West Berlin News

West Berliners crowd in front of the Berlin Wall early 11 November 1989 A Look Back 20 years ago today the Berlin Wall came down.

West Berliners gather at the Berlin Wall Nov. 11, 1989, two days after the walla TMs fall, as East German border guards open a new crossing point.

Day the Wall came down: History, what history? For a German teenager, it did not feel like a momentous event.

West Berliners at right watch East German construction workers erect a wall across Wildenbruchstrasse and Heidelbergerstrasse in West Berlin in August 1961.

For thousands of former employees of Communist East Germany's loathed Stasi secret police, next week's 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall is no cause for celebration.

When I was 15, a German exchange student, Kristine, came to stay with my family in Sydney.

It was 20 years ago this month that the Berlin Wall finally fell, one of the last vestiges of the Cold War.

Cover of Frederick Taylor's 'The Berlin Wall - A World Divided 1961-1989' November 9 marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Kenneth P. Morse, founding managing director of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center, has been hired by West Berlin, N.J.-based Dynasil Corp.

Crowds bear witness to the Fall of the Berlin Wall, November 10, 1989. Tom Stoddart / Hulton Archive / Getty ENLARGE + The fall of the Berlin wall caught the world by surprise.

To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Newseum in Washington DC will host a special program with Tom Brokaw and Robert MacNeil to explore the worldwide significance of the wall and how the media reported on the events surrounding it.

Guitarist The Edge and lead singer Bono of the rock band U2 perform with the band during the 360 world tour in East Rutherford, N.J., on Sept.

Federal workplace safety officials are investigating the death of a New Jersey construction worker crushed by a concrete slab at a job site near Pittsburgh.

Berlin- In the winter of 1962, just months after the Berlin Wall was built, bus driver and war veteran Hans Weidner decided he was fed up with life in East Germany.

1961

Aug. 13 The border between East and West Berlin is closed and barbed wire and fencing is erected; concrete appears two days later. The wall would eventually grow to be a 96-mile barrier encircling West Berlin.

Aug. 15 Conrad Schumann, a 19-year-old East German border guard, was the first person photographed escaping to West Germany. About 10,000 people attempted escapes, and 5,000 succeeded.

Aug. 24 Gunter Litfin, a 24-year-old tailor's apprentice, was the first person shot dead trying to escape.

Libya has paid $1.5 billion into a fund for American victims of terrorism from the 1980s, the U.S. State Department said on Friday, removing the last big obstacle to a normal relationship between the two countries.

Lois Downey didn't set out to break a glass ceiling. As a municipal judge, however, she did just that as the first woman to be appointed to the township bench.

I flew to Berlin within hours of the announcement the Wall was coming down and by the time I got to the Ku'damm, West Berlin's premier shopping street, it was 10-deep with East Germans unable to believe what was happening and pressing their noses against shop windows to marvel at the long-denied goodies inside.

"Don't desert us," the children begged the young American airman as they spoke across a barbed wire fence at Tempelhof Air Force Base in West Berlin.

Berlin's outspoken former city finance chief Thilo Sarrazin has provoked the citizens of his old home town once again by blaming the city's underclass and its leftist mentality for what he sees as its lack of success.