Hello Europe Podcast Podcast
Germany: applications to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall
On the sidelines of commemorations of the fall of the Berlin Wall in Germany, new technologies bring solutions to represent this item, which cut the city in two for 28 years. Lighting.
From our correspondent in Berlin,
What can be found on the market of applications to rediscover the divided Berlin of the time ?
Applications allow you to take a trip back in time. Because the division of the city, 30 years later, is difficult to perceive at first sight. There are some remains. And along the old route, two rows of pavers in the ground, but all that does not go very far. At Checkpoint Charlie, the most famous Cold War crossing, there are some explanatory signs and a bit of Disneyland for tourists.
With various applications, you can see in front of you the Berlin divided with photos of the time, the Wall of course suddenly threatening in front of you, the facades of the buildings of the time superimposed on those of Today ... Explanations are given, witnesses remember. An application proposed by the daily Tagesspiegel even offers you at home to have in one go in your living room Erich Honecker, the East-German leader life size.
As part of this week of commemorations, the application MauAr is proposed. The organizers developed it with Facebook and the ZDF television channel. With a QR code, we are immersed in history when we are on the strategic scene of the revolution of autumn 1989, or on the course of the Wall. Info is provided on Messenger. One can also choose to have explanations on the Wall at three different times, in 1961, during its construction, or 10 or 20 years later.
And if you prefer a more sedentary version, you can go to a new location that opened in August near the former checkpoint Charlie. It's called TimeRide or time travel. How does it work ?
Initially, the visit is not very new. Two films summarize the political reality and daily life in West Berlin and East Berlin. In a second play, three witnesses from that time address you and summarize their biography. These are three actors and their CV, in a way, is the result of many testimonials. There is an architect from the East who, at the end of the GDR, is in trouble with the regime, a tiler also from the East with a strong Berlin accent or a punk from West Berlin.
The visitor chooses with which person he will be guided in the third room. We settle in an old bus and we put on the head big glasses for a virtual reality trip through the Berlin of the late 1980s. It's very impressive to go under the sheds of Checkpoint Charlie and suffer the controls of the East German border guards.
Then we find the Berlin of that time with the typical cars Trabant, wastelands in the heart of the city center where are now building brand new. The visit ends at the Palace of the Republic, a now-defunct building where the East German Parliament was located, as well as many popular outing places for East Berliners. And the guide you have chosen gives you these different comments depending on the personality you have chosen.
It gives you a little dizziness, literally first, and also because this trip in history also allows you to go back in time and be a witness to the Cold War for an hour.