Germany commemorates 65th anniversary of Berlin Wall construction as Klöckner warns of persistent divisions

Commemoration at Bernauer Straße

On the 65th anniversary of the Berlin Wall's construction, around 120 guests from politics, culture, and society gathered at the Chapel of Reconciliation on Bernauer Straße in Berlin-Mitte to honor the victims of Germany's division. Bundestagspräsidentin Julia Klöckner, Berlin's Regierender Bürgermeister Kai Wegner (CDU), and Kulturstaatsminister Wolfram Weimer (parteilos) laid wreaths at the memorial. Excerpts from the biography of a victim were read during the ceremony. The Wall, whose construction began on 13 August 1961, ultimately stretched 155 kilometers and severed Berlin for more than 28 years, separating families, friends, and the western part of the city from its surrounding hinterland.

"Mauern in den Köpfen"

Klöckner used her address to draw attention to persistent divisions between eastern and western Germany, noting that political questions on migration, Corona measures, and dealing with Russia are sometimes answered very differently on both sides. She pointed to differing life experiences: for West Germans, reunification changed little; for East Germans, it changed everything. Young people, she said, feel commonly East German simply because they were born on a particular side of the country.

Die frühere Grenze ist fast unsichtbar geworden. Und doch ist sie da. Die Mauer hat in Deutschland Spuren gezogen, die unsere Wege heute noch beeinflussen.

Klöckner warned that the freedom movement of 1989 faces a new threat, this time through indifference and disinterest. She called on Germans to listen to one another and to summon the courage to approach each other again, as courage brought the Wall down in 1989.

Warnings against trivializing the DDR

Kulturstaatsminister Weimer warned that both left-wing and right-wing extremists are currently attempting to trivialize the DDR. He specifically named the AfD and Linke as producing "positive Zerrbilder der DDR" in eastern Germany, referencing an AfD event in Dessau-Roßlau in July where Kabarettist Uwe Steimle sang the DDR national anthem "Auferstanden aus Ruinen" and AfD politicians joined in. Weimer proposed in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that streets and squares be named after people who opposed the DDR's unjust system, were imprisoned, or were killed.

Das kollektive Vergessen, Verdrängen und Verharmlosen der DDR sei die größte Herausforderung für die Erinnerung an die SED-Diktatur.

Chancellor and educational gaps

Chancellor Friedrich Merz posted on the platform X, noting that Germany is now united longer than it was divided and that freedom and democracy are not self-evident. Axel Klausmeier, director of the Stiftung Berliner Mauer, told RBB Inforadio that DDR history is far too little represented in school curricula, often appearing only late in upper secondary school. He stressed that the DDR was ruled autocratically without free elections. At the Stiftung Berliner Mauer, more than 200 witness interviews were conducted in 2025. According to one survey, not even 20 percent of Germans can link personal memories to the Wall's construction, and about one third did not even experience the Wall's fall.

How the Wall came to be

The DDR leadership under Walter Ulbricht ordered the Wall built to halt mass emigration. Between the state's founding in 1949 and August 1961, up to four million people had left the DDR. The border to the Bundesrepublik was sealed in 1952, but crossings between Berlin's four sectors remained a loophole. In June 1961, Ulbricht told a journalist from the Frankfurter Rundschau: "Niemand hat die Absicht, eine Mauer zu errichten." Two months later, on the morning of 13 August, soldiers and construction crews began blocking the Soviet sector's border with asphalt, cobblestones, and concrete barriers. Between 1 and 13 August 1961 alone, 47,000 East Germans had left through Berlin. Günter Litfin is regarded as the first victim of the shoot-to-kill order. According to the Stiftung Berliner Mauer, at least 915 people were killed at the Wall.