November 9 - 1989
international |
miscellaneous |
opinion/analysis 
Sunday November 09, 2003 13:58
by ipsiphi - (though I didn't actually do anything really useful)
When the Wall came down.
Many cherished readers of indymedia globally were not born. And many cherished writers of indymedia globally were still in a box which has never ended.
But the Wall is gone.
I (for one) never met my friend's father, a man who finally took his own life before the wall came down. He had spent a life being intermittently tortured by the Stasi for being what he thought to term a "democrat".
other memories of how the wall went up:
"We walked through the border. On both sides the guard towers were empty & the barbed wire was shoved aside in great piles. Large signs told us that we needed sets of car documents. The East German guard asked if we had documents. I handed him my Danish cat's vaccination documents, in Danish. He waved us through."
In West Berlin, rent prices skyrocket as more people become homeless, while in East Berlin thousands of living spaces are empty, with no clear idea of who owns them.
Over the next year & into the 1990s huge battles took place as the German government attempted to dislodge homeless squatters.
http://www.infoshop.org/news/berlin_squats.html
http://www.notbored.org/squatworld.html
http://www.nadir.org/nadir/periodika/jungle_world/32/12c.htm
http://www.andreas.com/berlin.html
The Wall.
Official name: Stützwandelement UL 12.11
Height: (without tube) 360cm, 11.81 ft.
Width:120 cm, 3.937 ft.
Weight: (without tube)2750 kg, 433.07 st.
Length: 45 km, 30 miles
Selling price: 359 Mark each segment (East German Mark)
Numbers:about 45 000 pieces were used in Berlin
Total purchase price: 16 Million Mark (16 155 000 Mark)
Price of one bread: 1.04 Mark
Someday all walls come day,
that is inevietable,
but boxes remain.