Enlarge image

The new red information booth at Potsdamer Platz.

(© picture-alliance/dpa)

Berlin has kicked off a series of events marking 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989.

At a gathering on Berlin's landmark square Potsdamer Platz on January 28, the city's Senate representative Richard Meng said 2009 is a "year of remembrance," as well as a "year of respect for the people who contributed to the peaceful fall of the Wall."

Throughout the year exhibitions, talks and guided walks will remind people of the huge change Berlin has undergone.

The highlight of the year is a weekend of celebrations and a huge series of domino stones, set to topple on November 9, symbolically marking the sequence of events that brought an end to communism.

Since January 29, a red information booth on Potsdamer Platz has highlighted the city's transformation since 1989. The booth has a flight of stairs, granting a panoramic view of the square, redeveloped in glass and steel to regain the central role it played before the city was divided.

An interactive display, replicated in a mobile box travelling the city, reveals pictures of Berlin's changing face over the course of the last 20 years. As the so-called infobox visits 15 historically significant locations across Berlin, a large helium-filled arrow will float above it, pointing to the sites from a height of 100 meters (328 feet).

These booths are needed, city officials said, in part because very little is left of the original Berlin Wall. Tourists and locals alike are baffled by the fact that it's now difficult to see the former division between East and West.

Berlin's mayor, Klaus Wowereit, said there was an urge to remove all traces of the city's division after 1989.

Enlarge image

Berlin's Potsdamer Platz has been totally transformed since the fall of the Wall.

(© picture-alliance/dpa)

"We were in a euphoric mood," he told Berlin's RBB Inforadio on January 28. "Nobody wanted to bear this wall any longer, this wall of disgrace that divided the city, that brought so much distress to the city, to the families, to the individuals affected."

Despite the posters, maps and interactive displays, it's difficult to transmit "the horror of the wall, this system of terror with its mines, its dogs and the orders to shoot," the mayor said.

Wowereit added that, in retrospect, maybe the perhaps was removed too hastily: "Maybe more should have been left standing as an example."

Source: dpa

Related Links:

City of Berlin

German National Tourist Office