The Hinterland Wall in the Mauerpark
Why is it significant?
At the top of the slope runs a long line of grey concrete, but you can barely see the concrete: it is buried under layer upon layer of spray paint, tags, faces and slogans, some of them still wet. Put your hand on it. You are touching a real piece of the Berlin Wall. But which piece?
Key Facts
| Place | The Hinterland Wall in the Mauerpark |
|---|---|
| Address | Mauerpark, Gleimstraße 55, 10437 Berlin, Germany |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.54470, 13.40360 |
| Part of Walk | The Wall on Bernauer Straße: Escapes, Tunnels and the Mauerpark in Berlin |
| Generated | Generated |
At the top of the slope runs a long line of grey concrete, but you can barely see the concrete: it is buried under layer upon layer of spray paint, tags, faces and slogans, some of them still wet. Put your hand on it. You are touching a real piece of the Berlin Wall.
But which piece? This is not the wall the West saw. The famous outer wall, the one with the smooth rounded top that appeared on every postcard, faced West Berlin. What you are touching is the hinterland wall, the inner barrier on the eastern side of the strip. It was built to stop East Berliners from even reaching the border zone, and it faced the very people it was meant to keep in.
Think about the order of things for someone trying to escape from here. First this wall. Then a signal fence that set off an alarm at a touch, a strip of sand that showed every footprint, a patrol road, a line of lights, guards in towers, anti-vehicle ditches... and only then the outer wall. Most people who tried never got anywhere near it.
And then came November 1989. Within days of the 9th of November, new crossings were cut through the Wall all over the city, and soon afterwards people were walking freely across this ground for the first time in twenty-eight years. Most of the concrete was carted away and crushed, sold off as souvenirs or used in road building. This stretch survived, and today it belongs to the painters. Graffiti is allowed here, so the wall changes every week, sometimes every hour.
There is something fitting about it. The side of the Wall that East Berliners were never allowed to touch is now the one side of it everybody is invited to write on. Below you, in the stone amphitheatre, the karaoke crowds gather on summer Sundays. Now follow the top of the slope north, towards Gleimstraße, where the road disappears under the railway embankment.