The mayor of unified Germany's new capital knelt down to paint a thick red line at the former Allied Checkpoint Charlie border crossing Thursday to ensure the fallen Berlin Wall is never forgotten.
"We want to remind future generations of the tragic history of this city with this marking of the former wall," said Berlin Mayor Eberhard Diepgen. "A history which bears witness to the struggle and will to survive of a freedom-loving people."The hated Berlin Wall fell seven years ago, and the city that it cleaved for nearly three decades will now mark five small sections of it across the city to ensure no one forgets where it once stood and what it stood for.
Berlin will mark 12 miles of the original 27 miles with a bright red painted stripe or rows of small stones along what the former communist East Germany proudly used to call its "anti-fascist protection wall."
But Diepgen said the city had decided not to mark the whole length of the former concrete and barbed wire boundary because it did not want to be completely divided again.
"We in no way want to draw a dividing line again between east and west Berlin," said Diepgen at a ceremony. "During the nearly 30 years of city's division, that line left deep wounds."
Tourists coming to Berlin nowadays find barely a trace of the Wall and the "death strip" running between the double wall, where border guards stood ready to shoot to kill those who attempted escape.
Souvenir hunters, bulldozers and weather damage have left only a few small remnants scattered throughout the city, including the three quarters of a mile East Side Gallery, a strip of old wall still daubed with vivid murals.
The planned painted strips will mark five sections of the Wall including the site of Checkpoint Charlie, then an Allied border crossing and now the American Business Center office complex, and a segment neighboring the Brandenburg Gate.
Berlin had planned to lay a copper strip running the length of the former Wall, but the city, whose coffers have been drained since unification in 1990, opted late last year for the more modest paint and stone commemoration.
The entire project should cost around $12 million.