Transformation

Checkpoint Charlie

On the control booth there is a sign with the inscription: Allied Checkpoint. Above it hangs an American flag. On the right side of the booth, a sign reads: All British Military Visitors To East Berlin Report To Side Window. In the background on the right a sign reads in English, Russian, French and German: You are leaving the American Sector.

Stiftung Haus der Geschichte/Stephan Klonk | picture-alliance/akg-images|akg-images/Pansegrau

Checkpoint Charlie in 2022 and in the eighties.

CHECKPOINT CHARLIE

Between Memorials and Snack Bars

At Checkpoint Charlie, the Cold War was palpable for decades. In 1961, American and Soviet tanks faced off here and the world was holding its breath. Today the place is full of tourists who search for traces of the division.

LISTEN TO HISTORY

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Marching music was playing while the crane lifted the guard house up into the Berlin sky. The foreign ministers smiled into the cameras. On June 22, 1990, they were negotiating the unification of Germany in East Berlin. The dismantling of the border was a symbolic act to end the division of Berlin for all to see. They did so at a very special border crossing, Checkpoint Charlie. This is where Allied soldiers, diplomats and foreign guests had previously crossed the border between West and East Berlin.

After reunification, the world-famous border crossing was no longer needed. A huge wasteland in the middle of the city waited for its new purpose. The Berlin Senate expected an economic and real estate boom and granted US investors an American Business Center with five large office buildings. The boom, however, never came, only three buildings were built, bankruptcies followed. Two properties remained empty, an insolvency administrator rented them out to booth owners. They earned good money due to the increasing number of tourists who continued searching for the Wall, but hardly found any traces anymore.

In November 2004, the Haus am Checkpoint Charlie, a privately run museum about the Wall and escape from the GDR, erected more than a thousand crosses in the open space. These represented the dead of the GDR border regime. They remained there until July 2005. Many press comments rejected this so-called "Freedom Memorial" as tasteless and artificial. Yet it initiated a discussion about commemorating the Wall. The unanimous opinion was that too little was being done, the memory was fading. As a result, the Senate sought new solutions and passed the "Gesamtkonzept Berliner Mauer", in English "Overall Concept Berlin Wall". It determined that a new exhibition at Checkpoint Charlie should explain the worldwide significance of the Cold War. The wastelands disappeared behind construction fences. Since 2012, there have been changing information exhibits on the Cold War and the division of Berlin.

Then the boom arrived after all, the real estate carousel took on speed again. A new investor planned a hotel on the wasteland, also offices and apartments, as well as the museum space required by the authorities. Berlin debated these plans at length. At the end of 2019, the Senate finally rejected them, including the hotel. What is certain, however, is that a museum is supposed to be built on the historic site.

CHECKPOINT CHARLIE

Contemporary Witnesses Report

The checkpoint on Friedrichstrasse is the most famous border crossing in the divided city. Two West Germans witness the first East Berliners crossing the border here on the night the Wall fell in 1989.

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Intro

Anette Jünger waited for the first person to cross the border.

Mathias Brauner remembers overwhelmed border guards.

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Checkpoint Charlie

Checkpoint Charlie was the most famous border checkpoint between East and West Berlin. In the night of the fall of the Wall, people from both parts of the city came here to cross the border or to welcome those coming over from the other half of the city.

CONTEMPORARY WITNESS

Anette Jünger

Anette Jünger lived in West Berlin. On November 9, 1989, she stood at Checkpoint Charlie and waited for the first East Berliner that would come through the checkpoint. She observed that this person was initially overwhelmed by the situation.

"It took quite a while and it also wasn’t at twelve o’ clock. We definitely waited for quite a while. At some point the first one did indeed come through. He came, he still came alone. There wasn’t a rush, but it was one single person that came through. It was a small man, a middle-aged man, in some kind of parka, so a completely inconspicuous person. He was completely insecure. He stood there and didn’t know what was going on. When the first man arrived, the crowd somehow started to move and they cheered or clapped. He was offered champagne and so on. And he stood there and didn’t know what to do with it. It was as if he didn't even know where he actually was."

CONTEMPORARY WITNESS

Mathias Brauner

Mathias Brauner from East Berlin left the GDR in 1988. When he heard about the new freedom to travel in the GDR on November 9, 1989, he went straight to Checkpoint Charlie. He recalls the overwhelmed border guards that night.

"There were celebrations, people brought champagne, the champagne corks were popping. The border soldiers then stood outside the area of Checkpoint Charlie. I don’t know whether that still counted as East Berlin – I can’t say – or whether they were already on West Berlin soil. Anyhow, they tried to keep the masses away from Checkpoint Charlie, which of course didn't work. There were still enough soldiers there, but they were too few to really do something against the masses. Everyone kept moving forward. A little further and a little further, until the masses were actually at Checkpoint Charlie, at the wall that sealed off the whole thing, the whole checkpoint, and then there was real celebration. Then they took the border soldiers’ caps away, put them on, and every cap that was taken away from some border soldier was applauded and cheered. Some of them were furious. They had no sense of humour. They didn’t like it at all. They weren’t used to any form of casualness at all and didn’t really know how to deal with the situation."

Close Memories

Snapshots

Tanks with soldiers face off at Checkpoint Charlie. Several flags are hoisted on the left and right. On the right in the background is a sign that reads in English, Russian, French and German: You are leaving the American Sector. — picture alliance/dpa|dpa

Danger of War

In October 1961, Soviet and American tanks faced off at Checkpoint Charlie, ready for combat. It was one of the most dangerous moments of the Cold War.

Men in suits and military uniforms and a woman stand in a row. Behind them, the control booth hangs in the air on ropes. — Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-1990-0622-027 / Fotograf(in): Grimm, Peer

Symbolic Politics

On June 22, 1990, six foreign ministers attended the dismantling of the Allied control booth at Checkpoint Charlie. The representatives of the USA, Soviet Union, Great Britain, France and the two German states negotiated the unification of Germany in East Berlin.

A golden Statue of Liberty stands on a building. On the left, a sign reads in English, Russian, French and German: You are leaving the American Sector. In the back on the left is a new building surrounded by scaffolds. — Bundesregierung/Bernd Kühler

Greetings to America

In 1996, a Statue of Liberty stood on a building at the border crossing. Together with the watch tower on which it stood it was 13.30 metres high. It was one example of short-lived art that was created at Checkpoint Charlie in the 1990s.

A man holds a sign that reads: Remember! Do not forget. More than 3,000 dead at the Wall and barbed wire remind us. In the background are several rows of large, upright wooden crosses. — picture-alliance/dpa/dpaweb|Michael Hanschke

Bold Protest

In November 2004, the "Mauermahnmal", in English Wall Memorial, was created. 1,065 crosses and a rebuilt piece of the Wall were supposed to commemorate those that had died due to the GDR border regime. The event was criticized by some observers as distasteful, while others called for more commemoration of those that had died as a result of the Wall.

In the foreground is a large photograph of a U.S. soldier, in the background is the Allied control booth. On the left, the Mauermuseum. — Alamy Stock Foto/Inna Finkova

Tourist Hype

Berlin artist and photographer Frank Thiel photographed the last Allied soldiers before their withdrawal in 1994. Two of them, here U.S. soldier Jeffrey Harper, look down on the former border crossing from Thiel's installation.

Aerial picture of a crossing and open space. On the right are sales booths, on the left is the Black Box Cold War. — Stefan Boness/IPON/Süddeutsche Zeitung Photo

Shops and Buses

In 2018, the open space at Checkpoint Charlie was home to sales booths and, on the right, the "Black Box Cold War".

CHECKPOINT CHARLIE

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