The length of Berlin Wall is about 155 kilometers and 150 meters wide, 42 kilometers of the wall is in the city at the border of East Berlin and West Berlin. The wall is built to prevent people escape from East Germany to West Germany; thus, the defensive power was designed very strong. It is composed by “inner, back-up Wall, followed by a signal wire, anti-tank barriers, a guard tower, high-powered lighting, a patrol strip for troops and vehicles, a raked field kept smooth so as to notice if someone left footprints, vehicle barriers, and finally the outer Wall to the West.”[1] Therefore, it is nearly impossible that people escape from East to West Germany. Even though the heavily –guard wall isolate Germany people, but there were some people still tried to escape through the Wall. From1963 to1989. There were 5000 East Berliner successfully escape to West Berlin. “East Germans use a variety of methods to escape: digging long tunnels under the wall, waiting for favorable winds and taking a hot air balloon, sliding along aerial wires, flying ultralights.”[2] There were also man people died on the way of escaping. “On 22 August 1961, Ida Siekmann was the first casualty at the Berlin Wall: she died after she jumped out of her third floor apartment. And the last person to be shot and killed while trying to cross the border was Chris Gueffroy on 6 February 1989.”[3]
[1] Hope M. Harrison, “THE BERLIN WALL AFTER FIFTY YEARS: Introduction.” German Politics and Society 29: 2 (Summer 2011), 1-7.
[2] Wikipedia Berlin Wall Online, “Berlin Wall”, accessed November 18, 2014, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall.
[3] Wikipedia Berlin Wall Online, “Berlin Wall”.
[1] Hope M. Harrison, “THE BERLIN WALL AFTER FIFTY YEARS: Introduction.” German Politics and Society 29: 2 (Summer 2011), 1-7.
[2] Wikipedia Berlin Wall Online, “Berlin Wall”, accessed November 18, 2014, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall.
[3] Wikipedia Berlin Wall Online, “Berlin Wall”.