Berlin Wall: On the path of history

August 13 marks the 53rd anniversary of the building of the Berlin Wall. DW spoke with Paul Scraton, a tour guide in Berlin who is documenting surprising sights along what remains of the Wall: a 160-kilometer trail

Berlin Wall: On the path of history

DW: For almost three decades the Berlin Wall ran through the middle of Berlin and it has left a mark on the city that's still visible today. Between 1961 and 1989 the barrier cut off the communist-controlled East from the American, French and British zones in the West. Well this week marks the anniversary of the start of construction. Early on the morning of August 13th, 1961, Berlin's residents awoke to find that the East German soldiers had started rolling out barbed wire along the border. Within days there were tall concrete blocks and then guard towers were put up. There's not much left of the structure in Berlin today. And in most cases the remains have been turned into memorial sites. In 2006, the city opened ‘The Berlin Wall Trail', a 160 kilometer walking path that runs all the way along the old border.

Paul Scraton: I think I walked the first section of it within the first month of the sign posts going up.

That's Paul Scraton, he works as a tour guide in Berlin and last year he launched a project called ‘Traces of a Border'. He aims to explore and research the entire length of the Berlin Wall Trail. DW reporter Katherine Sacks sat down with Paul, and started out by asking him what drew him to the trail in the first place.

It's basically one big memorial site. It was created as a means of remembering and recognizing the history of what had happened. And when you walk along you'll come across hundreds of memorials, big and small, to the history of the Berlin Wall. But at the same time this path has now become a place of leisure and recreation. People go there to walk their dogs and go jogging. One of the most famous examples is the Mauerplatz in Prenzlauer Berg, which is a place where people sing karaoke and go to the flea market. I find that really interesting.

What's left of the Berlin Wall today attracts heaps of tourists. Places like Checkpoint Charlie or the East Side Gallery's wall murals are high on any visitors list of what to see in the city. Paul has walked most of the 160 km trail, and he says some of the most interesting sites are actually outside the city center.

Michelle and Sasha Obama visit a Berlin Wall Memorial site.

Especially once you get out to the edge of the city and you're walking through what is a mixture of suburbia and the countryside, you come to places where you have to take two or three looks to discover what it is you're looking at. For example, near Spandau there's a section of former sewage fields but when you're walking through it, it feels like you're walking through these lovely meadows framed by trees. You can't see anything of the city. And it's only as you walk along these trails you start to see within the field there's valves and piping and some concrete basins all overgrown with weeds. Then you realize this one of the many sewage farms that were built during the rapid industrialization of Berlin.

Paul says he aims to discover the obscure, abandoned, hidden and often surprising sites on the trail.

I was also interested in the discussion about what it means to turn a site of memory like the Berlin Wall is into a place of leisure and tourism. It some places I think it's very positive and in other places, like around Checkpoint Charlie, you wonder a bit about the Disney-fication of history. All of these debates are interesting and it's very difficult to find someone who will let you write all that in as much detail as you want, so it's best to do it yourself.

Next he's planning to put all his research about the trail into a book, so keep an eye out for that.DW DE