One interesting thing about the unserviced "ghost stations" was that they were basically left as they had been before the wall, with old advertisments and all kind of decades-old-stuff, only a little room for the Volkspolizei was added. It was a window into a time long gone. Together with some feeling of passing close to enemy country, they gave a really eerie feeling - or at least it seems so to me in 1987, when I saw them as an 11year-old on a visit to Berlin with my parents.
Just a small addition: under Ulbricht, they were left in intentional disrepair, and for long years under Honecker too. That said after the Transit agreement and the official recognition of the GDR, in small intervals they did change out posters, to intentionally influence Westerners, especially with the guards posted close to the platform, fully armed. Oh and just a by the by, one of your copassengers was an informal agent of the Eastern regime constantly on the lookout for defectors. They could do so as the network was serviced by them.
Great video. I was born in East Germany and remember the first time my family went to West-Berlin after the wall fell. I was 9 years old and it felt like a different world.
@@VideoAmericanStyle you just described many unstable capatalist states. Though i appreacite your accuracy by calling it "soviet communism" and not just communism. Though more appropriately soviet socialism, as Stalin only declared the Soviet union socialist. Regardless, it's important to distinguish what communism is and the communist party creating Soviet esque socialism and attempting to transition into communism.
@@Johnny.Picklez The difference between capitalist and Marxist economies tends to be that unstable capitalist states are examples of bad capitalist states. Meanwhile everything described about unstable capitalist states are almost entirely uniform for Marxist states by default. Thus, most people don't like the idea of Marxists getting into power, regardless of their ideals.
@@stephenjenkins7971 their has been no marxist states. None fit into Marx theory, even if backed by it. Also it's objectively untrue to say socialist economy are worse. Look into world bank Analysis of socialist countries and the vast majority devolped at a faster or equal rate to similar capatalist countries (within economic range, as in they don't compare a undeveloped country to a devolped country). Bit ridiculous how "well any bad examples of capatalism are just bad and super rare!" When these poor countries are constantly abused and imperalized by larger more dominant countries. Why doesn't Africa succeed with capatalism? Because the two major capatalist powers, china and the US have their hands in Africa 24/7.
@@Johnny.Picklez Marxist states don't exist in reality and never can, but the process to reach them (Socialist) always get stuck there. Thus people just shorthand the attempts to reach Communism as Communism, dismissing claims by Marxists of "not real Communism" as just an attempt to rationalize the failed attempts to reach a state which is not reachable at all. You're gonna have to cite that study. Because West Germany complete blew out East Germany. South Korea lagged behind the North, but the North had immense economic backiung by the USSR and little-to-none by the US but still far surpassed it by the 90's. South Vietnam didn't exist long enough to compare. So what "similar capitalist countries" are you speaking of? The only one I could think of was the USSR, and that was accomplished through extreme bloodshed and suffering, to be blunt so I barely count it. Because the fact of the matter is that each and every Socialist country collapsed in on themselves and especially the ones which were subjugated quickly and eagerly switched to capitalist economies. There are almost no economies based on Marxist theory left. Btw, economy isn't even everything. Nazi Germany's economy completely overshot comparable capitalist and Marxist economies. I sure as helpl am not gonna give it a ringing endorsement for that. I didn't say bad examples of capitalism are super rare. Just that they're not the standard, while for Marxist-inspired nations they were. African nations have exploded out of poverty rapidly since adopting capitalism, for the most part. Hell, world poverty across the planet has dramatically fell, especially after the fall of the USSR. Really, if I wanted to be slightly disengenious, I could ostensibly claim that any opposition to capitalism could be framed as: "Why do you hate the Global Poor?" The US doesn't have its hands in Africa, not since the Cold War. At least not a major hand. China does, but it's relatively recent, though far more omnipresent. France also does, if you wanna make that argument. But at least don't confuse Western nations like that.
Same here. My history classes always focused on why the city was split and how people tried to escape from the east, but never on all these other things that happen when you cut a city in two. Very interesting to learn about!
I think that’s the most interesting part of Berlin. How the city evolved from the middle of the 19th century up until now, not only in the big scope of history, but how this history effected and still effects architecture, infrastructure and every day life. Even today the city is still adjusting its public transport, filling gaps left open because there hadn’t been any progress made connecting eastern and western Berlin during the Cold War and parts devastated during WW2 never repaired because of the wall. It’s complicated, as most of German history is, and I don’t expect most of the people to know about all of this, but for me it helps me understand my city much better and makes my daily commutes interesting. Thinking about what has happened at a place through the centuries, who walked where you walk, what their daily struggles were and still finding little things that have never changed in this everchanging city. Therefore, thanks for this video! Greetings from Berlin!
Lot's of young men from West germany moved to West Berlin because they did not have to do military service there. So it created a place with lot's of pacifist and war opposers squatting empty houses to live and have social clubs. After the well fell they went to East Berlin and squatted even more places together with the local punk scene.
@Eat the socialist Noone invented communism. The idea of a classless society goes all the way back to ancient Greece, and probably is even older than that.
I was a US Soldier from 1971-1974serving in Berlin, since I was a history buff this was a dream come true. We knew if the Soviets came over the Wall our life expectancy would be about 15 minutes. I watched the Wall go up when I was 10 years old and it scared me to death, I asked my Dad "Are we going to war with Russia" I spent time in Vietnam and that was scary, when I first touched the Berlin Wall in January of 1971, my body shook with fear. The people in Berlin were GREAT and very supportive of the Allied Troops reluctantly. I never thought I would live to see the WALL come down.
If you like, you can check out a map of conspiratory apartments of informal agents of the HV-A between 1962 and 1989, a lot of them, a third being born West Germans, worked for the Stasi. Certainly I don't have to tell you that any German woman coming close to a Western soldier was to be considered a Stasi agent.
Did Germans accept American, British, French & Russians? I mean Allies were after all destroyed their Nazi Government. We’re these forces seen as liberators or invaders?
@@anir2286 Depends on the individual. First of all it wasn't "their" Nazi government. In the election in 1932 about 33% voted for the Nazi party (giving them the needed majority) but that also means that about 66% didn't vote for them. Many didn't like the new leaders but they kept their mouth shut because they feared oppression. At the end of the war I think everyone was happy when the war was finally over because H!tler wanted the war to go on till the last man, no matter if everyone dies and whole Germany becomes a ruin. Even high ranked Generals tried to make a deal with the allies in the last weeks of the war. Stauffenberg tried to kill H!tler in an attempt to save Germany from complete destruction. After capitulation, most soldiers tried to surrender to the western allies and avoid the Soviets because they were considered more cruel. As history showed their fears became true. Germans that were captured by Soviets in eastern territory went straight to the gulag, often for many years, the majority of them dying there, soldiers and civilians! The ones captured in the west were treated quite fairly by the allies. So I believe many saw the forces as liberators first and in the next moment as invaders because of the uncertain future of Germany. No German wanted the division of the country in two parts, they were forced to live in two states! Fun fact: In 1993 the last Soviet soldiers left East Germany, the U.S. on the other hand is still here, deploying new nuclear weapons on German soil, using Germany as a chess board in Europe. There are a lot of protests at their base in Ramstein frequently but you won't here much about it in the media because they don't like to show Germans that shout "Ami go home". :D
One thing I heard that was rather interesting was that the status of West Berlin as a city that basically existed to exist, maintained from the outside by subsidy money but isolated from its own country, it became a great place to be poor and make art. You could have a flat and some performance space or your own techno club for not a whole lot of money.
@@vznquest after the fall of the Wall, yes, but before, West Berlin was a haven for alternative culture, also because they were exempt from the military service that their peers in West Germany were subjected to.
You and almost everyone else. I teach a German course and when we get to this part, the students are all staring at the map and trying to comprehend how wild this was. The divider between the two cities was a concrete Wall and around the city was a fence. A fence also separated not only West and East Germany, but Europe from north to south. Thus the metaphor "Iron Curtain".
Me too. I assumed there were border guards in the non-Berlin parts of East Germany bordering West Berlin to keep the East Germans out, but that the wall was just between the two parts of Berlin.
@@pangolin83 Well it was also formed by two cities like Buda and Pest. Howeve,r it was formed by Berlin and Kölln (similar: Cologne is Köln in German).
Just to add a few thoughts: there was a subtle difference in the way, West and East Germany officially called the two parts of the City which reflected different political positions. West Germany called them West-Berlin and Ost-Berlin, usually hyphenated, to stress the view that this was actually still one city, Berlin, that was violently cut in two parts (and reunification should be the ultimate goal). East Germany on the other hand, when talking about East Berlin, just called it Berlin, usually with the addition "Hauptstadt der DDR" (capital of the GDR, i.e. East Germany) -- which contradicted the Western position that the whole of Berlin had a special status under Allied control and thus East Berlin strictly speaking was not part of East Germany. West Berlin was called "Westberlin" (unhyphenated, as one word!) by East Germany. So the East German position was, that there were two completely different cities "Westberlin" and "Berlin, Hauptstadt der DDR".
@@danielvanr.8681 Not a no mans land, just not part of Berlin, Hauptstadt der DDR. The BRD was similarly not included in maps of the border areas of the DDR.
Fun fact: West Berliners could not vote in federal elections until reunification due to the city’s special status. Instead they were represented by 22 non-voting delegates chosen by the city-state legislature.
Plus less fun fact, they also didn't have to serve either so it became home for those who wished to dodge the draft on the account of not wishing to die.
The history of Berlin is fascinating. I have lived in the suburbs my whole life, but the post war era has thoroughly influenced the city under and above the ground. This can be seen in very different urban development and architectural decisions and it is really interesting stuff. I’d argue that there is probably no other place where the different influences of the cold war can be seen in such close proximity.
Yeah, i live on the former boarder at Bernauer Straße and definetly in the former french sector. Then again, him being american I give him some leeway on geography basics.
Born 52 and growing up in West-Berlin I got used to the situation early on and found it normal after some time. Visitors always felt caged in as they always bumped into a border. As teenagers we change west to east Marks 1 to 5 and enjoyed cheap shopping and food in the east as the official exchange was 1 to 1. Using the subway through East Berlin daily I purchased a rim of cigarettes duty free at the Friedrichstraße Intershop and sold it to friends and neighbors with a little profit. My monthly income as apprentice was only 120 Marks or 60 USD.
Did the West Berlin authorities ever check passengers exiting ftom the U Bahn, for purchases made at Friedrichstrasse to sell for profit? (I assume this was officially forbidden), and was there an official limit as to the amount you could buy?
@@Eurobrasil550 Its the same like duty-free shops at airports. You can carry 200 cigarettes (one rim) and one liter alcohol per person tacfree. Some people carried more and we're running a risk of being caught by a few free roaming custom agents. The East German government was in dire need of western currency to import vital products. The present government of Germany today is looking to me like DDR 2.0 a new socialistic republic where idiology rules over freedom. I'm so happy to have left Germany for good 15 years ago.
I remember 7 years ago, when I was in Berlin how so much Berlin wall was sold with so cheap price, but I dont have any intrest to buy small part of concreate wall.
A little add on from a Berlin train nerd: the U9 Ubahn line was only built when there were already two separate states (which is why it runs kind of parallel to the S-Bahn on some parts that was operated by the GDR even when running in the west). The same is true for large parts of the U7.
@@MicrosoftSam92 Ringbahn was far more West in Charlottenburg while u9 was thru Moabit. Minimum 5 kms away. Plus in the 80ies the ringbahn did not operate.
At some point in the History of Berlin, they thought about building a Monorail. Walther Gropius himself (The Inventor of Bauhaus ("Form follows funktion")) argued to build a subway instead, because building a Monorail would be like dividing Berlin with a large wall, and that would be bad. This became ironic in 1961.
That was my first thought. In fact, Highway 101 divides two towns in California; Eureka and Arcata both have a highway running through them. It's awful, and Caltrans deeply regrets it, for all the good that does.
Some nerd detail on the graphic, the map of the subway that was drawn, was the map at around 2000, The north eastern part of Baden-Württemberg at that time was not part of french controlled territory but american controlled territorry. Baden-Württemberg at that time was three states, the two french controlled states Baden, and Württemberg-Hohenzollern, and the american Württemberg-Baden. Btw. Very great and interresting video.
also the map at 2:04 is missing the most eastern parts that were given to poland and the soviet union. like the borders should be like they were in 1945, not today (Czechoslovakia for example)
Same for the Ost Berlin U5; the last 2 stations were in a town called Hoenow. But sometime in late 1990, Berlin took over the areas by the last 2 stations
I'm currently doing my semester abroad in Berlin and it feels as though the things to see and do and learn here are almost endless!! Such a fascinating city.
Enjoy your time in Berlin!!! I am sure that like me and my study group back in 1978 Berlin will change your life. Ich habe noch ein Koffer in Berlin!!!
Just don't get caught in Berlin the day they celebrate when the wall fell (in or around November 9th) everything shuts down people usually spend time with family. So not much going on that weekend lol
I was born 10 years after the wall came down but you can still feel and see the differences in modern Berlin. The entire topic is so emotional and historical that it’s hard not to feel emotional too when hearing about the separation of two parts of the same country.
Can you make a video on Nicosia, Cyprus? It would be interesting to see your take on how the city planning was affected by the division. Great videos, keep it up!
Interesting fact about the name Nicosia. It is a misunderstanding of the Greek Alphabet that led to it having this name. It starts with a Lambda, rather than a Nu, in its endonym, but the Lambda was misunderstood for an N.
In nNikosia there is so-called UN-Line diveded the city also in two parts. But both part have an access to the rual area. Same happened to Vienna from 1945 until 1655. But in the greek part of Nikosia exists a Check Point Charlie similar to the famous one in Berlin. And in the UN-Zone is located the original airport: It is still a ghosted facility like the mentioned subways. It have still the avertisments of the year 1971.
I crossed from the west Berlin into east Berlin at Friedrich Str. In 1982 it was like stepping back in time. Still a lot of war damage in East Berlin at that time
@@lucasrem what are you talking about ? East Berlin development at that time was about 25 years behind west Berlin. So keep your smartarse comments to yourself
I did that same journey in 1985 and had trouble spending the 10 Ostmarks in my pocket. On the return trip they held me for half an hour because they thought I was trying to defect. Interesting experience.
The two Berlins' airports were entertainingly different. West Berlin's Tegel with its flights to Hamburg and Munich and GDR Berlin's Schönefeld with Maputo and Havana flights.
And you could fly to and from Tempelhof also in the West - I did that several times. They only closed Tempelhof in the last ten years. The good thing about Tempelhof it was close to the city centre.
My brother and his friend compared stories visiting east Berlin in the 80's with their school class trip, (they did this in separate schools), this was in about 96' when we visited him living in Berlin at the time. New construction in the city was crazy then. When we visited the Fernsehturm tower (the big TV tower on the east side that has an observation deck) my brothers friend recalled how looking back at West Berlin from the towers observation deck; it looked like the west was having a disco party all the time. Clearly with the lights of the city and how colorful it looked, and all the movement with vehicles etc, versus looking into the part of the east Berlin they could see, it looked so much more devoid of activity and no colorful lights to hint at that activity.
this history is part of what makes Berlin today a unique and wonderful city, you can still feel the effects of this divide even with the train stations
Now that you covered Berlin, you should also do a video on East German cities post unification! Cities like Halle, Chemnitz, Magdeburg and others lost a third of their population within 5-10 years after the unification. In Halle, the city is still dismantling large amounts of empty housing.
For a city planner it might be interesting, indeed. It's not as if they just randomly demolish buildings. However, my childhood home and school is just an empty field now.
From what I saw a couple of years ago, most of the houses being dismantled are not in Halle proper but Plattenbauten in Halle-Neustadt. There was even a documentary about the "Scheiben" being left to rot and probably being torn down soon because they couldn't find buyers where they interviewed the original construction workers. I didn't follow how it turned out, in 2014 the "Scheiben" were still there, albeit rotting. Did they dismantle them or blow them up in the meantime?
Very interesting. Thanks. I made quite a few trips to Berlin back in the “wall” days - never knew any of this about the utilities. (Except U-Bahn ghost stations that I had the chance to experience - also remember as a kid in 1964 watching the almost totally empty S-Bahn trains rolling through West Berlin).
I think you missed the opportunity to mention that west Berlin abandoned it's trams (streetcars). So, like 99% of the current tram network is still in the East.
@@petesmitt you are trolling! Trams are in their advantages and disadvantages between buses and metros with regard of comfort, speed, capacity, building time and price. In my district the tram does such a good job, that there is no demand for a metro line.
I've been living in Berlin for 15 years but have never heard the post-war era condensed into a coherent story so elegantly. Hearing about the actual operational separation and it's issues has been totally new - thanks for this great and entertaining education! 👏
I remember going to Berlin in 1987, and travelling around East and West Berlin it was really weird! Especially Banhof FrederickStrasse.. In which the top floor was in the west, the grant for was in East Germany, and the underground section was in the west.
I lived in West Berlin in the 1980s. Spent three years living with a lady from the Spandau district. A wonderful experience. Hard to say why, maybe because we were 'contained', but the city was alive. There was everything in there. Restaurants, pubs, museums, parks, forests, vibrant shopping areas, lovely towns with rows of shops and cafes for 'coffee and cake'. Summers were long and warm. Winters could be hard, but the city never stopped. I went back in 1994. It was still vibrant and exciting, but I couldn't help but notice the explosion in the amount of people. Everywhere was packed out. Not been back since, would love to visit and see old haunts.
my grandma managed to escape east berlin 3 days after the wall was announced, if she had been found out she would've been shot on sight. crazy how this was only last century
2:13 Actually the french and the british sector are the other way around. The british controlled the sector in the middle, in which e.g. the Reichstag building stands.
I really like this way of thinking about urban development. Kinda connecting the dots. I have some observations and fail to explain them systematically.
i love these historical explorations about cities around the world! i really enjoyed your video about soviet style cites and this one of course! i would love to see more videos like these! :D
As a tour guide, my group and I were waiting at Teigarten for the U-Bahn. The train came in but instead of returning backwards into the West, it disappeared under the EAST. Shortly nafter, our train came out of the West and no-one other than me was interested in waiting for another eastbound train very much to my lifetime annoyance I never got here. My cook and driver later told me they were on the U-Bahn and when they got up off their seats to exit the train for lunch, a platform of soldiers (Vopo) pointed rifles at thenm and proceeded to check under the train with mirrors. Obviously by mistake, they witnessed what I missed. Damn.
You got two flags mixed at 2:15 Uk and france were the other way around. You can even feel the effects today, as the schools in the north of berlin mostly offer french as a third language. The southern schools mostly have spanish
This video is a great example of the fact that societies don't care about night shift/3rd shift workers. Those workers were cut off from their families and homes and day shift workers were not. Night shifters see this disregard for their jobs on a daily basis. Dostors offices are closed at night. Mechanic shops are only open during the day. Business hours are dayshift hours. TV and radio broadcasts refer to morning rush hour as the commute to work and the evening one as the commute from work. Drivers drive fast in the morning but slower at night. Elementary, Middle, and High Schools operate on a Mon-Fri 8 AM-early PM model. All of this reinfoces the idea that people only work 9-5 on Mondays through Fridays. It is very rude that society is this way but that's how it is. You are the ghost workers when you work at night.
To be fair though, at least it's easier to do things on your time off. If you work 9-5 on weekdays and everything is only open 9-5 on weekdays you have to take days off whenever you need to go to an appointment or the bank.
I studied in Berlin in 1978 (my mother was German and lived in Berlin through WWII). It was a great experience and it made all of us in the program truly appreciate the freedoms we have here. As US citizens we could travel "freely" between east and west, which I only did twice. There really wasn't any reason to go to East Berlin, unless you wanted to see the mass of bombed out buildings that remained at that time. It was always interesting riding the subway under East Berlin and going through the ghost stations. Actually quite creepy as they were dark and you would catch glimpses of armed soldiers. The station at Friedrichstrasse was quite interesting having been split in half for passengers from the west and those from the East. West Berliners very much frowned on anyone in the West riding the S-Bahn. When you rode your fare directly supported East Germany. One day a fellow student and I decide to ride the S-Bahn "Schwarz" (no ticket). No one else was on the train (still pre-war carriages) as we rumbled to the last station in Grünewald (a huge urban forest/park in the west). When we got off of the train an East German officer approached us and asked for our tickets. YIKES!!!! Our reaction was to run out of the station to the safety of West Berlin outside of the station. When you were on the S-Bahn or in a station you were on East German territory even though you were in the west. Well that turned into another adventure as it was winter, it was evening and that part of the city is not an urban center. We walked for a while and finally found a house with a their porch light on. Fortunately a woman answered the door and directed us to the U-Bahn station so we made it back safe and sound. I still love Berlin, one of my favorite cities. 3 years ago it had been 40 years since our study group. There were 14 of us and I have remained in contact with a couple of them. We got a wild hair and thought it would be great to have a reunion IN BERLIN. Well, 12 of us made it, and it was a great reunion. We are actually having another smaller reunion here in Colorado in a few weeks. Great memories of my time studying in Berlin and visiting the city since then. It was a great trip when we brought my mother back to Berlin after the wall had fallen. So glad we are able to go to Berlin one liast time with Mom before she passed away.
Very interesting. I also studied in Berlin in 1979 and had similar experiences. Still have very good memories of that time - the fact that West Berlin had great nightlife until dawn was a real 'eye opener' for me as 18 years old.
@@TheChrisEMartin That all-night tradition goes back a long way, but after the war there was a curfew. East and West authorities started extending the open hours in a rivalry before the Wall was built and finally the West Allies eliminated it entirely.
Great video! One detail though: the map of divided Berlin shown starting at 2:02 has the French and British zones swapped. The northernmpost zone was Frenach, and the middle zone British.
I was stationed in West Berlin with the U.S. Army from 1984-87. You could see the wall and East German guard towers from our quarters (apartment) about 100 meters away. Pretty scary being 100 miles inside enemy territory with wife and kids, surrounded by 10 Soviet tank divisions (Berlin Brigade had one tank company), but you got used to it. I recently saw a documentary about Teufelsberg, which at the time was a super sensitive/top secret listening post built on the rubble after the bombing of Berlin in WWII. It's completely abandoned, open, and covered with graffiti and underbrush. VERY surreal. It just doesn't seem that long ago - almost like a dream. Life goes by so quickly....
Kind of the other way around since they did the exact same split, they just ended it. The People's Republic of Austria would have had a Yugoslavia-like existence.
DDR: To show the power of communism, I sawed this city in half! USA: And repaired it with only David Hasselhoff 2:03 The US zone should be bigger. The section of the French zone jutting into the American zone (Württemberg-Baden; this was merged with Württemberg-Hohenzollern and Baden into Baden-Württemberg in 1952) should be American rather than French
I was stationed in West Berlin from 1984-1987 with the U.S. Army. The transit system there was incredible and a motor vehicle wasn't necessary to get around the city. Soldiers that had never been assigned to the city were briefed on the S Bahn system, we were told we weren't allowed to use it and could only use the U Bahn. I forgot that East Germany "owned" the S Bahn and that's the reason we weren't allowed to use it.
It was off-limits due to the boycott but making it off-limits U.S. authorities also got out of problems with lost or drowsy GI's riding into the East. The two U-Bahn lines that transited East Berlin were rarely used by soldiers. Also, the Bahnpolizei were under the control of the East and we had to stay away from them. It was also easy to implement because by the 1960's most of the senior ranks had POV's and some of them rarely used public transit.
very nice done video! just one little mistake I saw on the map shwon at 2:29. The british and the french sector got confused with each other. The northern part of West Berlin was french sector with districts like Wedding, Reinickendorf and the western part with districts like Spandau, Charlottenburg, Moabit and so on was british not the other way around. Thanks for the informative video and greetings from Berlin
Due to lack of car ownership extensive public transport was actually vital in socialist countries. I don‘t know about service levels, but I can well imagine the GDR had better public transport coverage than West Germany.
Not really, a lot of rail lines in the east were striped as reparations. Rail service is the west was good until it started declining during the mid 80s and became even worse in the 90s. Now, Germanys rail service east and west ist mediocore for a european developed country.
@@Skullair313 Yeah. And one of my friend who's mixed German & Chinese says although Germany still has pretty good public transit compared to America (and pretty much most of the New World, including Canada, AU/NZ and most of LatAm), he still considers Germany a highly car dependent society, especially compared to Japan or even China.
@@bahnspotterEU Well theoretically. But in China at that time we were even poorer, and thus bikes are the main form of transportation for a lot of families. So much so that, in most western countries, 'shoulder lanes' of urban streets are for parking by default, while in China they're bike lanes by default.
I've been to Berlin this year, even visited the Berlin wall at the East side gallery and it's honestly amazing how you can't even tell it's ever been split in 2.
I've only been to Berlin once, a few years ago. I didn't even know my hotel was in former East Berlin side. Aside from some areas where there are bricks in the street, telling you where the split was, along with some of the Berlin Wall left for historic purposes, along with Checkpoint Charlie, I really couldn't tell where the border was.
I used to think East and West Berlin were split along the lines with the rest of the country. I did not know West Berlin was located wholly within East Germany and the Berlin Wall was actually a circular wall that completely walled off.
THANK YOU for Nebula+. It was annoying to have to run to Nebula and pick up the same video from a certain point. Since Nebula content doesn't seem to update as often (or have as many of the creators) as TH-cam, I like to keep my TH-cam connection. The ability to just continue in the bonus video makes it MUCH easier to see the extra content I want to see by jumping over there.
Fun fact: You can still see the East-West divide in Berlin if you look at a picture of it from space. In the East, streetlights are predominately sodium-vapour lamps with a yellower hue, while in the West, they use fluorescent lights with a whiter hue.
It actually switched around for most parts, as the older East-Berlin lighting is now being replaced by bright white LEDs while the west now remains with the older and slightly more yellow flourecent lights.
As a resident of Berlin I totally enjoyed this video. It tells a lot about the history of the city. I would have talked about some of the building used at the time (like the Tränenpalaist, the custom building at the station of Friedrickstraße), but it is a fantastic video even so P.S.: The map of the U-Bahn that you've shown at the beginning is dated: the fifth line (U5) had been extended, in part several years ago (10?), the biggest part was open in the last winter, but hey, it's material for a "(Almost) All the mistakes I made" video 😂😂
I have been in Berlin on Jan 89 (11 months before the collapse). One curiosity that I have noticed. To come back to Munchen we got the train in Friedrich strasse station. That was a metro station and in the west sector. But in a certain way the platform of the train was "managed" by the east. No visa, no passport but some Grenztruppen der DDR along the platform. The train arrived (from the east), two patrols checking everything inside and under the train with dogs and than they let us in.
Friedrichstr was in East Berlin, but as stated in the video, it was divided. One minor part was for transition to and from West Berlin. Greetings from Berlin! ;-)
Another way in which West Berlin was propped up was by making exceptions to the draft (Wehrdienst) so a lot of young men moved there at least for a few years to avoid that.
Very good video. One thing to try not to confuse: when referring to the 4 way division of Berlin, use the word “sector”. When referring to the 4 way division of Germany, use the word “zone”. Within the context of this historical period these terms are not interchangeable. Thanks.
To be completely destroyed by the enemy and, after just two decades, recover and become the locomotive of the European economy. Only one nation is capable of this: the Germans. Wish greater prosperity to you! From Tajikistan.😀
The Friedrichstraße Station got extended by one building, which is called Tänenpalast (= palace of tears), since it was the separation point for Eastern and Western Familys.
Brilliant video. I spent significant periods of time in both West and East Berlin, 1968 to 1989. You get every factual detail right: both unusual and difficult! One of the oddest things I recall is that you could get off the U Bahn (...U6 or U8?) at Friedrichstraße and stand on the platform "beneath" or "in" East Germany and NOT go upstairs to enter the GDR formally. It was ... frowned upon, maybe ?forbidden?, but quite feasible. I think there were even East German shops/kiosks on the platform?
My Oma lived in West Berlin and my first visit to West Berlin (and West Germany) was in 1978. I remember having to go through the various checkpoints to enter into East Germany to travel through to West Germany. I went back to Berlin in 1990 for my Oma's 70th birthday and chisled off pieces of the Berlin Wall and traveled all around the former East Berlin. I remember all the funny looking cars there and the potholes in the roads. I Went back to Berlin in 2018 to visit family and except for the wall segments still standing for tourist, you'd never think that the city was once divded.
As a resident of Berlin, I would like to thank you for this very interesting documentary. I only noticed two small errors that I wanted to bring to your attention: 1. At 2:02 you show the occupation zones in Germany at the time, with the entire state of (nowadays) Baden-Würrtenberg (in the south-west) being shown as belonging entirely to the French occupation zone; in fact, however, only the southern part belonged to the French zone, the northern part to the American occupation zone; 2. In the map of the occupation zones in Berlin, at 2:12 and 3:29 you mistakenly interchanged the British sector (in the centre of West Berlin) and the French sector (in the north of West Berlin). Anyway, you did a great job!
Doctor, I lived there 85-86 and used to jog through an area with row after row of the tiniest and cutest cottages Berliners had as a sort of out-of-the-city getaway, since actually leaving was a hassle. Do you know if those are still a thing? Sorry, all I can remember for location was that it was in the US sector and close to the nude beach.
Yes this is part of the history I grew up with. I lived only 20miles away from the wall near Braunschweig. When the wall came down I was one of the first to cross over because of my uncle who had done a lot of import from China so we had a lot of diplomatic friendship going on with the UDSSR back than. So we took a taxi for a day and drove thru the wall check points into East Berlin where we visited a lot including museum's and the Alexander Platz over which we walked and it was so strange that feeling because we were the only people on that gigantic open area called the Alexander Platz which even today is still the same.
This is a fantastic idea for a video! The logistics of severing all of the utilities and public services of a city because of geopolitics ... that has to be a monumental and bizarre project!
@@burgerpommes2001 it's a perfectly straightforward paraphrase for its purpose and a near 1:1 translation. why use a foreign language when your own one is befitting? that's stupid :D
The diffence is that in one side mostly turks live and in the other side mostly greeks. Even if the city reunited, it would always be split defacto in half.
So when I look out my window I have basically the view you see at 2:54 :D The Building and the church are still the same. the photo must've been taken before the house I live in was constructed at almost the same spot. Ofcourse the scenery has changed since then but that church is very distinct. Spotting stuff like this is alwas a pleasent surprise :D
I was in Berlin in the summer of 1990, before unification and after the Wall fell. On the U-bahn, I saw workers restoring some of the ghost stations, the trains didn't stop. I also chipped some chunks off the Wall myself.
Cities split in half in north america: Mexicali & Calexico, Nogales, (US) & Nogales, (MX). Fun fact, MEXIco + CALIfornia = Mexicali and CALifornia + mEXiCO = Calexico.
Texarkana, Texas and Texarkana, Arkansas. Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas (I know they are both within one country, but you get the picture)
Very interesting video. As a sort of transit nerd living in Berlin, this is all very "natural" to me but I'd guess most people have never thought about the "on the ground" realities of spliting a city in half and it would seem really strange. On a sidenote: Here is an interesting video of the evolution of Berlin's transportation network, where the impacts of the division (and the stitching together of the network post-reunification) is visible: th-cam.com/video/MFtwQuSZLp8/w-d-xo.html
The podcast "99% Invisible" has had at least 2 episodes on Berlin. Episode 104, "Tunnel 57" is about the wall itself, and a tunnel under it used for escapes. Episode 442, "Tanz Tanz Revolution" is about how the situation in Berlin before the fall of the wall has lead it to become one of the major party cities in Europe. There's even a connection to Detroit (a musical influence on the city).
I recall seeing the wall's fall on the news in school. Didn't understand much of what that meant to the world at that age, but I still recall it as a good day for us to celebrate in class.
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One interesting thing about the unserviced "ghost stations" was that they were basically left as they had been before the wall, with old advertisments and all kind of decades-old-stuff, only a little room for the Volkspolizei was added. It was a window into a time long gone. Together with some feeling of passing close to enemy country, they gave a really eerie feeling - or at least it seems so to me in 1987, when I saw them as an 11year-old on a visit to Berlin with my parents.
Your description is giving me Fallout vibes
(the game series, not literal nuclear fallout - that'd be even worse)
No paranormal activity?
@@jeffbenton6183 DDR is like vibeo gaem!!!!
I have travelled on the U6 and U8 many times in the 1980s (and since)
Just a small addition: under Ulbricht, they were left in intentional disrepair, and for long years under Honecker too. That said after the Transit agreement and the official recognition of the GDR, in small intervals they did change out posters, to intentionally influence Westerners, especially with the guards posted close to the platform, fully armed.
Oh and just a by the by, one of your copassengers was an informal agent of the Eastern regime constantly on the lookout for defectors. They could do so as the network was serviced by them.
Great video. I was born in East Germany and remember the first time my family went to West-Berlin after the wall fell. I was 9 years old and it felt like a different world.
wich one was better?
@@VideoAmericanStyle you just described many unstable capatalist states. Though i appreacite your accuracy by calling it "soviet communism" and not just communism. Though more appropriately soviet socialism, as Stalin only declared the Soviet union socialist. Regardless, it's important to distinguish what communism is and the communist party creating Soviet esque socialism and attempting to transition into communism.
@@Johnny.Picklez The difference between capitalist and Marxist economies tends to be that unstable capitalist states are examples of bad capitalist states. Meanwhile everything described about unstable capitalist states are almost entirely uniform for Marxist states by default. Thus, most people don't like the idea of Marxists getting into power, regardless of their ideals.
@@stephenjenkins7971 their has been no marxist states. None fit into Marx theory, even if backed by it. Also it's objectively untrue to say socialist economy are worse. Look into world bank Analysis of socialist countries and the vast majority devolped at a faster or equal rate to similar capatalist countries (within economic range, as in they don't compare a undeveloped country to a devolped country). Bit ridiculous how "well any bad examples of capatalism are just bad and super rare!" When these poor countries are constantly abused and imperalized by larger more dominant countries. Why doesn't Africa succeed with capatalism? Because the two major capatalist powers, china and the US have their hands in Africa 24/7.
@@Johnny.Picklez Marxist states don't exist in reality and never can, but the process to reach them (Socialist) always get stuck there. Thus people just shorthand the attempts to reach Communism as Communism, dismissing claims by Marxists of "not real Communism" as just an attempt to rationalize the failed attempts to reach a state which is not reachable at all.
You're gonna have to cite that study. Because West Germany complete blew out East Germany. South Korea lagged behind the North, but the North had immense economic backiung by the USSR and little-to-none by the US but still far surpassed it by the 90's. South Vietnam didn't exist long enough to compare. So what "similar capitalist countries" are you speaking of? The only one I could think of was the USSR, and that was accomplished through extreme bloodshed and suffering, to be blunt so I barely count it. Because the fact of the matter is that each and every Socialist country collapsed in on themselves and especially the ones which were subjugated quickly and eagerly switched to capitalist economies. There are almost no economies based on Marxist theory left.
Btw, economy isn't even everything. Nazi Germany's economy completely overshot comparable capitalist and Marxist economies. I sure as helpl am not gonna give it a ringing endorsement for that.
I didn't say bad examples of capitalism are super rare. Just that they're not the standard, while for Marxist-inspired nations they were.
African nations have exploded out of poverty rapidly since adopting capitalism, for the most part. Hell, world poverty across the planet has dramatically fell, especially after the fall of the USSR. Really, if I wanted to be slightly disengenious, I could ostensibly claim that any opposition to capitalism could be framed as: "Why do you hate the Global Poor?"
The US doesn't have its hands in Africa, not since the Cold War. At least not a major hand. China does, but it's relatively recent, though far more omnipresent. France also does, if you wanna make that argument. But at least don't confuse Western nations like that.
I’d never considered that they would have needed to adjust the subway lines. Thanks for another awesome video!
Same here. My history classes always focused on why the city was split and how people tried to escape from the east, but never on all these other things that happen when you cut a city in two. Very interesting to learn about!
Two of my favorite city-related youtube channels on the same thread
I don't even think about stuff like this, There are no subways in my country.
I think that’s the most interesting part of Berlin. How the city evolved from the middle of the 19th century up until now, not only in the big scope of history, but how this history effected and still effects architecture, infrastructure and every day life. Even today the city is still adjusting its public transport, filling gaps left open because there hadn’t been any progress made connecting eastern and western Berlin during the Cold War and parts devastated during WW2 never repaired because of the wall. It’s complicated, as most of German history is, and I don’t expect most of the people to know about all of this, but for me it helps me understand my city much better and makes my daily commutes interesting. Thinking about what has happened at a place through the centuries, who walked where you walk, what their daily struggles were and still finding little things that have never changed in this everchanging city. Therefore, thanks for this video! Greetings from Berlin!
The reopening of the ghost stations and reconnecting all the severed U-Bahn and S-Bahn lines was the best part of reunification.
Lot's of young men from West germany moved to West Berlin because they did not have to do military service there. So it created a place with lot's of pacifist and war opposers squatting empty houses to live and have social clubs. After the well fell they went to East Berlin and squatted even more places together with the local punk scene.
@Eat the socialist Noone invented communism. The idea of a classless society goes all the way back to ancient Greece, and probably is even older than that.
@Eat the socialist I see, your historic knowledge is limited
@Renard Roux Rebelle Compare 1961 East Berlin Vs 2021 Hong Kong in your Next Video Project!!
And now all those houses are unaffordable even if you have a good job.
@@zico739 danke hipster
I was a US Soldier from 1971-1974serving in Berlin, since I was a history buff this was a dream come true. We knew if the Soviets came over the Wall our life expectancy would be about 15 minutes.
I watched the Wall go up when I was 10 years old and it scared me to death, I asked my Dad "Are we going to war with Russia" I spent time in Vietnam and that was scary, when I first touched the Berlin Wall in January of 1971, my body shook with fear.
The people in Berlin were GREAT and very supportive of the Allied Troops reluctantly. I never thought I would live to see the WALL come down.
If you like, you can check out a map of conspiratory apartments of informal agents of the HV-A between 1962 and 1989, a lot of them, a third being born West Germans, worked for the Stasi. Certainly I don't have to tell you that any German woman coming close to a Western soldier was to be considered a Stasi agent.
Did Germans accept American, British, French & Russians? I mean Allies were after all destroyed their Nazi Government. We’re these forces seen as liberators or invaders?
@@anir2286 Depends on the individual. First of all it wasn't "their" Nazi government. In the election in 1932 about 33% voted for the Nazi party (giving them the needed majority) but that also means that about 66% didn't vote for them. Many didn't like the new leaders but they kept their mouth shut because they feared oppression. At the end of the war I think everyone was happy when the war was finally over because H!tler wanted the war to go on till the last man, no matter if everyone dies and whole Germany becomes a ruin. Even high ranked Generals tried to make a deal with the allies in the last weeks of the war. Stauffenberg tried to kill H!tler in an attempt to save Germany from complete destruction. After capitulation, most soldiers tried to surrender to the western allies and avoid the Soviets because they were considered more cruel. As history showed their fears became true. Germans that were captured by Soviets in eastern territory went straight to the gulag, often for many years, the majority of them dying there, soldiers and civilians! The ones captured in the west were treated quite fairly by the allies. So I believe many saw the forces as liberators first and in the next moment as invaders because of the uncertain future of Germany. No German wanted the division of the country in two parts, they were forced to live in two states! Fun fact: In 1993 the last Soviet soldiers left East Germany, the U.S. on the other hand is still here, deploying new nuclear weapons on German soil, using Germany as a chess board in Europe. There are a lot of protests at their base in Ramstein frequently but you won't here much about it in the media because they don't like to show Germans that shout "Ami go home". :D
@@GrandTheftChris wow these things are never on mainstream media. Nice comparison.
Thankyou for your service
One thing I heard that was rather interesting was that the status of West Berlin as a city that basically existed to exist, maintained from the outside by subsidy money but isolated from its own country, it became a great place to be poor and make art. You could have a flat and some performance space or your own techno club for not a whole lot of money.
yeah, a lot of artists, authors, musicians etc lived in west berlin back then. but that time is long gone.
Don't you mean East Berlin? The techno clubs and culture came as a result of the wall falling and artists flooding the cheaper east side, iirc.
@@vznquest Alexander is right, the artists etc already lived there before 89. I'm a Berliner, I can confirm
@@vznquest after the fall of the Wall, yes, but before, West Berlin was a haven for alternative culture, also because they were exempt from the military service that their peers in West Germany were subjected to.
West-Berlin was the place to get around conscription
For some reason, I never realized the wall extended completely around West Berlin; I always just pictured a single wall cutting Berlin in two.
You and almost everyone else. I teach a German course and when we get to this part, the students are all staring at the map and trying to comprehend how wild this was. The divider between the two cities was a concrete Wall and around the city was a fence. A fence also separated not only West and East Germany, but Europe from north to south. Thus the metaphor "Iron Curtain".
Me too. I assumed there were border guards in the non-Berlin parts of East Germany bordering West Berlin to keep the East Germans out, but that the wall was just between the two parts of Berlin.
That would have been nice: Just go to the end of the wall and walk around ;-)
And I thought the Berlin wall was part of the Iron Curtain...
@@jamesr1703 wow thank you for the knowledge drop
they should have called them Ber and Lin. missed opportunity
Budapest-esque! Would be another good addition
Would need a slight renaming, Bär and Lien
@@pangolin83 Well it was also formed by two cities like Buda and Pest. Howeve,r it was formed by Berlin and Kölln (similar: Cologne is Köln in German).
Berlin was not one city back then. Prussia made it into one
Bernd and Linda ... haha
Just to add a few thoughts: there was a subtle difference in the way, West and East Germany officially called the two parts of the City which reflected different political positions. West Germany called them West-Berlin and Ost-Berlin, usually hyphenated, to stress the view that this was actually still one city, Berlin, that was violently cut in two parts (and reunification should be the ultimate goal). East Germany on the other hand, when talking about East Berlin, just called it Berlin, usually with the addition "Hauptstadt der DDR" (capital of the GDR, i.e. East Germany) -- which contradicted the Western position that the whole of Berlin had a special status under Allied control and thus East Berlin strictly speaking was not part of East Germany. West Berlin was called "Westberlin" (unhyphenated, as one word!) by East Germany. So the East German position was, that there were two completely different cities "Westberlin" and "Berlin, Hauptstadt der DDR".
Stalin's idea, I'd guess. That was a very bad man.
As a side note: on East German maps of Berlin, the Western parts were completely blanked out. Just one big no man's land....
@@danielvanr.8681now that is saying something without actually saying it! It just doesn’t exist, nothing to see here. Shit that’s dark.
@@danielvanr.8681 Not a no mans land, just not part of Berlin, Hauptstadt der DDR. The BRD was similarly not included in maps of the border areas of the DDR.
Fun fact: West Berliners could not vote in federal elections until reunification due to the city’s special status. Instead they were represented by 22 non-voting delegates chosen by the city-state legislature.
Plus less fun fact, they also didn't have to serve either so it became home for those who wished to dodge the draft on the account of not wishing to die.
Kind of DC like
Voting, after what they did, keep then under some US embargo!
we never need that Big Germany again, or Stasi merkel Europe!
West Berlin was never a part of West Germany and only joined the Bundesrepublik on the day of reunification, the same day as East Germany.
They are doing same here now in America..the leftys&deep state(obmah&his man wife) so were stuck with a dementia idiot!!
4:41 I see you there, putting in modern stock footage but coloring it black and white
It’s smart tho would’ve never known if u didn’t point it out
How do u know?
@@greenmachine5600 the crispness and lack of film damage.
You dont “color” footage into black and white, you desaturate it.
@@ericktellez7632 it ain't that deep bruh
The history of Berlin is fascinating. I have lived in the suburbs my whole life, but the post war era has thoroughly influenced the city under and above the ground. This can be seen in very different urban development and architectural decisions and it is really interesting stuff. I’d argue that there is probably no other place where the different influences of the cold war can be seen in such close proximity.
2:13 I'm pretty sure the map is wrong - the British and French sectors should be swapped
Yes, he switched them up
It is
ee
Agree!
Yeah, i live on the former boarder at Bernauer Straße and definetly in the former french sector.
Then again, him being american I give him some leeway on geography basics.
The Rentenmark is a currency from the Weimar Republik. The GDR had the "Mark of the GDR". Minor mistake there.
Yes, I caught that too.
Thanks. He had me wondering if there was a Rentenmark temporarily before the "DDR Mark".
Born 52 and growing up in West-Berlin I got used to the situation early on and found it normal after some time. Visitors always felt caged in as they always bumped into a border. As teenagers we change west to east Marks 1 to 5 and enjoyed cheap shopping and food in the east as the official exchange was 1 to 1. Using the subway through East Berlin daily I purchased a rim of cigarettes duty free at the Friedrichstraße Intershop and sold it to friends and neighbors with a little profit. My monthly income as apprentice was only 120 Marks or 60 USD.
Did the West Berlin authorities ever check passengers exiting ftom the U Bahn, for purchases made at Friedrichstrasse to sell for profit? (I assume this was officially forbidden), and was there an official limit as to the amount you could buy?
@@Eurobrasil550 Its the same like duty-free shops at airports. You can carry 200 cigarettes (one rim) and one liter alcohol per person tacfree. Some people carried more and we're running a risk of being caught by a few free roaming custom agents. The East German government was in dire need of western currency to import vital products. The present government of Germany today is looking to me like DDR 2.0 a new socialistic republic where idiology rules over freedom. I'm so happy to have left Germany for good 15 years ago.
Ah, should've asked me to gather some footage when I was still in Berlin!
You’re not in Berlin anymore? Did you move back?^^
You moved back? I hoped I would bump into you one day here with your funny hat.
@@raileon Compare 1961 East Berlin Vs 2021 Hong Kong in your Next Video Project!!
I remember 7 years ago, when I was in Berlin how so much Berlin wall was sold with so cheap price, but I dont have any intrest to buy small part of concreate wall.
A little add on from a Berlin train nerd: the U9 Ubahn line was only built when there were already two separate states (which is why it runs kind of parallel to the S-Bahn on some parts that was operated by the GDR even when running in the west). The same is true for large parts of the U7.
U9 ran parallel to the S-Bahn? I can't confirm!
@@michelangelos-pizzeria It runs kind of parallel tonthe western part of the Ringbahn and parallel between Zoo and Tiergarten/Hansaviertel
@@MicrosoftSam92 Ringbahn was far more West in Charlottenburg while u9 was thru Moabit. Minimum 5 kms away. Plus in the 80ies the ringbahn did not operate.
The U7 was actually built in West Berlin, splitting the second branch of the U6
How to Split a City in Half:
Build a highway.
At some point in the History of Berlin, they thought about building a Monorail. Walther Gropius himself (The Inventor of Bauhaus ("Form follows funktion")) argued to build a subway instead, because building a Monorail would be like dividing Berlin with a large wall, and that would be bad. This became ironic in 1961.
Rochester NY moment
That was my first thought. In fact, Highway 101 divides two towns in California; Eureka and Arcata both have a highway running through them. It's awful, and Caltrans deeply regrets it, for all the good that does.
this was the top comment
@@Ribulose15diphosphat lol.
Some nerd detail on the graphic, the map of the subway that was drawn, was the map at around 2000,
The north eastern part of Baden-Württemberg at that time was not part of french controlled territory but american controlled territorry. Baden-Württemberg at that time was three states, the two french controlled states Baden, and Württemberg-Hohenzollern, and the american Württemberg-Baden.
Btw. Very great and interresting video.
Or at the time when the U55 closed for preperation work.
When he shows the map of Berlin Occupation zones at 2:30, the English and French sectors are swapped.
also the map at 2:04 is missing the most eastern parts that were given to poland and the soviet union. like the borders should be like they were in 1945, not today (Czechoslovakia for example)
Same for the Ost Berlin U5; the last 2 stations were in a town called Hoenow. But sometime in late 1990, Berlin took over the areas by the last 2 stations
Let's never repeat this kind of experiment.
thank you! other commentors are just saying "oh how interesting", while avoiding how incredibly horrible this was. I was starting to get angry.
Nikosia *makes sad noises*
Palestine laughing with tears
@@rimacalid6557 that's very different
good luck on that one
I'm currently doing my semester abroad in Berlin and it feels as though the things to see and do and learn here are almost endless!! Such a fascinating city.
Enjoy your time in Berlin!!! I am sure that like me and my study group back in 1978 Berlin will change your life. Ich habe noch ein Koffer in Berlin!!!
Enjoy it while it last. Germany is steering into a very dangerous court with the daughter of Adolf Hitler as the Chancellor of Germany.
You should visit a German Office, it's still a concentration camp regime!
Just don't get caught in Berlin the day they celebrate when the wall fell (in or around November 9th) everything shuts down people usually spend time with family. So not much going on that weekend lol
@@lsellclumanetsolarenergyll5071 LOL
I was born 10 years after the wall came down but you can still feel and see the differences in modern Berlin. The entire topic is so emotional and historical that it’s hard not to feel emotional too when hearing about the separation of two parts of the same country.
Can you make a video on Nicosia, Cyprus? It would be interesting to see your take on how the city planning was affected by the division. Great videos, keep it up!
YES PLEASE
Interesting fact about the name Nicosia. It is a misunderstanding of the Greek Alphabet that led to it having this name. It starts with a Lambda, rather than a Nu, in its endonym, but the Lambda was misunderstood for an N.
In nNikosia there is so-called UN-Line diveded the city also in two parts. But both part have an access to the rual area. Same happened to Vienna from 1945 until 1655.
But in the greek part of Nikosia exists a Check Point Charlie similar to the famous one in Berlin. And in the UN-Zone is located the original airport: It is still a ghosted facility like the mentioned subways. It have still the avertisments of the year 1971.
I crossed from the west Berlin into east Berlin at Friedrich Str. In 1982 it was like stepping back in time. Still a lot of war damage in East Berlin at that time
1982, stepping back in time?
You do Coke?
@@lucasrem what are you talking about ? East Berlin development at that time was about 25 years behind west Berlin. So keep your smartarse comments to yourself
Have you been able to visit east Berlin in the past couple of years? How is it there now?
@@andycapsphotos day and night difference. Now is very much like west Berlin except having trams.
I did that same journey in 1985 and had trouble spending the 10 Ostmarks in my pocket. On the return trip they held me for half an hour because they thought I was trying to defect. Interesting experience.
This is the Project MAD video I was most looking forward to. Great work on this one Dave! Fascinating stuff
The two Berlins' airports were entertainingly different. West Berlin's Tegel with its flights to Hamburg and Munich and GDR Berlin's Schönefeld with Maputo and Havana flights.
And you could fly to and from Tempelhof also in the West - I did that several times. They only closed Tempelhof in the last ten years. The good thing about Tempelhof it was close to the city centre.
My brother and his friend compared stories visiting east Berlin in the 80's with their school class trip, (they did this in separate schools), this was in about 96' when we visited him living in Berlin at the time. New construction in the city was crazy then. When we visited the Fernsehturm tower (the big TV tower on the east side that has an observation deck) my brothers friend recalled how looking back at West Berlin from the towers observation deck; it looked like the west was having a disco party all the time. Clearly with the lights of the city and how colorful it looked, and all the movement with vehicles etc, versus looking into the part of the east Berlin they could see, it looked so much more devoid of activity and no colorful lights to hint at that activity.
this history is part of what makes Berlin today a unique and wonderful city, you can still feel the effects of this divide even with the train stations
I wasn't familiar with this channel prior to the collaboration and I am now subscribed!
This is one of the better city planner channels, the others are mostly just pompous Bull sheet.
Now that you covered Berlin, you should also do a video on East German cities post unification!
Cities like Halle, Chemnitz, Magdeburg and others lost a third of their population within 5-10 years after the unification. In Halle, the city is still dismantling large amounts of empty housing.
For a city planner it might be interesting, indeed. It's not as if they just randomly demolish buildings. However, my childhood home and school is just an empty field now.
From what I saw a couple of years ago, most of the houses being dismantled are not in Halle proper but Plattenbauten in Halle-Neustadt.
There was even a documentary about the "Scheiben" being left to rot and probably being torn down soon because they couldn't find buyers where they interviewed the original construction workers. I didn't follow how it turned out, in 2014 the "Scheiben" were still there, albeit rotting. Did they dismantle them or blow them up in the meantime?
@@amarsven Compare 1961 East Berlin Vs 2021 Hong Kong in your Next Video Project!!
Very interesting. Thanks. I made quite a few trips to Berlin back in the “wall” days - never knew any of this about the utilities. (Except U-Bahn ghost stations that I had the chance to experience - also remember as a kid in 1964 watching the almost totally empty S-Bahn trains rolling through West Berlin).
I am very impressed that a young man like you made such profound research about the past I had to live through. Excellent work! Congratulations!
I think you missed the opportunity to mention that west Berlin abandoned it's trams (streetcars). So, like 99% of the current tram network is still in the East.
Yeah, Turmstraße 😂
Trams are shit..
@@Suyalus Not, yet. There is only a very short piece around Hauptbahnhof. However, the M13 has some mentionable kilometres in the west.
@@petesmitt you are trolling! Trams are in their advantages and disadvantages between buses and metros with regard of comfort, speed, capacity, building time and price. In my district the tram does such a good job, that there is no demand for a metro line.
I love Berlin’s trams and am glad they are slowly extending the tram lines into the west. Much faster and infinitely more comfortable than busses.
TO SHOW YOU THE POWER OF FLEX TAPE,
I SAWED THIS CITY IN HALF.
😅😅😅
Thats a lot of damage
-Heavy rainfall starts....
Phil bursts through the wall: “It EvEn WoRkS UnDErWaTeR!!”
You did a FANTASTIC job telling this story and explaining how it all transpired from start to fall. Only a few mistakes, but overall a fantastic job.
I've been living in Berlin for 15 years but have never heard the post-war era condensed into a coherent story so elegantly. Hearing about the actual operational separation and it's issues has been totally new - thanks for this great and entertaining education! 👏
The money denomination causing the arilift! ...very interesting.
I remember going to Berlin in 1987, and travelling around East and West Berlin it was really weird! Especially Banhof FrederickStrasse.. In which the top floor was in the west, the grant for was in East Germany, and the underground section was in the west.
*Friedrichstraße
@@mistermist634 thank you...
Actually, it was all in the East. It's just that the border controls were set up to divide passengers.
I lived in West Berlin in the 1980s. Spent three years living with a lady from the Spandau district. A wonderful experience. Hard to say why, maybe because we were 'contained', but the city was alive. There was everything in there. Restaurants, pubs, museums, parks, forests, vibrant shopping areas, lovely towns with rows of shops and cafes for 'coffee and cake'. Summers were long and warm. Winters could be hard, but the city never stopped. I went back in 1994. It was still vibrant and exciting, but I couldn't help but notice the explosion in the amount of people. Everywhere was packed out. Not been back since, would love to visit and see old haunts.
my grandma managed to escape east berlin 3 days after the wall was announced, if she had been found out she would've been shot on sight. crazy how this was only last century
I mean, people are shot on sight for crossing the U.S.-Mexican border, so it's not too far removed
@@onesob13 the US is archaic in so many ways so it's almost expected that they feel they have the right to end innocent lives
@@onesob13 There is nothing comparable with US mexico border because DDR shot people trying to get out not to get IN.
@@olekkuvppl what's the difference?
Berlin is my home away from home and truly one of my most favorite cities in the world. Fantastic video!!
2:13 Actually the french and the british sector are the other way around. The british controlled the sector in the middle, in which e.g. the Reichstag building stands.
I really like this way of thinking about urban development. Kinda connecting the dots. I have some observations and fail to explain them systematically.
Next video: "How to split a country (Korea)"
That was a bit easier because there wasn't much infrastructure in 1950s Korea
Germany was also split as a country. The Wall around west Berlin was just the smallest part
@@nicolasblume1046 really? so did they call them West Germany and East Germany?
@@petesmitt Ehm yes?
How to split a country. TRUMP
i love these historical explorations about cities around the world!
i really enjoyed your video about soviet style cites and this one of course! i would love to see more videos like these! :D
As a tour guide, my group and I were waiting at Teigarten for the U-Bahn. The train came in but instead of returning backwards into the West, it disappeared under the EAST. Shortly nafter, our train came out of the West and no-one other than me was interested in waiting for another eastbound train very much to my lifetime annoyance I never got here.
My cook and driver later told me they were on the U-Bahn and when they got up off their seats to exit the train for lunch, a platform of soldiers (Vopo) pointed rifles at thenm and proceeded to check under the train with mirrors. Obviously by mistake, they witnessed what I missed. Damn.
Glad you could join us for this collaboration!
You got two flags mixed at 2:15
Uk and france were the other way around. You can even feel the effects today, as the schools in the north of berlin mostly offer french as a third language. The southern schools mostly have spanish
This video is a great example of the fact that societies don't care about night shift/3rd shift workers. Those workers were cut off from their families and homes and day shift workers were not.
Night shifters see this disregard for their jobs on a daily basis. Dostors offices are closed at night. Mechanic shops are only open during the day. Business hours are dayshift hours. TV and radio broadcasts refer to morning rush hour as the commute to work and the evening one as the commute from work. Drivers drive fast in the morning but slower at night. Elementary, Middle, and High Schools operate on a Mon-Fri 8 AM-early PM model.
All of this reinfoces the idea that people only work 9-5 on Mondays through Fridays. It is very rude that society is this way but that's how it is. You are the ghost workers when you work at night.
To be fair though, at least it's easier to do things on your time off. If you work 9-5 on weekdays and everything is only open 9-5 on weekdays you have to take days off whenever you need to go to an appointment or the bank.
Thanks to Covid, nothing is 24 hours anymore and probably will never be again :/
Well if you work at night why do you care? You can go where ever after work. If you work when everything is open you cant go anywhwere.
@@kristijangrgic9841 nothing is open
But when do most people work? The day?
I studied in Berlin in 1978 (my mother was German and lived in Berlin through WWII). It was a great experience and it made all of us in the program truly appreciate the freedoms we have here. As US citizens we could travel "freely" between east and west, which I only did twice. There really wasn't any reason to go to East Berlin, unless you wanted to see the mass of bombed out buildings that remained at that time.
It was always interesting riding the subway under East Berlin and going through the ghost stations. Actually quite creepy as they were dark and you would catch glimpses of armed soldiers. The station at Friedrichstrasse was quite interesting having been split in half for passengers from the west and those from the East.
West Berliners very much frowned on anyone in the West riding the S-Bahn. When you rode your fare directly supported East Germany. One day a fellow student and I decide to ride the S-Bahn "Schwarz" (no ticket). No one else was on the train (still pre-war carriages) as we rumbled to the last station in Grünewald (a huge urban forest/park in the west). When we got off of the train an East German officer approached us and asked for our tickets. YIKES!!!!
Our reaction was to run out of the station to the safety of West Berlin outside of the station. When you were on the S-Bahn or in a station you were on East German territory even though you were in the west. Well that turned into another adventure as it was winter, it was evening and that part of the city is not an urban center. We walked for a while and finally found a house with a their porch light on. Fortunately a woman answered the door and directed us to the U-Bahn station so we made it back safe and sound.
I still love Berlin, one of my favorite cities. 3 years ago it had been 40 years since our study group. There were 14 of us and I have remained in contact with a couple of them. We got a wild hair and thought it would be great to have a reunion IN BERLIN. Well, 12 of us made it, and it was a great reunion. We are actually having another smaller reunion here in Colorado in a few weeks.
Great memories of my time studying in Berlin and visiting the city since then. It was a great trip when we brought my mother back to Berlin after the wall had fallen. So glad we are able to go to Berlin one liast time with Mom before she passed away.
Very interesting. I also studied in Berlin in 1979 and had similar experiences. Still have very good memories of that time - the fact that West Berlin had great nightlife until dawn was a real 'eye opener' for me as 18 years old.
@@TheChrisEMartin That all-night tradition goes back a long way, but after the war there was a curfew. East and West authorities started extending the open hours in a rivalry before the Wall was built and finally the West Allies eliminated it entirely.
Great video! One detail though: the map of divided Berlin shown starting at 2:02 has the French and British zones swapped. The northernmpost zone was Frenach, and the middle zone British.
I love photos of East and West Berlin today, with different color street lights demarcating the East and West.
you can definitely tell the Simpsons episode episode about Springfield being split in two was inspired by the two Germanies
or, what is more likely since it's animated in Korea, it's that split.
I was stationed in West Berlin with the U.S. Army from 1984-87. You could see the wall and East German guard towers from our quarters (apartment) about 100 meters away. Pretty scary being 100 miles inside enemy territory with wife and kids, surrounded by 10 Soviet tank divisions (Berlin Brigade had one tank company), but you got used to it. I recently saw a documentary about Teufelsberg, which at the time was a super sensitive/top secret listening post built on the rubble after the bombing of Berlin in WWII. It's completely abandoned, open, and covered with graffiti and underbrush. VERY surreal. It just doesn't seem that long ago - almost like a dream. Life goes by so quickly....
Look at the occupation zones in Vienna after the war. Imagine if they had split up Austria. THAT would have been interesting :D
Kind of the other way around since they did the exact same split, they just ended it. The People's Republic of Austria would have had a Yugoslavia-like existence.
I literally squeaked with excitement when I saw this pop up.
DDR: To show the power of communism, I sawed this city in half!
USA: And repaired it with only David Hasselhoff
2:03 The US zone should be bigger. The section of the French zone jutting into the American zone (Württemberg-Baden; this was merged with Württemberg-Hohenzollern and Baden into Baden-Württemberg in 1952) should be American rather than French
I was stationed in West Berlin from 1984-1987 with the U.S. Army. The transit system there was incredible and a motor vehicle wasn't necessary to get around the city. Soldiers that had never been assigned to the city were briefed on the S Bahn system, we were told we weren't allowed to use it and could only use the U Bahn. I forgot that East Germany "owned" the S Bahn and that's the reason we weren't allowed to use it.
It was off-limits due to the boycott but making it off-limits U.S. authorities also got out of problems with lost or drowsy GI's riding into the East. The two U-Bahn lines that transited East Berlin were rarely used by soldiers. Also, the Bahnpolizei were under the control of the East and we had to stay away from them. It was also easy to implement because by the 1960's most of the senior ranks had POV's and some of them rarely used public transit.
very nice done video! just one little mistake I saw on the map shwon at 2:29. The british and the french sector got confused with each other. The northern part of West Berlin was french sector with districts like Wedding, Reinickendorf and the western part with districts like Spandau, Charlottenburg, Moabit and so on was british not the other way around.
Thanks for the informative video and greetings from Berlin
You know your from America when you’re jealous of the extensive public transit network in East Berlin.
Due to lack of car ownership extensive public transport was actually vital in socialist countries. I don‘t know about service levels, but I can well imagine the GDR had better public transport coverage than West Germany.
Not really, a lot of rail lines in the east were striped as reparations. Rail service is the west was good until it started declining during the mid 80s and became even worse in the 90s. Now, Germanys rail service east and west ist mediocore for a european developed country.
@@Skullair313 Yeah. And one of my friend who's mixed German & Chinese says although Germany still has pretty good public transit compared to America (and pretty much most of the New World, including Canada, AU/NZ and most of LatAm), he still considers Germany a highly car dependent society, especially compared to Japan or even China.
@@bahnspotterEU Well theoretically. But in China at that time we were even poorer, and thus bikes are the main form of transportation for a lot of families. So much so that, in most western countries, 'shoulder lanes' of urban streets are for parking by default, while in China they're bike lanes by default.
Nah i live in nyc
I don't know if this is new, but I just noticed the map of the NYC subway behind you, and I think it's really cool.
I've been to Berlin this year, even visited the Berlin wall at the East side gallery and it's honestly amazing how you can't even tell it's ever been split in 2.
There are cobble stones where the wall was, did you miss them?
I've only been to Berlin once, a few years ago. I didn't even know my hotel was in former East Berlin side. Aside from some areas where there are bricks in the street, telling you where the split was, along with some of the Berlin Wall left for historic purposes, along with Checkpoint Charlie, I really couldn't tell where the border was.
This is such an interesting topic, and one which I had not really thought about before. I can't wait to see what Dave comes up with next!
When your ideology is so great, you have to build a wall to keep people from leaving
I used to think East and West Berlin were split along the lines with the rest of the country. I did not know West Berlin was located wholly within East Germany and the Berlin Wall was actually a circular wall that completely walled off.
I just saw your recent contribution to PBS Terra about urban design. Great job!
THANK YOU for Nebula+. It was annoying to have to run to Nebula and pick up the same video from a certain point. Since Nebula content doesn't seem to update as often (or have as many of the creators) as TH-cam, I like to keep my TH-cam connection. The ability to just continue in the bonus video makes it MUCH easier to see the extra content I want to see by jumping over there.
Fun fact: You can still see the East-West divide in Berlin if you look at a picture of it from space. In the East, streetlights are predominately sodium-vapour lamps with a yellower hue, while in the West, they use fluorescent lights with a whiter hue.
It actually switched around for most parts, as the older East-Berlin lighting is now being replaced by bright white LEDs while the west now remains with the older and slightly more yellow flourecent lights.
As a resident of Berlin I totally enjoyed this video. It tells a lot about the history of the city. I would have talked about some of the building used at the time (like the Tränenpalaist, the custom building at the station of Friedrickstraße), but it is a fantastic video even so
P.S.: The map of the U-Bahn that you've shown at the beginning is dated: the fifth line (U5) had been extended, in part several years ago (10?), the biggest part was open in the last winter, but hey, it's material for a "(Almost) All the mistakes I made" video 😂😂
Isn't the map supposed to reflect the line as it was at least 30 years ago?
@@BonaparteBardithion No, the original map says "present day U-Bahn network system".
Berlin alone could justify a mini series, being one of the most unusual major cities in the world.
I have been in Berlin on Jan 89 (11 months before the collapse). One curiosity that I have noticed. To come back to Munchen we got the train in Friedrich strasse station. That was a metro station and in the west sector. But in a certain way the platform of the train was "managed" by the east. No visa, no passport but some Grenztruppen der DDR along the platform. The train arrived (from the east), two patrols checking everything inside and under the train with dogs and than they let us in.
Friedrichstr was in East Berlin, but as stated in the video, it was divided. One minor part was for transition to and from West Berlin. Greetings from Berlin! ;-)
Another way in which West Berlin was propped up was by making exceptions to the draft (Wehrdienst) so a lot of young men moved there at least for a few years to avoid that.
Very good video. One thing to try not to confuse: when referring to the 4 way division of Berlin, use the word “sector”. When referring to the 4 way division of Germany, use the word “zone”. Within the context of this historical period these terms are not interchangeable. Thanks.
To be completely destroyed by the enemy and, after just two decades, recover and become the locomotive of the European economy.
Only one nation is capable of this: the Germans.
Wish greater prosperity to you!
From Tajikistan.😀
The Friedrichstraße Station got extended by one building, which is called Tänenpalast (= palace of tears), since it was the separation point for Eastern and Western Familys.
Brilliant video. I spent significant periods of time in both West and East Berlin, 1968 to 1989. You get every factual detail right: both unusual and difficult! One of the oddest things I recall is that you could get off the U Bahn (...U6 or U8?) at Friedrichstraße and stand on the platform "beneath" or "in" East Germany and NOT go upstairs to enter the GDR formally. It was ... frowned upon, maybe ?forbidden?, but quite feasible. I think there were even East German shops/kiosks on the platform?
He gets the Allied sectors wrong.
My Oma lived in West Berlin and my first visit to West Berlin (and West Germany) was in 1978. I remember having to go through the various checkpoints to enter into East Germany to travel through to West Germany. I went back to Berlin in 1990 for my Oma's 70th birthday and chisled off pieces of the Berlin Wall and traveled all around the former East Berlin. I remember all the funny looking cars there and the potholes in the roads. I Went back to Berlin in 2018 to visit family and except for the wall segments still standing for tourist, you'd never think that the city was once divded.
0:55 that's Potsdamer Platz, which is a S-Bahn Station, not a U-Bahn Station.
The North-South S-Bahn Tunnel was also going thorough East Berlin.
Potsdamer Platz is also a U-Bahn Station
@@timo1573 yes indeed, but the ghost station was the S-Bahn Plattform.
As a resident of Berlin, I would like to thank you for this very interesting documentary. I only noticed two small errors that I wanted to bring to your attention: 1. At 2:02 you show the occupation zones in Germany at the time, with the entire state of (nowadays) Baden-Würrtenberg (in the south-west) being shown as belonging entirely to the French occupation zone; in fact, however, only the southern part belonged to the French zone, the northern part to the American occupation zone; 2. In the map of the occupation zones in Berlin, at 2:12 and 3:29 you mistakenly interchanged the British sector (in the centre of West Berlin) and the French sector (in the north of West Berlin). Anyway, you did a great job!
Doctor, I lived there 85-86 and used to jog through an area with row after row of the tiniest and cutest cottages Berliners had as a sort of out-of-the-city getaway, since actually leaving was a hassle. Do you know if those are still a thing? Sorry, all I can remember for location was that it was in the US sector and close to the nude beach.
The sign at 8:45 says “for an unbreakable friendship with the Sovietunion”
Yes this is part of the history I grew up with. I lived only 20miles away from the wall near Braunschweig. When the wall came down I was one of the first to cross over because of my uncle who had done a lot of import from China so we had a lot of diplomatic friendship going on with the UDSSR back than. So we took a taxi for a day and drove thru the wall check points into East Berlin where we visited a lot including museum's and the Alexander Platz over which we walked and it was so strange that feeling because we were the only people on that gigantic open area called the Alexander Platz which even today is still the same.
Love your videos so much really fascinating!
This is a fantastic idea for a video! The logistics of severing all of the utilities and public services of a city because of geopolitics ... that has to be a monumental and bizarre project!
A year later, the same thing happened in Cuba at Gitmo.
I've searched so long for a tutorial on this. Thanks, this was super helpful! Can't wait to get starting.
Which city are you planning to cut in half next?
@@OpasgegenLinks any American city building a highway through it
One of the best videos I’ve seen on the Berlin wall
For those curious about the Berlin Airlift, here's a neat video about it from Extra History:
th-cam.com/video/nwjFSQCrShM/w-d-xo.html
Only politicians could have come up with something as crazy as the Berlin Wall.....
9:00 I love how they translated Park and ride to have the same symbol
strangely, this translation as "Parken und Reisen" didn't catch on, but we mostly use the English "Park and Ride"
@@Cleeves358 because it is stupid and was only used to not use english
@@burgerpommes2001 it's a perfectly straightforward paraphrase for its purpose and a near 1:1 translation. why use a foreign language when your own one is befitting? that's stupid :D
@@Cleeves358 ride and reisen is not the same
@@burgerpommes2001 back than most Germans would not understand "ride". Now every German learns English.
United you stand divided you fall
I wonder if the same it's happening in Cyprus's capital, as it's still divided.
and to get to the power station, they need to cross a British territory to get there
The diffence is that in one side mostly turks live and in the other side mostly greeks. Even if the city reunited, it would always be split defacto in half.
So when I look out my window I have basically the view you see at 2:54 :D The Building and the church are still the same. the photo must've been taken before the house I live in was constructed at almost the same spot. Ofcourse the scenery has changed since then but that church is very distinct. Spotting stuff like this is alwas a pleasent surprise :D
👍🏾😎Greetings from Berlin 🇩🇪
I was in Berlin in the summer of 1990, before unification and after the Wall fell. On the U-bahn, I saw workers restoring some of the ghost stations, the trains didn't stop. I also chipped some chunks off the Wall myself.
Must've have been a strange transition time never to be repeated.
Cities split in half in north america: Mexicali & Calexico, Nogales, (US) & Nogales, (MX).
Fun fact, MEXIco + CALIfornia = Mexicali and CALifornia + mEXiCO = Calexico.
Texarkana, Texas and Texarkana, Arkansas. Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas (I know they are both within one country, but you get the picture)
El Paso and Ciudad Juárez
Finally a video to sum up all that mess. Best one which I have found. THANKS A LOT
Very interesting video. As a sort of transit nerd living in Berlin, this is all very "natural" to me but I'd guess most people have never thought about the "on the ground" realities of spliting a city in half and it would seem really strange.
On a sidenote: Here is an interesting video of the evolution of Berlin's transportation network, where the impacts of the division (and the stitching together of the network post-reunification) is visible:
th-cam.com/video/MFtwQuSZLp8/w-d-xo.html
The podcast "99% Invisible" has had at least 2 episodes on Berlin. Episode 104, "Tunnel 57" is about the wall itself, and a tunnel under it used for escapes. Episode 442, "Tanz Tanz Revolution" is about how the situation in Berlin before the fall of the wall has lead it to become one of the major party cities in Europe. There's even a connection to Detroit (a musical influence on the city).
Fascinating. Didn't know all of the complicated utility and logistical hurdles. Thanks!
I recall seeing the wall's fall on the news in school. Didn't understand much of what that meant to the world at that age, but I still recall it as a good day for us to celebrate in class.
When the wall came down and the train lines reconnected passengers on one felt U4ia (sorry)
Fantastic new look at the split of Berlin.