The Preserved Border Complex

The border here was held by several lines of barriers: on the East Berlin side stood the inner wall, an alarmed fence, a patrol road, a row of lamps, and leveled ground where tracks remained. At the end of this corridor rose the outer concrete wall, about three and a half meters high; it is the one usually called the Berlin Wall. Before building the strip, the military demolished the border buildings, moved graves, and cut down trees to clear the view. All the lines of the border strip have been preserved in the complex.

On September fifth, nineteen sixty-one, at around three in the morning, Karl-Heinz, a resident of forty-three Ackerstraße, was leaving East Berlin with two adults and a child. His apartment was suited for an escape across the border because the border ran along the façade: the building stood in East Berlin, while the sidewalk beneath its windows was already in West Berlin.

Three weeks earlier, border guards had blocked the passageways. They monitored the residents and did not allow them to go out onto Bernauer Straße. But the second-floor window still opened directly above West Berlin territory.

Karl-Heinz and his companions first lowered some household belongings by rope. West Berlin police officers helping the escapees kept the East German border guards at a distance behind the cemetery fence. Other helpers directed light reflected by mirrors into the border guards' eyes. Firefighters set a ladder against the building, and all four climbed down to the sidewalk. When East Berlin police broke into the apartment door, the people were no longer there. Only the rope hung from the window.

To close off such routes, border units began bricking up the windows. The residents were then evicted, and in nineteen sixty-five, number forty-three and the neighboring buildings at the border were demolished. On cemetery land, graves were moved, trees were cut down, and sightlines were cleared. Instead of a single barrier, the military built an entire sequence of obstacles.

On the eastern side, the inner wall prevented city residents from even approaching the guarded strip. Behind it stood a signal fence: touching it triggered an alarm at the nearest watchtower. Farther on came the patrol road, a line of lamps, and a leveled strip where tracks remained. The final obstacle was the outer concrete wall, about three and a half meters high—the one usually called the Berlin Wall.

Nothing remains of Karl-Heinz's apartment—not the window, nor the stairwell. The address forty-three Ackerstraße now appears on the official list of sites within the preserved border complex.