One remark is permanently connected with the building of the Berlin Wall and the division of Germany. It is as legendary as it is brazen. Almost everyone knows it:
"Nobody has the intention to build a wall!"
This is what Walter Ulbricht said at an international press conference in East Berlin on June 15, 1961, about the rumors that the leaders of the GDR were planning to shut the country off from the West in order to meet the desire for freedom of many people and the associated escape movement. Shortly after, on August 13, 1961, the construction of the Berlin Wall began.
And so at some point, a deadly border stretched right across Germany for almost 1,400 km. It divided the country into East and West, into two systems, two economic zones and two world views.
From the West, one could get very close to the border. To the piece of land that stretched like an iron curtain from the Lübeck Bay to the tri-border area. At the same time, Berlin-West was separated from the "East" and thus isolated. These borders, consequences of a new distribution of power after World War II, existed until 1989.
A permanent will to unite these two divided countries, strong institutions and reliable allies made it possible: Little by little, this border became more porous, more permeable, until it was abandoned as intolerable.
Will McBride: Children playing on the wall, Berlin, 1961 © Will McBride
Daniel Biskup: Berlin, 09.11.1989 © Daniel Biskup
No report can express the people’s joy as good as the photos from this time of the opening of the border.
The downfall of the GDR is one of the most significant examples of the power people on the street can develop. The courage of individuals and the power of the masses - supported by the power of images - can achieve extraordinary things. The desire for freedom of the people in the GDR was bigger than the fear of further state reprisals, and therefore their contribution to overcoming the division of Europe cannot be valued highly enough.
Will McBride was an American photographer who spent his military service in the 1950s in Germany and stayed there after studying philology in Berlin. He worked as a photojournalist for magazines such as Quick, Geo, Stern, Live and Playboy. In 2004 he was awarded the Salomon Prize of the German Society for Photography (DGPh) for his photographic achievements surrounding his "style-forming life's work".
Born in Bonn, he moved to Augsburg at the age of 18, did his Abitur there and studied history, politics and folklore. The camera was his constant companion on trips to the Soviet Union in 1988, and he documented the decline of the GDR from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the reunification, to then become a witness to the next upheavals in the USSR and Yugoslavia. The magazine "Der Spiegel" called him the "eye of the revolution". In recent years he has portrayed celebrities and politicians such as Bill Gates, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Mikhail Gorbachev. His photographic works are part of the collections of the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, the German Historical Museum in Berlin and the Haus der Geschichte in Bonn.