SEPARATION

After the wall was built, only very few visits to the West were authorized by the ruling East German party, which was called SED. As of 23 August, West Berliners were no longer allowed to enter East Berlin; this restriction was eased gradually over the years but visits from West to East never became“routine”. People could stay in touch only by send-ing letters that the GDR secret police could also read, or, at least in the early days, by waving across the border. East German police and border troops tried to hinder this kind of cross-border contact. But as long as visual contact was possible, people continued to come to Bernauer Strasse to wave to their relatives on the other side of the city.This art piece shows a young couple after their marriage in the Western part of Berlin, in tears, and their desperate parents waving out of their window behind the wall in the Eastern part of Berlin. It also shows family and friends standing on laddersalong the wall waving to their loved ones on the otherside and a little boy holding a newspaper with the news “Ost-Berlin ist abgeriegelt / East-Berlin is sealed off”.Even West Berlin funerals were often organized ina cemetery along Bernauer Strasse, which gave relatives a chance to watch the service from the other side of the wall. A church named Versöhnungskirche / Reconciliation Churchstood in the border strip surrounded on all sides by border fortifications. Because of its name and the fact that the steeple seemed to reach into the heavens almost accusingly from its site behind the wall, the church became a symbol of Berlin’s division. It was demolished on 28 January 1985 and left many people with a broken heart.Today, at the Berlin Wall Memorial in Bernauer Strasse there is also a Chapel of Reconciliation. Visitors to services in the new chapel regularly commemorate the victims of the wall. The Window of Memorial on the site portrays the people who were shot or died along the Berlin Wall.