There are many of tales of ingenious and well-thought out escape plans from people desperate to flee from East to West Berlin. Wolfgang Engels’ wasn’t one of them. It was, however, one of the most daring.
Germany is gearing up to celebrate 25 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9th 1989. The city has changed more than any other in Europe in that time, as these 11 photos of scenes from then and now show.
Germany, November 1989: Snow falls as an excited crowd breaks through the Wall and people tearfully embrace loved ones after decades of living apart. But this is Mödlareuth - population 50 - not Berlin.
Half a sentence uttered 25 years ago on Tuesday by the then West German foreign minister helped catalyze the reunification of Germany, which Germans celebrate on Friday. Now 87, Hans-Dietrich Genscher is The Local's German of the Week.
A group of expats will walk part of the route of the Berlin Wall on German Unity Day this Friday, almost 25 years after it fell, to raise money for refugees exactly a year after the Lampedusa tragedy.
Benefit payments to former political prisoners of ex-communist East Germany (GDR) will be raised to send an "important message" 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the government said on Wednesday.
Developers of a luxury housing complex in Berlin are building a five-metre-high concrete wall around a play park to shield future residents from the sound of children. The construction of the barrier, which is taller than the wall which once divided the city, is causing controversy.
The owner of a shopping mall in Saxony-Anhalt built a concrete wall in front of his property so his customers wouldn’t have to see the drinkers in the park across the street. But locals have urged him to tear down his wall.
Germany launched a project on Friday to shed light on the identities of the hundreds of people killed along its internal Cold War border while trying to flee the communist East.
Berlin’s love-hate relationship with the former wall has meant that while it is a symbol of horror and hatred, it is also a huge tourist attraction, yet in many places has either disappeared completely or is in a state of terrible disrepair.
Germany's formerly communist eastern states need just 10 more years to match the economic output of the poorest western states, according to a new study released by the IW economic institute in Cologne on Tuesday.
Twenty years ago this week, East Germany’s communist regime celebrated its 40th anniversary in power while the East German people took to the streets with their fists in the air. <a href="http://www.tagesspiegel.de" target="_blank">Der Tagesspiegel</a>’s Matthias Schlegel reports on the peaceful demonstrations that would help bring down the Berlin Wall.
Communist East Germany's last leader Egon Krenz said this week he still believes socialism will triumph over capitalism in the end, almost 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
A Vietnamese reporter has been sacked after he made a blog post about the Berlin Wall in which he criticised his country's former communist ally, the Soviet Union.
On Thursday Germany marks the fateful summer day in 1961 when Berliners woke to find their city carved in two - an anniversary that still awakens painful memories on both sides of the fallen Wall.
Nearly 20 years after the Berlin Wall fell, two men who tried to spirit their East German families to freedom in the West were honoured in a moving ceremony on Wednesday. AFP's Deborah Cole reports on a daring escape attempt and tragic love story.
As the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall approaches, 91 artists are feverishly working to restore their original contributions to the famed East Side Gallery. The Local’s <b>Andrew Mach</b> reports.
Even for East Germany's communist rulers, Chemnitz was only second choice when they were seeking a "model Socialist town" to rename as Karl Marx City in 1953. AFP’s Deborah Cole reports.
Work began this week to repaint Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev's passionate kiss with East German strongman Erich Honecker on the longest-surviving stretch of the Berlin Wall.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday thanked eastern Europeans for helping bring down the Berlin Wall, saying that joyous moment 20 years ago would not have been possible without them.
Entering the twentieth anniversary year of the fall of the Berlin Wall, most Germans expressed disappointment over what the country has achieved since reunification in a new poll.
More than 1,300 people died at the border separating the two Germanies between 1945 and 1989, according to a new study published on the eve of the 47th anniversary of the building of the Berlin Wall.
One day ahead of the anniversary of the construction of the Berlin Wall, the German government said it is planning massive celebrations for the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Iron Curtain next year.
A new survey has found that every ninth person in Berlin and even more in the surrounding state of Brandenburg wants the Berlin Wall back. Life was better back then, Wall supporters said.
