With the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 the SED regime put an end to the increasing number of people fleeing the GDR. At first, barbed wire was used, then a continuously developed system of blockades. All around West Berlin, the GDR border troops constructed a so-called death strip between two walls of 168 kilometres length. Nothing was allowed to grow on this strip except for very short grass. In order to prevent any kind of plant growth, the soldiers regularly raked stripes of sand on the strip. This way any flight attempt would have left visible tracks – and would have also revealed any mistake the guards may have made. Plants were not welcome at the deadly border.
Where once border troops used to patrol now runs the Berlin Wall Trail. Instead of the barren soil of former times, it is now in parts surrounded by meadows and trees. Particularly colourful and impressive are the Japanese cherry blossoms. They are a reminder of how strongly the peaceful revolution and the happy end of the division had moved the people of Japan. In 1990, the Japanese TV channel TV Asahi called for donations in order to plant cherry trees in Berlin and its surrounding areas. The cherry blossom, in Japanese Sakura, is a special event in the calendar of the island nation. When the trees open their buds from the end of March onwards, people greet the springtime. During the Hanami, the flower viewing, people enjoy having picnics underneath the trees with family or friends. They associate beauty and transience with the white and pink cherry blossoms.
The call for donations by the TV channel led to the establishment of the organisation Sakura-Campaign in Berlin, which administered 1 million Euros. In 1990 and 1994, it bought young cherry trees of different varieties in Japan and had them shipped to Berlin. Tree nurseries took care of the trees, of which two were planted on November 10, 1990, one year after the fall of the Wall, at the Glienicke Bridge between Berlin and Potsdam as well as at the Brandenburg Gate. All in all, there are more than 9,000 trees. 1,100 of them are located at the Berlin Wall Trail between Berlin-Lichterfelde and Teltow in Brandenburg. 1,400 stand in the landscape park Nord-Ost in Lichtenberg. The final eight trees found their home at the Bösebrücke on November 9, 2010. At this site, the people of East Berlin had crossed the Wall for the first time on November 9, 1989, at the border crossing Bornholmer Straße. Since the 1990s, other trees grow beneath the bridge, as well as at the nearby Mauerpark and at the S-Bahn station Wollankstraße. They mark a now vanished border that, for 28 years, stood for division and death.
