15 October 2009: Berlin Wall / End of the GDR links for today

Some links for today in my ongoing series commemorating the 20th Anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall:

  • Did East Germans originate from apes? Well to find the answer to that question (which is, of course, a joke) you will need to see today’s article at Telegraph.co.uk titled “West German spies collected jokes from behind the Berlin Wall”.
  • “Germany: East is East” is the title of an article by Wolfgang Kerler appearing at the ipsnews.net site. The article highlights some of the major differences — for example in income and optimism — between western and eastern parts of Germany even today, 20 years later. One example: unemployment is 12% in the “new states” (the states that were once part of the GDR), whereas only 7% of the west german working population is jobless.
  • At the Wall Street Journal’s WSJ.com, see a slideshow of the wall being erected right now in Berlin — a wall that will be toppled quite soon.

Today’s video comes from the geobeats.com site, which I had never seen before and which looks very interesting. It is a video about the Berlin Wall produced by Sybille Spinola and hosted by the very charming Dörthe Eickelberg, who speaks perfect English throughout the video.

About the Author

Bill Dawson is an American citizen who, having married an Austrian, lives and works in Vienna, Austria. A programmer by trade, he studied history as an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley.