The Berlin Wall (IV): The Divided City (Continued)

West Berlin indeed became a showcase of the western world, including its very worst parts, and social problems were soon rampant. A particularly bad problem the city had to deal with was drug addiction. David Bowie, who lived in Schöneberg in the late seventies, called West Berlin the “world’s capital of heroin”, and the book, “Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo” by junkie Christiane F. amply illustrated the problem and made it known throughout West Germany. By 1980, West Berlin’s centre was crowded with junkies, hookers and tramps.

West Berlin, and particularly the Free University, was also a centre of the leftist scene. The West German ’68 revolt started when on 2nd June 1967, the student Benno Ohnesorg was shot at a riot that emerged from a protest against the Shah of Iran who was visiting the city. From that point on, Berlin became a test tube for alternative ways of life. Particularly the borough of Kreuzberg, which at some parts was enclosed by the Wall on three sides, became a self-styled autonomous territory, attracting leftist students and later, punks.

The Wall stood for 28 years, and created two distinct cities out of one. Prior to 1961, it had been unimaginable that Berlin was anything other than one city. By 1989, it had become unimaginable that it would ever be one city again.