Outdoor Exhibition at the Berlin Wall Memorial
Aerial view of the memorial site, 2010 © Berlin Wall Foundation, photo: Jürgen Hochmuth
The memorial’s outdoor exhibition utilizes Bernauer Strasse’s historical significance and its many extant traces of the Wall to inform visitors about the Wall’s purpose and function in the context of the original site. Above all, it tells the stories of the people whose lives were restricted by the Wall, who were forced to move when it went up, or who tried to overcome it. The newly designed memorial grounds include the memorial, the Chapel of Reconciliation, and the “Window of Remembrance.”
Divided into four sections, each with a different focus, the outdoor exhibition explains the site itself, the most important events that occurred there, and the historical context:
- Section A: The Wall and the “death strip”
- Section B: The destruction of the city
- Section C: The construction of the Wall
- Section D: Everyday life at the Wall
Corten steel is used to indicate where the original remnants of the border installations have been lost, as well as outlining former escape tunnels and demolished houses along the border. Incident markers show where particular events occurred, and “archaeological windows” reveal older layers of the border installations and traces of the city that were destroyed by the Wall and the border strip.