Today Google has put up a doodle celebrating the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. This doodle is actually an interactive video depicting the pulling down of the Berlin Wall which separated West and East Germany for nearly 30 years. The video shows footage of the night in November 1989 and also different cities of the world with pieces of the wall, including Cape Town, Berlin, London, Seoul, Madrid, Island of Langeland, Moscow, Buenos Aires, Brussels, Budapest, Ein Hod, Mountain View, Strasbourg, Kiev, Sofia, Washington DC and New York.
According to the Google Doodle team, special thanks goes to the following contributors:
- the team at veed.me who arranged 17 international film crews to gather footage;
- the German Federal Archives (Bundesarchiv) who provided powerful archival photographs by Klaus Lehnartz and Heiko Specht to set context for the video;
- Googlers from around the world who translated more than 50 international versions and Morgan Stiff edited it all together;
- and Nils Frahm, who composed the video’s beautiful music.
The Berlin Wall (German: Berliner Mauer) was a barrier that existed between 1961 and 1990, constructed by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off (by land) West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin until it was opened in 1989. The barrier included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, which circumscribed a wide area (later known as the “death strip”) that contained anti-vehicle trenches, “fakir beds” and other defenses. The Eastern Bloc claimed that the wall was erected to protect its population from fascist elements conspiring to prevent the “will of the people” in building a socialist state in East Germany. In practice, the Wall served to prevent the massive emigration and defection that marked East Germany and the communist Eastern Bloc during the post-World War II period. (Source: Wikipedia)
According to TIME, more than one million people are expected to visit Berlin this weekend as the German city celebrates the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, according to tourist organization Visit Berlin.
