The Berlin Wall was a wall in Berlin, Germany that separated Communist East Berlin from democratic West Berlin. The Wall was erected overnight on August 13-14, 1961. Over the 28 years that the wall was in place, East Germany jailed more than 75,000 people who tried to flee to the West across the Wall, and 809 people died/were killed in escape attempts.
On November 9, 1989, the East German government announced that all GDR citizens could visit West Germany and West Berlin. The wall was finally torn down over the next few weeks. [The German Democratic Republic (GDR), informally called East Germany by West Germany and other countries, was a socialist state established in 1949 in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany, including East Berlin of the Allied-occupied capital city.]
For a 2009 article on the 20th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall, which includes a video of President Ronald Reagan at Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin, Germany, June 12, 1987 in which he urged Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev “Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall,” go to: