Wir waren so frei
This might interest my fellow history nerds. Wir waren so frei is a project collecting pictures and eyewitness reports about the fall of the Berlin Wall and beyond. The website exists in both [german] and [english].
There are nearly 2400 pictures and 34 videos. You can browse by topic, location or click through users' favourites. It's incredibly neat. It does not only give you an impression of that specific night but there are also pictures from the prior protests and the aftermath up to and including unification.
[This] picture is beyond awesome. My sister lived there when she first moved to Berlin! It's smack dab in the middle of Prenzlauer Berg, right around the corner from where I lived. [This] is how these houses looked around that time. And [this] is how the area looks now. Berlin's inner city (many towns', actually) was pretty run down during the GDR years because no money had been invested into restoring or updating them, instead large [Plattenbauten] were build on the outskirts of towns. To be fair, they were in high demand because they were quite spacious and modern. I grew up in one such neighbourhood.
These 19th century working class houses largely stood empty because they were often in terrible shape, so students like my sister who were desperate for living space squatted there and began restoring them for human habitation (until they were made to leave quite forcefully in later years, but that's a different story). I visited her there a couple time as a kid. It was "adventurous" to say the least. And many of these squatters ended up marching in the streets in the months leading up to November 9th, including both my sisters and my brother-in-law.
Anyway, it's incredible to think how much time has passed already. It's gonna be twenty years in a few months. I'm always [ a little deranged] on November 9th but this year is going to be a lot worse.
Twenty years. Wow.
This entry was originally posted at http://acari.dreamwidth.org/478954.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
There are nearly 2400 pictures and 34 videos. You can browse by topic, location or click through users' favourites. It's incredibly neat. It does not only give you an impression of that specific night but there are also pictures from the prior protests and the aftermath up to and including unification.
[This] picture is beyond awesome. My sister lived there when she first moved to Berlin! It's smack dab in the middle of Prenzlauer Berg, right around the corner from where I lived. [This] is how these houses looked around that time. And [this] is how the area looks now. Berlin's inner city (many towns', actually) was pretty run down during the GDR years because no money had been invested into restoring or updating them, instead large [Plattenbauten] were build on the outskirts of towns. To be fair, they were in high demand because they were quite spacious and modern. I grew up in one such neighbourhood.
These 19th century working class houses largely stood empty because they were often in terrible shape, so students like my sister who were desperate for living space squatted there and began restoring them for human habitation (until they were made to leave quite forcefully in later years, but that's a different story). I visited her there a couple time as a kid. It was "adventurous" to say the least. And many of these squatters ended up marching in the streets in the months leading up to November 9th, including both my sisters and my brother-in-law.
Anyway, it's incredible to think how much time has passed already. It's gonna be twenty years in a few months. I'm always [ a little deranged] on November 9th but this year is going to be a lot worse.
Twenty years. Wow.
This entry was originally posted at http://acari.dreamwidth.org/478954.html. Please comment there using OpenID.