However, since 1958 the SED (the Socialist Unity Party of Germany) had long been scheming a plan, code named Operation Chinese Wall, which would completely seal off of West Berlin from the GDR and would prevent a collapse of the socialist rule in East Germany.

When this plan actually became a reality on the night of August 12th, 1961, Winston Churchill's infamous expression of an Iron Curtain had truly materialized right in the heart of Berlin. The "Moskau-Paris-Express" to freedom. An escape from East to West by Karl-Heinz Richter

Karl-Heinz Richter is an official tour guide in The Memorial Berlin-Hohenschönhausen and frequently holds public lectures on the subject of political persecution. Please contact us per email for school lecture appointments and further enquiries. January 1964 a group of young East Berliners plan a risky escape to West Berlin.

One after the other, they escape by jumping on the daily Moscow-Paris Express train departing from the Friedrichstrasse station. The Stasi discover the secret spot after one of the young men, Karl-Heinz Richter, falls off the train and severely injures himself. He is arrested and sent to a Stasi prison. From this first-hand account, Karl-Heinz Richter takes us through his story about yearning to flee the GDR, his desolate incarceration and the relentless Stasi interrogations. Through the eyes of a seventeen year old we see how freedom cannot be walled in and how life and love triumph over all.

Harald Hauswald / Lutz Rathenow

Ost-Berlin

Leben vor dem Mauerfall / Life before the Wall fell

»Ost-Berlin« ist mehr als nur ein Buch. Es ist eine Legende – so wie die Stadt, deren Namen es trägt und die mit der friedlichen Revolution in der DDR verschwand. Mitte der 1980er Jahre zeichneten zwei oppositionelle Künstler ein schonungslos ehrliches Porträt ihrer Stadt. In der DDR verboten, konnte ihre Publikation nur in Westdeutschland erscheinen. Nun haben der Fotograf Harald Hauswald und der Schriftsteller Lutz Rathenow ihr Werk, das längst Kultstatus genießt, erweitert und ihm einen packenden Essay von Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk zur Entstehungs- und Wirkungsgeschichte vorangestellt.

»Ost-Berlin« is more than a book. It is a legend – like the city it was named for, a city that ceased to exist following the peaceful revolution in the GDR. In the mid-1980s, two dissident artists presented a brutally honest portrait of their city. Their publication was banned in the GDR and only available in West Germany. The book, which had long achieved cult status, has now been expanded by the photographer Harald Hauswald and the writer Lutz Rathenow. It also includes an absorbing essay by the historian Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk describing its unusual history and impact.

The Berlin Wall. Division of a City  

Thomas Flemming  , Hagen Koch 

• Taschenbuch: 78 Seiten
• Verlag: be.bra verlag (1. Januar 2000)
• Sprache: Deutsch, Englisch
• ISBN-10: 393086374X
• ISBN-13: 978-3930863747
• Größe und/oder Gewicht: 23,8 x 17 x 0,7 cm

PastFinder Berlino 1933-1945

Maik Kopleck

• Broschiert: 91 Seiten
• Verlag: Links; Auflage: 1 (1. März 2007)
• Sprache: Italienisch
• ISBN-10: 9783861534235
• ISBN-13: 978-3861534235
• ASIN: 3861534231
• Größe und/oder Gewicht: 23,2 x 10,4 x 1 cm

Europa im Ostblock
Vorstellungen und Diskurse (1945-1991)

Europe in the Eastern Bloc
Imaginations and Discourses(1945-1991)

Die kommunistischen Machthaber misstrauten der Idee der europäischen Einheit zutiefst. Der westeuropäische Integrationsprozess stellte in ihren Augen einen feindlichen Zusammenschluss imperialistischer Staaten dar, die unter der Führung der USA gegen das sozialistische Friedenslager kämpften. Der Band spürt in deutsch- und englischsprachigen Beiträgen den Europabildern und Europakonzepten in zahlreichen Ländern östlich des Eisernen Vorhangs nach. Die Autoren untersuchen offizielle Europa-Diskurse und oppositionelle Gegenvorstellungen in den einzelnen Warschauer Pakt-Staaten sowie in Emigrantenkreisen. Die Befunde zeigen, das im sozialistischen Lager nicht nur kritisch abwehrend, sondern oft auch zustimmend nachgedacht wurde.

The Communist rulers profoundly distrusted the idea of European unification. For them the process of Western European integration was an alliance of imperialist states that fought under American leadership against the Socialist Block. Nevertheless, the idea of Europe did not completely disappear in State Socialism. This book traces concepts and images of Europe in different countries East of the Iron Curtain. Articles in German and English present the official discourses on Europe and the opposition’s counter-image of Europe, in the Warsaw Pact countries and in the émigré circles in Western Europe. The results are unambiguous and all point in the same direction: Europe was also reflected upon in the Socialist camp and even during Stalinist times images of Europe were not only critically defensive but often astoundingly approving and positive.