Berlin Wall removed in secret government raid

[mawilson 2,133]

The 18-metre strip of graffitied wall was removed in the middle

of the night. Photograph: Rainer Jensen/EPA

One of the last remaining pieces of the Berlin Wall in the centre of the German

capital was removed by government-contracted workers in a secretly engineered

operation over the Easter weekend, it was revealed today.

Hoping that no one would notice because of the quiet bank holiday, the 18-metre

strip of graffitied wall was yanked from its foundations in the dead of night.

Startled tourists were the first to notice on Easter Sunday when they went to take

photographs of the famous strip on Potsdamer Platz, the centre of the once-divided

city, and found it was gone.

At first the media spear-headed a detective-style hunt for the tourist attraction,

which contains well-known murals painted by international artists.

One image is of an East German trabant car, bursting through the wall on

November 9 1989. Another carries the slogan: "don't destroy history" - an appeal

by artists for parts of the wall to be kept intact so that young Berliners could learn

about their history.

After a couple of days spent keeping its head down, the government finally owned up.

The federal civil engineering and planning office said it had removed the panels so

that construction of the new environment ministry could go ahead on the site.

Quick to want to heal the public relations gaffe, a spokeswoman for the planning

office said the intention was to eventually incorporate the strip of wall into a visitor

centre in the ministry, which onlookers would be able to view through a window.

She said the missing segment had been put in storage and was being professionally

restored.

But Erich Stanke, 47, a businessman from Krefeld who claims to own various remnants

of the wall after buying them from a defunct border guard in 1990, was incandescent

with rage.

"I was sitting in a cafe when a friend called to say: 'the wall is gone'," he said, calling

the operation a "cloak and daggers affair".

"The wall is a protected monument, and now it is gone. People were shot there, and

now this piece of human world heritage has simply been ripped up - it's a disgrace."

The spokesman said that, contrary to Mr Stanke's claims, the remains of the wall

belonged to the city.

Few sections of the Berlin Wall, which snaked across almost 27 miles of the border

etween East and West Berlin from 1961 to 1989, remain, despite campaigners' efforts

to keep parts of it intact. Its former path is marked by a barely noticeable cobbled strip.

Source

[almaty 19]

gone but not forgotten....

[Otto 83]

Ahh...those lovely DDR memories...

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

Progress. I'm sure it was a nice tourist magnet though.

[Ladylethal 12]

It's part of history, I think it shouldn't have been removed. It also attracts turism.

[Nagishkaw 510]

Nothing is real

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

Nothing is real

reality is nothing

[Ban Hammer 13,970]

look at the bright side - this is an improvement. it used to be people disappeared in the night, now it's just walls