leapt over the barbed wire at Bernauer Strasse two days after the border closed?

Conrad Schumann was 19, and Peter Leibing's photo of the jump, Leap into Freedom, became one of the Cold War's most famous images.

Ida Siekmann, the Wall's first fatality, died nine days after construction began doing what?

Jumping from her third-floor window at Bernauer Strasse 48 was her way out; the nurse died on 22 August 1961, the day before her 59th birthday.

Near which street was 18-year-old Peter Fechter shot at the Berlin Wall in 1962 and left to bleed to death?

Zimmerstrasse runs beside Checkpoint Charlie; Fechter lay on East German ground, so West Berlin police could only throw him bandages, and angry protests followed.

What did Chris Gueffroy, the last person shot dead at the Berlin Wall, mistakenly believe?

The shoot order was lifted, he believed, during the Swedish prime minister's state visit; it hadn't been, and guards shot him in February 1989.

Tunnel 57, dug from a bakery, was named for what?

The number of people who fled through it was 57, over two nights in October 1964, and future astronaut Reinhard Furrer helped build it.

Researchers have confirmed roughly how many people died at the Berlin Wall?

About 140 is the confirmed minimum from Potsdam researchers; the museum at Checkpoint Charlie counts 245 by adding cases such as bodies found in border waters.

Kennedy delivered his 'Ich bin ein Berliner' speech in June 1963 from the steps of which building?

Rathaus Schoeneberg was West Berlin's city hall, and after Kennedy's assassination the square in front of it was renamed John-F.-Kennedy-Platz.

The story that Kennedy's 'Ich bin ein Berliner' called him a jelly doughnut is what?

A later urban legend, it traces back to Len Deighton's 1983 novel Berlin Game; Berliners call that pastry a Pfannkuchen anyway.

Reagan's 'tear down this wall!' speech at the Brandenburg Gate marked which occasion?

Berlin's 750th anniversary brought Reagan to the Brandenburg Gate, and he kept the line even though aides called it 'extreme' and 'unpresidential'.

Who was the speechwriter credited with the 'tear down this wall' line?

Peter Robinson wrote it after talking with West Berliners, though chief speechwriter Anthony Dolan says Reagan came up with the line on his own.

Which East German leader predicted in January 1989 that the Wall would stand for another 50 or 100 years?

Erich Honecker said the Wall would last as long as the reasons for it did; ten months later it opened, three weeks after he was ousted.

Which rock star told a vast East Berlin crowd in July 1988 he hoped all barriers would one day be torn down?

Bruce Springsteen's show officially drew 160,000 fans, though as many as 500,000 are said to have come; the Wall opened 16 months later.

Whose 2016 death drew a German Foreign Office tweet thanking him for helping bring down the wall?

David Bowie's 1987 concert by the Reichstag carried over the Wall to East Berliners, and the Foreign Office's farewell said he was now among #Heroes.

Which SED spokesman mistakenly announced on 9 November 1989 that new travel rules took effect 'immediately'?

Guenter Schabowski had not been told the rules were embargoed until the next morning, so he answered, 'As far as I know… immediately, without delay.'

Which journalist is usually credited with asking East Germany's spokesman when the new travel rules took effect?

Riccardo Ehrman of ANSA is usually credited, though Bild reporter Peter Brinkmann, also in the front row, says he asked when the rules took effect.

Which crossing did commander Harald Jaeger open to the crowds on the night of 9 November 1989?

Bornholmer Strasse guards had at first stamped leavers' papers invalid, quietly expelling them, until Jaeger gave up and let everyone through.

Which August 1989 event on the Austria-Hungary border is credited with setting the fall of the Wall in motion?

The Pan-European Picnic briefly opened a border gate near Sopron, and more than 600 East Germans ran through it into Austria.

Who took over as East German leader on 18 October 1989, three weeks before the Wall opened?

Egon Krenz lasted only until 3 December 1989, and in 1997 a court sentenced him to six and a half years for manslaughter over deaths at the Wall.

Which West German chancellor walked through the reopened Brandenburg Gate in December 1989?

Helmut Kohl walked through on 22 December 1989 and was greeted on the other side by East Germany's prime minister, Hans Modrow.

Germany didn't make 9 November, when the Wall opened, its national holiday because that date also marks what?

Kristallnacht, the Nazi pogrom of 9 November 1938, made the date unsuitable, so Germany's holiday is 3 October, the day it formally reunified in 1990.

What bird-based nickname was given to souvenir hunters who chipped at the concrete with hammers and chisels?

Woodpeckers, Mauerspechte in German, chipped away so much that border troops at first tried to repair the damage, then gave up.

The East Side Gallery's most famous mural, based on a 1979 photo, shows East Germany's leader kissing which Soviet leader?

Leonid Brezhnev: Dmitri Vrubel painted the socialist fraternal kiss in 1990 and titled it My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love.

Which star sang 'Looking for Freedom' at the Berlin Wall on New Year's Eve 1989?

David Hasselhoff sang from a bucket crane in a jacket covered in flashing lights; the song had spent eight weeks at number one in West Germany.

Which German band performed 'In the Flesh' at Roger Waters's 1990 Berlin staging of The Wall?

The Scorpions played both versions of 'In the Flesh', and Waters had once said he'd only stage The Wall outdoors 'if they ever take the wall down in Berlin'.

Which Havel crossing between Wannsee and Potsdam became known as the 'Bridge of Spies'?

Glienicke Bridge hosted the 1962 exchange of U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers for Soviet spy Rudolf Abel, the first of its spy swaps.

Which John le Carré novel ends with its hero shot dead at the Berlin Wall?

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold ends with Alec Leamas climbing back down to the dead Liz instead of jumping west, and being shot himself.

Which Berlin Airlift hero did Kennedy send back to West Berlin as special advisor in 1961?

Lucius D. Clay was already honoured in the city: in 1949 West Berlin had renamed Kronprinzenallee as Clayallee.

Which future president did Kennedy send to West Berlin days after the border closed, to reassure its people?

Lyndon B. Johnson, then vice president, arrived on 19 August 1961, and the visit calmed West Berliners and showed US solidarity with the city.

Which agency intercepted advance warning of the plan to close the intra-Berlin border?

The NSA intercepted a party message about the plan on 9 August 1961, but the intercept was not widely shared and the warning never reached Kennedy beforehand.

What was the East German term for illegal flight from the republic, which the Wall was built to stop?

Between 1949 and 1961 more than 2.5 million East Germans fled to the West.

Which 2003 German film has a son hide the fall of the Berlin Wall from his mother after her coma?

Good Bye, Lenin! has Alex and a friend fake East German TV news broadcasts so his ailing mother never learns her country is gone.

Roughly how many East Germans successfully escaped over, under or through the Berlin Wall during its existence?

Methods included tunnels, hot-air balloons, sliding along aerial wires, ultralights and, early on, simply ramming a sports car through the first fortifications.

What was fitted along the top of the fourth-generation Wall to make it harder to climb?

A smooth pipe capped the 3.6-metre concrete slabs, leaving escapers nothing to grip as they tried to haul themselves over.

Günter Litfin, the first person shot dead trying to reach West Berlin, was attempting to do what?

Swimming across the Spree from the Humboldthafen, the 24-year-old tailor was shot on 24 August 1961, the first refugee killed by border guards' gunfire.

A never-demolished stretch of the Berlin Wall stands on the former Gestapo headquarters grounds, now which site?

The Topography of Terror shows the excavated cellar walls of the Gestapo headquarters in a trench right beside that stretch of Wall.

The 1982 film Night Crossing dramatised two families' 1979 escape from East Germany by what means?

A homemade hot air balloon carried the Strelzyk and Wetzel families over at night, after a first try in July 1979 came down just short of the border.

At which 1961 summit did Kennedy concede that the US would not actively oppose a barrier in Berlin?

Vienna, in June 1961, was where Kennedy signalled he would accept a divided Berlin, and East Germany sealed the border ten weeks later.