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The Berlin border crossings were border crossings created as a result of the post-World War II division of Germany. Prior to the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, travel between the Eastern and Western sectors of Berlin was completely uncontrolled, although restrictions were increasingly introduced by the Soviet and East German ...
On 27 May 1952, East German authorities closed the bridge to citizens of West Berlin and West Germany. The bridge was closed to East German citizens after the construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961. Only Allied military personnel and foreign diplomats were allowed to access the bridge at any time.
East German checkpoint at the Oberbaum Bridge, 1961. Crowds at Oberbaumbrücke after the breach of the Berlin Wall in November 1989.. When the Berlin Wall was built in 1961 the bridge became part of East Berlin's border with West Berlin; as all the waters of the River Spree were within the Friedrichshain limits, the East German fortifications extended up to the shoreline on the Kreuzberg side.
Checkpoint Charlie has since become one of Berlin's primary tourist attractions, where some original remnants of the border crossing blend with reconstructed parts, memorial and tourist facilities. The guard house on the American side was removed in 1990; it is now on display in the open-air museum of the Allied Museum in Berlin- Zehlendorf ...
The number of legal East German border-crossers rose from 66,000 in 1985 to 573,000 in 1986, 1.2 million in 1987 and 2.2 million in 1988. The "pensioner traffic" increased greatly as well, from 1.6 million a year in 1985 to 3.8 million in 1987. [26] And more than 99.5% of the border-crossers returned home. [27]
Immediately after news of East Germany's somewhat mistaken announcement on the removal of border controls by Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) official Günter Schabowski was broadcast at 8:00pm on 9 November 1989, [1] thousands of East Germans began gathering at the Bornholmer Straße border crossing, demanding that border guards immediately open its gates to let them through to West Berlin.
In 1961, 8,507 people fled across the border, most of them through West Berlin. The construction of the Berlin Wall that year reduced the number of escapees by 75% to around 2,300 per annum for the rest of the decade. The Wall changed Berlin from being one of the easiest places to cross the border, from the East, to one of the most difficult. [1]
East German tanks stretch out along the Warschauer bridge in Berlin to stem the flow of refugees to the West, 13 August 1961. Barbed Wire Sunday (German: Stacheldrahtsonntag), is the name given to 13 August 1961, when the military and police of East Germany closed the border between East and West Berlin and began the construction of what would become the Berlin Wall.