Graffiti (both singular and plural; the singular graffito is rarely used except in archeology) is writing or drawings made on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view.
Its actually due to the rebellious culture of Berlin due to its history. During the cold war, west Berlin was heavily subsidized home to squatter scenes and bohemian culture, because West Germany and its allies wanted west Berlin populated, they practically paid people to move there.
Under current German law, graffiti is only punishable if it can be proven that the spraying itself or the removal of the graffiti resulted in damages to the surface under it. "We have to clearly show the mostly young people who do this that illegal spraying is punishable," she said.
The gallery is located on the so-called "hinterland mauer", which closed the border to West Berlin. It is possibly the largest and longest-lasting open air gallery in the world.
Berlin is one of the world's graffiti-capitals with tags, political slogans and street art widespread throughout the city. Unless the owner of the surface expresses permission, all graffiti is now illegal and punishable by fines up to EUR 2,000, or three years in prison.
The East Side Gallery is visited at all times of the day and night by visitors, locals, and people spilling out of the nearby clubs, such as Berghain or Watergate.
- Reichstag Building.
- Memorial of the Berlin Wall.
- Pergamonmuseum.
- Museum Island.
- Friedrichstadt-Palast.
- Brandenburg Gate.
- Topography of Terror.
- The Holocaust Memorial - Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.
When purchasing the Berlin WelcomeCard, you benefit from free and flexible use of public transport, either in the city of Berlin (tariff zone AB) or extended as far as Potsdam (ABC).
When did the Berlin Wall fall?
When was the East Side Gallery made?
The people, language, and traditions are what make the German culture unique. It has had a key role in the history of Europe, and not only. English speakers call it Germany, Germans themselves call it Deutschland. Germany is known as the country of poets and thinkers.
The best way to get from Alexanderplatz to East-Side-Gallery is to line 300 bus which takes 16 min and costs 2€ - 3€. Alternatively, you can train, which costs 2€ - 3€ and takes 18 min.
Ministry for State Security
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.
The official purpose of this Berlin Wall was to keep Western “fascists” from entering East Germany and undermining the socialist state, but it primarily served the objective of stemming mass defections from East to West. To this day, the Berlin Wall remains one of the most powerful and enduring symbols of the Cold War.
Most visitors to Berlin want to see the Wall. But of the concrete barrier that once divided the German capital, only remnants remain. For more than 28 years, the Wall divided East and West Berlin. Today, almost nothing is left of it.
The wall came down partly because of a bureaucratic accident but it fell amid a wave of revolutions that left the Soviet-led communist bloc teetering on the brink of collapse and helped define a new world order.
Why was the Berlin Wall erected? The Berlin Wall was built in 1961 to stop an exodus from the eastern, communist part of divided Germany to the more prosperous west. Between 1949 and 1961 more than 2.6 million East Germans, out of a total population of 17 million, had escaped.
After the defeat of Germany in World War II, the country was divided between the two global blocs in the East and West, a period known as the division of Germany. Germany was stripped of its war gains and lost territories in the east to Poland and the Soviet Union.
Escapees had various motives for attempting to flee East Germany. The vast majority had an essentially economic motive: they wished to improve their living conditions and opportunities in the West. Some fled for political reasons, but many were impelled to leave by specific social and political events.
It is believed that approximately 5,000 people made the escape from East Germany to the West successfully by crossing the Berlin Wall. The West side of the Berlin Wall was covered in graffiti while the East side was not. The subway system that had run across Germany was divided after the Berlin Wall was built.
The 27-mile portion of the barrier separating Berlin into east and west consisted of two concrete walls between which was a “death strip” up to 160 yards wide that contained hundreds of watchtowers, miles of anti-vehicle trenches, guard dog runs, floodlights and trip-wire machine guns.
West Berlin was 100 miles (161 kilometres) east and north of the Inner German border and only accessible by land from West Germany by narrow rail and highway corridors. It consisted of the American, British, and French occupation sectors established in 1945.
The Wall was built in 1961 to prevent East Germans from fleeing and stop an economically disastrous migration of workers. It was a symbol of the Cold War, and its fall in 1989 marked the approaching end of the war.
Painted in 1990, it has become one of the best known pieces of Berlin wall graffiti art. The painting depicts Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker in a socialist fraternal kiss, reproducing a photograph taken in 1979 during the 30th anniversary celebration of the foundation of the German Democratic Republic.
Checkpoint Charlie (or "Checkpoint C") was the best-known Berlin Wall crossing point between East Berlin and West Berlin during the Cold War (1947–1991), as named by the Western Allies. Checkpoint Charlie became a symbol of the Cold War, representing the separation of East and West.
To halt the exodus to the West, Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev recommended to East Germany that it close off access between East and West Berlin. On the night of August 12-13, 1961, East German soldiers laid down more than 30 miles of barbed wire barrier through the heart of Berlin.
Painted by Dmitri Wrubel, the Russian text reads “God, Help me Survive this Deadly Love”. Due to wear and tear over the years, as well as weather damage, the murals are repainted with weather resistant paint and generally maintained to keep this art time capsule alive.
