East Berlin facts

While investigating facts about East Berlin Pa and East Berlin Map, I found out little known, but curios details like:

Peter Fechter, an 18 year old East German who was shot by East German troops trying to cross the Berlin Wall, was caught in barbed wire, and bled to death in front of the world's media, as police tried to throw him bandages.

how was life different between east and west berlin?

In the 80s, Munich's Playboy Club issued membership cards that, at a glance, looked very similar to diplomatic passports. As a result, many people escaped East Berlin by simply flashing their membership cards, and were usually waved through by guards.

What was the difference between east and west berlin?

In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across answering what was east berlin like. Here are 50 of the best facts about East Berlin Wall and East Berlin Pharmacy I managed to collect.

what was life like in east berlin?

David Bowie performed at the Berlin Wall, while East Germans gathered to listen behind. "And we would hear them cheering and singing along from the other side. God, even now I get choked up. It was breaking my heart. I'd never done anything like that in my life, and I guess I never will again."
The Bethke brothers. Each escaped from Soviet East Berlin. Ingo floated on a mattress across a river. Holger used a bow to fire a cable across the gap, then zip-lined to safety. Then Ingo and Holger built an aircraft and flew back over the wall to rescue their third brother, Egbert.
In 1963, an East German soldier named Wolfgang Engels stole a tank and drove it through the Berlin Wall at top speed to try and escape.
The Berlin Wall was opened accidentally. After being told wrong info, a Soviet spokesman stated that border crossings would be allowed, “immediately”. Crossings were actually planned to be allowed in limited circumstances. Thousands of East Germans then ran to the border and forced it open.
That, in 1964, a group of college students used garden spades to tunnel under the Berlin Wall into East Berlin, allowing 57 people to escape to the West. The students moved enough dirt to fill four eighteen-wheeler big rigs; one of them went on to design tunnels professionally.
East Germany created its own cola drink. Vita-Cola's sales almost disappeared after the fall of the Berlin Wall brought Coke and Pepsi into the East. It is still the most popular cola in Thuringia, making the German state one of the few places in the world where Coca-Cola is not the leader.
The Berlin Wall was a wall that encircled ALL of West Berlin; it didn't just bisect Berlin. Also, West Berlin was surrounded by East Germany for over 100 miles in all directions
East Germans defected by various ways like digging long tunnels under the Berlin Wall, waiting for favorable winds and taking hot air balloons, sliding along aerial wires, flying ultralight aircraft and, in one case, driving a sports car at full speed through the basic, initial fortifications.
West and East Berlin used two different kinds of street lights during the Cold War, producing different colours that are still visible from space, almost 30 years after the wall fell.

east berlin facts — What was life like on the east side of the berlin wall?

East Berlin data charts

For your convenience take a look at East Berlin figures with stats and charts presented as graphic.

east berlin fact data chart about The 1949-1990 division of Berlin in East & West Berlin is st — The 1949-1990 division of Berlin in East & West Berlin is still visible today in the Tram network

Why did east berliners fled to west berlin?

You can easily fact check why was west berlin in east germany by examining the linked well-known sources.

The 3 Bethke brothers, who escaped East Berlin one by one. The first, Ingo, used an air mattress to float to the West. The second, Holger, used a zip line to go over the Berlin Wall to freedom. Then, to rescue their third brother, Egbert, they flew ultralight planes and retrieved him. - source

It is possible to distinguish the parts of Berlin that were formerly West and East from the space: “East” Berlin uses sodium vapor lamps which produce a yellow color, whilst “West” Berlin uses fluorescent lamps produce a white color. - source

In 1962 news channel NBC paid a West Berlin team 50,000DM ($150,000 today) to dig under the Berlin Wall, on the condition that NBC could film the escape. 29 East Germans managed to escape, and the resulting NBC film, The Tunnel, won 3 Emmies.

After Russia made it virtually impossible for people to cross the Berlin Wall on foot, one group of East Germans crashed a stolen tank into the wall to get through to the other side. - source

How did the soviets respond when east berliners defected?

You could see the border of East and West Berlin from space because of street lamp color.

How did west berlin exist in east germany?

During the division of Berlin, there were still several West Berlin subway lines which passed through parts of East Berlin. They just didn't stop there, leaving behind heavily guarded "ghost stations". Over the years, several citizen of the East managed to get on trains towards the West.

The Berlin Wall was built to keep East Germans from leaving, but when the wall was taken down, it was for the same reason - to stop East Germany's residents from leaving.

136 people died trying to cross the Berlin Wall during its existence. It is believed that approximately 5,000 people made the escape from East Germany to the West successfully by crossing the Berlin Wall.

College dropout, Thierry Noir who, in 1984 using graffiti, pioneered the trend of painting the Berlin Wall as a form of protest. Climbing through small holes and avoiding gunfire, Noir was able to paint 5 km of both the West and the East sides of the Wall. Noir is now a well known artist.

When was berlin divided into east and west?

In 1963 an East German soldier stole a tank and drove through the Berlin Wall to escape

West Germans would often throw garbage over the wall into East Germany - knowing that the East Germans and Soviets could do nothing about it.

Bruce Springsteen played in East Berlin 1988. 300,000 east germans, isolated since 1961, sang 'Born in the USA'.

The Berlin Wall was built because 3 million East Germans (20% of population) had fled to the West by 1961

The co-founder of Youtube was born in East Germany, crossed to West Germany before the Berlin Wall fell, before moving to the US at age 13.

How was west berlin in east germany?

An East German citizen, who successfully hijacked a plane and demanded landing in West Berlin, was sentenced to just 9 months.

30 years after the Berlin wall fell, the town of Mödlareuth in Germany is still divided between East and West, with 2 mayors

The Berlin Wall made the Soviets and East Germans look bad - people already had a bad opinion of communism but the Berlin Wall portrayed them as tyrannical.

The Berlin Wall was built to stop East Germans from defecting to the West. West Germans were able to visit East Germany by way of permit.

The three Bethke brothers all escaped from East Berlin several years apart. One floated an inflatable mattress across a river, one fired a cable over the Berlin Wall to the rooftop of a building, and then the two brothers flew over the wall and back in an ultralight to pick up the third brother.

The subway system that had run across Germany was divided after the Berlin Wall was built. Subways on the East could only operate on the East side and vice versa.

After a married couple escaped East Berlin in the trunk of an Austin Maxi in 1972, British Leyland's West German arm recreated the event for a television ad that would show that the Maxi's trunk was big enough to faciliate this.

A west Berlin Wall observer would hire actors on the east side to stage escapes and getting shot, and would then charge tourists to watch it.

The Soviet Union added tens of thousands trip wired machine guns inside the inner section of the Berlin Wall to prevent people in the East from escaping. In 1983, the Soviets agreed to dismantle the controversial machine guns in exchange for a 2 billion deutsche mark loan from West Germany

In 1979, two families tried to escape East Germany over the Berlin Wall in a homemade hot air balloon, and failed twice. The 3rd time, their balloon caught on fire mid-flight and crash-landed in a tree. They were unaware that they landed in the West until they met a local policeman.

Shortly before German reunification, the most popular crime series in West and East Germany respectively produced one of the first ever crossover episodes, where the heroes of both shows had to team up to solve a case in the turmoil that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall

Ulrich Mühe, who portrayed an East German Stasi officer who surveilled a radical playwright in the film "The Lives of Others", was himself under surveillance in the 1980s by four fellow actors in the East Berlin theatre, and by his wife.

There is a museum about everyday life of East Germany in Berlin. There's a Trabant car that people can pretend to drive. In one corner, curators have rebuilt a typical East German living room and kitchen

This is our collection of basic interesting facts about East Berlin. The fact lists are intended for research in school, for college students or just to feed your brain with new realities. Possible use cases are in quizzes, differences, riddles, homework facts legend, cover facts, and many more. Whatever your case, learn the truth of the matter why is East Berlin so important!