Who Built The Berlin Wall? – Mythbusting Berlin

“Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in, to prevent them from leaving us.”

Who were the workers who accomplished this staggering task? But more appropriately – and often the actual point of inquisition – who was responsible for the decision to construct the Berlin Wall? Which state, power, or person/s?

Of course, equally, if not more importantly, hidden within the innocuous phrasing of the question – why?

Humans have constructed walls for thousands of years, from the ancient examples in Mesopotamia and Babylon, through the towering achievements (and failures) of Constantinople and the Great Wall of China; to modern day gated communities and the contemporary mania for security fences and fortified borders. These walls have largely served one purpose- to keep outsiders at bay and establish a domain of absolute security.

The Berlin Wall, however, from its conception, was a different kind of barrier.

As David Fyre, author of ‘Walls – A History of Civilisation’, explains: “It is the universal example, perpetually at hand, perpetually tossed into discussions of barriers with which it had absolutely nothing in common. In its afterlife, it has assumed an importance out of proportion with its reality.”

Fyre is describing the regularity with which this particular example is trotted out and displayed as the ultimate indication of the failure of walls. His argument being that rather than symbols of oppression and the failure of humanity; these barriers have stood for millennia as representations of the success of humanity, guarantors of civilisation, and ensured the peacetime conditions essential for prosperity.

An opinion that was not far from the minds of the people responsible for the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 – even if the story would not play out that way.