Brandenburg Gate Looking Along the Wall, West Berlin, West Germany 1984

            This is so different to how the Brandenburg Gate looks today. I was amazed when I saw a film of the Gate now with all the buildings around it and how you can pass right through it. When I was there in the early 1980's if you went over the Berlin Wall you would be shot on sight.

The Brandenburg Gate is an 18th-century neoclassical monument in Berlin, built on the orders of Prussian king Frederick William II after the temporary restoration of order during the Batavian Revolution. One of the best-known landmarks of Germany, it was built on the site of a former city gate that marked the start of the road from Berlin to the town of Brandenburg an der Havel, which used to be the capital of the Margraviate of Brandenburg.

It is located in the western part of the city centre of Berlin within Mitte, at the junction of Unter den Linden and EbertstraÃŸe, immediately west of the Pariser Platz. Just to the north stands the Reichstag building, which houses the German parliament (Bundestag). The gate is the monumental entry to Unter den Linden, a boulevard of linden trees which led directly to the royal City Palace of the Prussian monarchs.   
Throughout its existence, the Brandenburg Gate was often a site for major historical events and is today considered not only as a symbol of the tumultuous history of Europe and Germany, but also of European unity and peace.

After Germany's surrender and the end of the war, the governments of East Berlin and West Berlin restored it in a joint effort. The holes were patched, but were visible for many years. The gate was located in the Soviet occupation zone, directly next to the border to the British occupation zone, which later became the border between East and West Berlin.

Vehicles and pedestrians could travel freely through the gate until the day after construction began on the Berlin Wall on Barbed Wire Sunday, 13 August 1961. West Berliners gathered on the western side of the gate to demonstrate against the Berlin Wall, among them West Berlin's mayor, Willy Brandt, who had returned from a federal election campaign tour in West Germany earlier the same day. The wall passed directly by the western side of the gate, which was closed throughout the Berlin Wall period, which ended on 22 December 1989.

This was taken on black and white negative film and scanned to digital.

Taken on: September 9, 2024

Tags:

Wall

Art. Graffiti

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berlin wall

brandenburg gate

Brandenburger Tor

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politics

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Groups appears in: • Berlin • Berlin Wall more » • Berlin Analog • Black and white details • "Black and White Unlimited" • Black & White Done Right !. • Experience History: Berlin 1961-1989 • Berlin analog b/w • BERLIN FOR YOU • 100 YEARS & OLDER « less

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