"stands with fake military items and stores proliferate as well. British spy James Bond (played by Roger Moore) passed through Checkpoint Charlie in the film ""Octopussy"" (1983) from West Berlin to East. Checkpoint Charlie is featured in the opening scene of the 1965 Martin Ritt film ""The Spy Who Came in from the Cold"" (starring Richard Burton and Claire Bloom), based on the John le Carré novel of the same name. Checkpoint Charlie Checkpoint Charlie (or ""Checkpoint C"") was the name given by the Western Allies to the best-known Berlin Wall crossing point between East Berlin and West Berlin during"
"Checkpoint Charlie Museum The Checkpoint Charlie Museum () is a private museum in Berlin. It is named after the famous crossing point on the Berlin Wall, and was created to document the so-called ""best border security system in the world"" (in the words of East German general Heinz Hoffmann). On display are the photos and related documents of successful escape attempts from East Germany, together with the escape apparatus: hot-air balloons, getaway cars, chairlifts, and a mini-U-Boat. The museum researches and maintains a list of deaths at the Berlin Wall. It is operated by the ""Arbeitsgemeinschaft 13. August"" (August 13th"
"to symbolize physically the ""Iron Curtain"" that separated Western Europe and the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. Before the Wall's erection, 3.5 million East Germans circumvented Eastern Bloc emigration restrictions and defected from the GDR, many by crossing over the border from East Berlin into West Berlin; from there they could then travel to West Germany and to other Western European countries. Between 1961 and 1989 the Wall prevented almost all such emigration. During this period over 100,000 people attempted to escape and over 5,000 people succeeded in escaping over the Wall, with an estimated death toll ranging from"
"boundary point along the Inner German Border, from 1945 between the British Zone of Occupation in the west and the Soviet Zone of Occupation in the east; and from 1949 between West and East Germany. The so-called Iron Curtain including the Convoy Way (""Kolonnenweg"") ran past this point. The Convoy Way used to act as a border patrol track, but is now a hiking trail. Since 3 October 1990, German Unity Day, the boundary stone has marked the borders of Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia. It is now part of the German Green Belt. The ""Drei-Länder-Stein"" is no. 47 in"
"Allied side of the checkpoint for entry into West Berlin was named ""Checkpoint Bravo"", and ""Checkpoint Charlie"" was the Allied checkpoint for entry into (and exit from) East Berlin. The nomenclature of ""checkpoint"", as opposed to the East German """"Grenzübergangsstelle"""" (which literally means ""border-crossing-place"") was a result of the Western Allies not recognising the legitimacy of East Germany as a state. That changed in 1973, when the GDR was admitted to the United Nations, but the term remained in use. On the grounds of the former East German border control buildings, the ""Gedenkstätte Deutsche Teilung Marienborn"" was opened on August"
"of West German, British and US guards and soldiers. Despite the extensiveness of the Inner Border, it was the Berlin Wall (German: Berliner Mauer) that would serve as the famous and infamous representation of the ""Iron Curtain"" and the Cold War. The Berlin Wall was a barrier that divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989, constructed by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off (by land) West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin until it was opened in November 1989. In practice, the Wall served to prevent the massive"
"Checkpoint Charlie has become one of Berlin's primary tourist attractions. An open-air exhibit was opened during the summer of 2006. Gallery walls along Friedrichstraße and Zimmerstraße give informormation about escape attempts, how the checkpoint was expanded, and its significance during the Cold War, in particular the confrontation of Soviet and American tanks in 1961. An overview of other important memorial sites and museums about the division of Germany and the wall is presented as well. Tourists can have their photographs taken for a fee with actors dressed as allied military policemen standing in front of the guard house. Several souvenir"
"memory of the division is being kept alive in many other places along the ""Grenze"". Throughout the Cold War the term ""curtain"" would become a common euphemism for boundaries – physical or ideological – between communist and capitalist states. Post Cold War: Geography: Iron Curtain The Iron Curtain was the name for the physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. The term symbolizes the efforts by the Soviet Union to block itself and its satellite states from open contact with the"
"Iron Curtain The Iron Curtain was the name for the physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. The term symbolizes the efforts by the Soviet Union to block itself and its satellite states from open contact with the West and its allied states. On the east side of the Iron Curtain were the countries that were connected to or influenced by the Soviet Union, while on the west side were the countries that were allied to the United States or nominally"
"support in relation to its exhibition section about his situation, while he was imprisoned. According to museum director Alexandra Hildebrandt, it was she who in 2011 encouraged Genscher to become involved in the diplomatic efforts to release Khodorkovsky. The museum installed an exhibition of the works of Nadiya Savchenko in 2016, and helped in the efforts to secure her release from prison. Checkpoint Charlie Museum The Checkpoint Charlie Museum () is a private museum in Berlin. It is named after the famous crossing point on the Berlin Wall, and was created to document the so-called ""best border security system in"
"and barbed wire with the date of the Pan-European Picnic and the names of participants. On the ribbon under the board is the Latin text: ""In necessariis unitas – in dubiis libertas – in omnibus caritas."" (Unity in unavoidable matters – freedom in doubtful matters – love in all things.) The memorial symbolises the iron curtain and recalls forever the memories of the border breakthrough in 1989. There are several open air museums in parts of the former inner German border, as for example in Berlin and in Mödlareuth, a village that has been divided for several hundred years. The"
"tanks briefly faced each other at the location during the Berlin Crisis of 1961. After the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc and the reunification of Germany, the building at Checkpoint Charlie became a tourist attraction. It is now located in the Allied Museum in the Dahlem neighborhood of Berlin. By the early 1950s, the Soviet method of restricting emigration was emulated by most of the rest of the Eastern Bloc, including East Germany. However, in occupied Germany, until 1952, the lines between East Germany and the western occupied zones remained easily crossed in most places. Consequently, the inner German border"
"the physical embodiment of the Iron Curtain that stood between East Germany and West Germany in the decades following the conclusion of World War II. The Berlin Wall stretched approximately 28 miles (45 km) through the city of Berlin and another 75 miles (120 km) around the edges of West Berlin and stood close to 15 feet (5 meters) in height. The sheer physical stature of the Berlin Wall in addition to becoming an iconic, international symbol of the Cold War and its virtues, drove it to become a popular site of tourism throughout its existence, and even after its"
"mayor Willy Brandt—while condemning the Wall's restriction on freedom of movement. Along with the separate and much longer Inner German border (IGB), which demarcated the border between East and West Germany, it came to symbolize the ""Iron Curtain"" that separated Western Europe and the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. Before the Wall's erection, 3.5 million East Germans circumvented Eastern Bloc emigration restrictions and defected from the GDR, many by crossing over the border from East Berlin into West Berlin, from where they could then travel to West Germany and other Western European countries. Between 1961 and 1989, the wall"
"emotional and significant moment in German history. Until 3 November when the East German authorities closed the border with Czechoslovakia, many more GDR citizens fled to the embassy in the following weeks, wearing down the patience of the Czechoslovak authorities which gave in eventually, letting all East Germans travel directly to West Germany. Thus, they broke their part of the Iron Curtain, the Czechoslovak border fortifications during the Cold War. On 9 November 1989 the Berlin Wall fell, and the Czechs would succeed in the Velvet Revolution. These events are commemorated by a golden statue of a Trabant car on"
"Heinz Schäfer Heinz Schäfer (born c. 1930/31) is a former East German Stasi officer who was present during at least two significant European events of the Cold War years. On 27 October 1961, Soviet and US forces confronted one another at Berlin's Checkpoint Charlie, creating the potential for all-out war between the powers. Heinz Schäfer was an East German border guard at the time, and states that only by keeping calm did both sides avoid catastrophic confrontation. 9 November 1989 marked the opening of the Berlin Wall. Schäfer—at the time a Stasi colonel—claims to have been the first to open"
"Union, when they placed their troops and tanks on the East German side. This led to the iconic image of tanks facing each other at ""Checkpoint Charlie"", which symbolized the East-West division, which is the division of the east and west parts of Germany. Any action taken by either of the troops had the possibility of resulting in a nuclear war between the USSR and the US. As a result, in the summer of 1961 John F. Kennedy met with Khrushchev in Vienna in order to try to find a solution regarding the problem of Berlin. Kennedy suggested Khrushchev to"
"the ""Iron Curtain"" during the Cold War. From this location, one can hike to the other end of the mountain ridge to the peak named Eckstein. It also has a Cold War history, since it was the site of German, French and American Signal Intelligence operations (since closed in the 1990s) that were directed over the Czech Border (3.5 miles to the East). Rimbach, Upper Palatinate Rimbach is a municipality in the district of Cham (district) in the Upper Palatinate in Bavaria in Germany. Rimbach is a beautiful little vacation village at the foot of the (a seven-peaked mountain ridge"
"the first of three Allied checkpoints on the road to Berlin. The others were Checkpoint Bravo, where the autobahn crossed from East Germany into West Berlin, and most famous of all, Checkpoint Charlie, the only place where non-Germans could cross by road or foot from West to East Berlin. On the other side of the border at Marienborn, over 1,000 East German officials worked around the clock to process travellers. A large proportion of the staff were officers of the Stasi, the much-feared secret police, although they wore the uniforms of the regular ""Grenztruppen"". The real ""Grenztruppen"" were also present"
"Eisen"" or ""eiserner Wehrmann"" (Iron Guardian), ""Nagelfigur"", ""Nagelbild"" or ""Nagelbrett"" (Nail Figure or Nail Board), ""Wehrschild"" (Defence Shield) and ""Kriegswahrzeichen"" (War Monument). The most famous were the original Wehrmann in Eisen in Vienna and the 'Iron Hindenburg', a 12 metre (42 foot) statue of Hindenburg adjacent to the Victory Column in Berlin. The idea for the Nail Men came from the Stock im Eisen in Vienna, a tree-trunk which had had nails hammered into it for centuries. The first Nail Man, a medieval knight, was set up in Vienna and was first nailed on 6 March 1915 in a public"
"Western Allies. Its counterpart in the Berlin southern borough of Dreilinden was named ""Bravo"". The connection between these checkpoints gained its importance from being the shortest connection between the western zones and Berlin, at . During the Berlin Blockade, which endured from June 1948 to May 1949, the Soviet checkpoint was closed. From 1950 onwards, the East German ' (later the ') performed the border control on the eastern side of the checkpoint, with the exception of the Soviet military, which escorted Allied military traffic to and from West Berlin. Due to the increasing tensions between the Western Allies and"
"The East German economy suffered accordingly. On August 13, 1961, a barbed-wire barrier that would become the Berlin Wall separating East and West Berlin was erected by the East Germans. Two days later, police and army engineers began to construct a more permanent concrete wall. Along with the wall, the 830 mile zonal border became 3.5 miles wide on its East German side in some parts of Germany with a tall steel-mesh fence running along a ""death strip"" bordered by mines, as well as channels of ploughed earth, to slow escapees and more easily reveal their footprints. Checkpoint Charlie was"
"a month long renovation and reopened in September 2016 with an updated display of 40 large-scale photographs tracing the history of the award. Berlin Wall Gallery: The Newseum has procured the largest display of the original wall outside of Germany. There are eight high concrete sections of wall, each weighing about three tons, and a three-story East German guard tower from Checkpoint Charlie (or ""Checkpoint C""), the name given by Western Allies to Berlin's best-known East-West crossing. Cox Enterprises First Amendment Gallery: This gallery explores the role that the First Amendment’s guarantee of rights (religion, speech, press, assembly and petition)"
"of high metal fences and walls, barbed wire, alarms, anti-vehicle ditches, watchtowers, automatic booby traps, and minefields. It was patrolled by 50,000 armed East German guards who faced tens of thousands of West German, British, and US guards and soldiers. In the hinterlands behind the border were more than a million North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and Warsaw Pact troops. The border was a physical manifestation of Sir Winston Churchill's metaphorical Iron Curtain that separated the Soviet and Western blocs during the Cold War. It marked the boundary between two ideological systems—democratic capitalism and single-party communism. Built by East Germany"
"corner of the neighbourhood. Another famous landmark in Friedrichstadt is Checkpoint Charlie, the most infamous border crossing between East and West Berlin between 1945 and 1990. Because of Friedrichstadt central location within Berlin, many government ministries and offices have their headquarters in the Friedrichstadt neighbourhood. Although many ministries occupy older buildings, many are opting for newer, more modern headquarters, and new construction to accommodate these departments is not uncommon. Seven government ministries have their headquarters in the neighbourhood, including the ministries of Finance, Scientific Research and Development, Family Services, Seniors', Women's, and Children's Services, Health, Justice, and Housing. Many of"
"Road crossing (East/West checkpoints, from north to south) Railway crossing Water crossing The largest crossing point or ""Grenzübergangsstelle"" (GÜSt) between East and West Germany was at Marienborn on the Hanover–Berlin autobahn. It was originally a set of simple huts straddling the border, where British and Soviet military police checked travellers between the eastern and western zones. In 1971–72 the East German government expanded it into a complex through which 34.6 million travellers passed between 1985–89. The British, French and Americans worked alongside the West German ""Bundesgrenzschutz"" and Customs to maintain a corresponding checkpoint near Helmstedt. Codenamed Checkpoint Alpha, this was"
"of Europe in the 1920s. Apart from minor changes, the city boundary defined in the law is still the same as today, even though its character has changed several times over the years. Originally a mere municipal boundary, it became a demarcation line between occupation zones after 1945, a part of the Iron Curtain after 1949 with the Berlin Wall on some of its length between 1961 and 1990. Since the reunification of Germany it is the border between the German states of Berlin and Brandenburg. Greater Berlin Act The Greater Berlin Act (), in full the Law Regarding the"
"to keep East German citizens from escaping to the West. Over a period of months the wall was rebuilt using concrete, and buildings were demolished to create a ""death zone"" in view of East German guards armed with machine guns. The Wall closed the biggest loophole in the Iron Curtain, and Berlin went from being one of the easiest places to cross from East Europe to West Europe to being one of the most difficult. The West, including the U.S., was accused of failing to respond forcefully to the erection of the Wall. Officially, Berlin was under joint occupation by"
"Berlin Wall The Berlin Wall (, ) was a guarded concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. Constructed by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany), starting on 13 August 1961, the Wall cut off (by land) West Berlin from virtually all of surrounding East Germany and East Berlin until government officials opened it in November 1989. Its demolition officially began on 13 June 1990 and finished in 1992. The barrier included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, accompanied by a wide area (later known as the ""death strip"") that contained anti-vehicle trenches, ""fakir"
"the middle of the night in early September with live armaments and vehicles, in order to enforce the ban. Although the wall was opened in November 1989 and the checkpoint booth removed on June 22, 1990, the checkpoint remained an official crossing for foreigners and diplomats until German reunification during October 1990 when the guard house was removed; it is now on display in the open-air museum of the Allied Museum in Berlin-Zehlendorf. The course of the former wall and border is now marked in the street with a line of cobblestones. A copy of the guard house and sign"
"briefly caused fears of a military crisis, though only 11,000 western troops were located in Berlin compared to 500,000 Soviet troops surrounding them deployed in East Germany. The completion of the Berlin Wall closed the biggest loophole in the Iron Curtain. It brought an end to a decade during which divided capital of the divided Germany was the easiest place for unauthorized east-to-west crossings. Along with the wall, the zonal border became wide on its East German side in some parts of Germany with a tall steel-mesh fence running along a ""death strip"" bordered by bands of plowed earth, to"
"role in 2018 European Athletics Championships. It is also the usual finish line of the Berlin Marathon. A Soviet flag flew from a flagpole atop the gate from 1945 until 1957, when it was replaced by an East German flag. Since the reunification of Germany, the flag and the pole have been removed. During the 1953 riots in East Berlin the Soviet flag was torn off by West Germans. In 1963, U.S. President John F. Kennedy visited the Brandenburg Gate. The Soviets hung large red banners across it to prevent him looking into East Berlin. In the 1980s, decrying the"
"Berlin landmarks such as the East Side Gallery the longest surviving stretch of the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin Ostbahnhof historically one of the two main railway stations in Berlin, the Joseph Stalin era Karl-Marx-Allee and the towers at Frankfurter Tor. Each section of the new constituency had previously been an eponymous part of one of the three previous constituencies of Berlin Kreuzberg - Schöneberg, Berlin Friedrichshain - Lichtenberg and Berlin Mitte - Prenzlauer Berg. Although the previous constituencies had been won by either the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) or the Left Party.PDS (PDS), the Kreuzberg - Schöneberg"