The mural "My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love" by Dmitri Vrubel,
on the Berlin Wall today
On August 12, 1961, 62 years ago, Walter Ulbricht, First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party and State Council chairman of socialist East Germany, signed the order to close the border of East Berlin with West Berlin and erect a wall. At midnight, the police and units of the East German army began to close the border and, by Sunday morning, 13 August, the border with West Berlin was closed.
Only two months earlier, Ulbricht had stated that "Niemand hat die Absicht, eine Mauer zu errichten!" (No one has the intention of erecting a wall!).
Before the Wall's erection, 3.5 million East Germans circumvented Eastern Bloc emigration restrictions and defected from the GDR, many by crossing over the border from East Berlin into West Berlin.
Nowadays, the longest surviving section of the once 155-km long Wall, is only 1,3 km long and forms the East Side Gallery - a permanent open-air gallery that consists of a series of murals painted directly on the Berlin Wall.
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