X-Nico

13 unusual facts about West Berlin


Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra

The Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, known from 1956 to 1993 as the Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and situated in West Berlin during the Cold War

Bus transport in Berlin

It is a bus simulator set in the late 1980s in West Berlin that features the MAN SD200 and MAN SD202 double-decker buses with a complex set of functions and made in various years.

Coalition of Labor Union Women

For example, when day care workers went on strike in 1989 in West Berlin, the strike consisted of day care workers.

Ivan Stranski

It was not until the 1960s that he was re-accepted as a foreign member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and he would only return to Bulgaria from West Berlin in 1967.

Kapelle der Versöhnung

With the division of Berlin in 1945, the church building found itself within the Soviet sector of the divided city of Berlin, with most of the parishioners in the neighbouring French sector.

Kathi Goertzen

When the Berlin Wall fell, Goertzen was the first local American news reporter to report live from the scene at Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin.

Martin-Gropius-Bau

Until the end of the cold war in 1990 the building stood on the border between East and West Berlin, at the sector boundary to the East Berlin district of Mitte.

Nancy Reddin Kienholz

The couple sold their house in Los Angeles, and Reddin moved with Kienholz and their children to West Berlin.

Peter Urbach

Peter Urbach (2 May 1940 – 3 May 2011) was an informant and agent provocateur of the West Berlin domestic intelligence agency, the Verfassungsschutz, in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Sjur Torgersen

After Jakarta he was transferred to West Berlin where he served as Military Attaché, functioning as representative for Norway in the allied occupational forces in West Berlin between 1984-1987.

The Spencer Davis Group

For the German market the group released "Det war in Schöneberg, im Monat Mai" and "Mädel ruck ruck ruck an meine grüne Seite" (the first is from a 1913 Berlin operetta, the second is a Swabian traditional) as a tribute single for that audience, Davis having studied in West Berlin in the early 1960s.

The Zoo Story

Rejected by New York producers, the play premiered in West Berlin at the Schiller Theater Werkstatt on 28 September 1959 in a double bill with the German premiere of Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape.

Verwaltung des ehemaligen Reichsbahnvermögens

The Verwaltung des ehemaligen Reichsbahnvermögens (VdeR) was a body created in 1953 to take ownership of assets and properties of the East German Deutsche Reichsbahn in the western sectors of Berlin.


Air Charter Limited

The Fairflight acquisition enabled Laker to take over that company's lucrative Government contract to transport refugees, goods and raw materials between West Berlin and West Germany as part of the second "Little Berlin Airlift".

Alfred Schieske

He then worked at the Schiller and Schlosspark theaters in West Berlin, as well as in Düsseldorf, Recklinghausen and Jagsthausen.

Anica Kovač

Anica Kovač (née Martinović) (born 3 March 1976 in West Berlin, West Germany) is a Croatian former model best known for being the First Runner-up in the Miss World 1995 competition and for her marriage to the Croatian football player Robert Kovač.

Barack Obama – Der schwarze Kennedy

Kennedy is very popular in Germany, with many recalling his famous statement, “Ich bin ein Berliner" (“I am a Berliner”) – given in West Berlin in 1963 at the height of the Cold War. Steffen Hallaschka, a moderator for Germany's NDR TV, said: "Germans in the '60s projected a lot of hope and fantasies on Kennedy.

Berlin Township, New Jersey

Crow Foot, Reed Crossing and West Berlin are unincorporated communities located within the township.

Bundesautobahn 2

During the division of Germany, the A 2 played, together with the A 24, an important role as a transit corridor to West Berlin, with allied checkpoints at Helmstedt and Dreilinden-Drewitz (on the A 10) respectively.

Bundestag

Because West Berlin was not officially under the jurisdiction of the Constitution and because of the Cold War, the Bundestag met in Bonn in several different buildings, including (provisionally) a former water works facility.

Carlo Karges

He was attending a 1982 Rolling Stones concert at the Waldbühne (the "Forest Theatre") in West Berlin, when they released a large mass of helium balloons into the air.

Charlottenburg Town Hall

Severely damaged during the bombing of Berlin in World War II by an RAF air raid in the night of 22 November 1943, it was gradually rebuilt by the West Berlin authorities until the 1960s.

Christiane F. – We Children from Bahnhof Zoo

Christiane F. – Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo is a 1981 film directed by Ulrich Edel that portrays the drug scene in West Berlin in the 1970s, based on the non-fiction book of the same name written following tape recordings of Christiane F. The movie immediately acquired cult status (which it still retains today) and features David Bowie as both himself and the soundtrack composer, which gave the movie a commercial boost.

Col. Gail Halvorsen Award

During this tour, Col. Halvorsen began his own mission, operation Little Vittles, in which he dropped parachutes containing candy to the children of both east and west Berlin.

D-EWOH

On 15 July 1987 Thomas Krüger stole it from the Gesellschaft für Sport und Technik (an East German military youth organisation) and flew it from Schönhagen in East Germany to RAF Gatow (later General-Steinhoff Kaserne) in West Berlin in order to facilitate his defection to the West.

Extraterritorial crossroad

By land, West Berlin could only be accessed by transit roads through the GDR

Friedrichstraße

During the Cold War and division of Berlin, the Friedrichstraße underground station, despite being located in East Berlin, was utilized by two intersecting West Berlin S-Bahn lines and the West Berlin subway line U6.

Gudow

Between 1982 and 1990 Gudow served as West German inner German border crossing for cars travelling along Bundesautobahn 24 between the East German Democratic Republic, or West Berlin and the West German Federal Republic of Germany.

Günter Rexrodt

After the Abitur in 1960 in Arnstadt, Thuringia and an extra year in West Berlin, he graduated with a Diplom in business studies from the Free University Berlin where he also received his doctorate ("Dr. rer. pol") in 1971.

History of BMW motorcycles

The /5 models were the first to be built at BMW's new motorcycle factory in Spandau, West Berlin.

Karl-Heinz Kurras

Karl-Heinz Kurras (born December 1, 1927 in Barten, East Prussia) is a former German police officer who served in the police force of West Berlin, and a former agent of the East German secret service Stasi.

Marianne von Weizsäcker

Her husband served as Governing Mayor of Berlin (West Berlin) from 1981 to 1984, when he was elected President.

Memorial to the German Resistance

The visitor enters the museum from Stauffenbergstrasse through an archway, on the wall of which is inscribed: "Here in the former Supreme Headquarters of the Army, Germans organized the attempt of 20 July 1944 to end the Nazi rule of injustice. For this, they sacrificed their lives. The Federal Republic of Germany and the State of Berlin created this new memorial place in the year 1980."

Pilar Lorengar

She studied in Madrid under Spanish lyric soprano Ángeles Otein, and she also studied in West Berlin with Carl Ebert and mezzo-soprano Hertha Klust, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau's teacher.

Rauch-Haus-Song

The West Berlin band Ton Steine Scherben's Rauch-Haus-Song describes the occupation by squatters of the former Bethanien-Krankenhaus (Bethanien hospital), from the viewpoint of the squatters.

Richard Kelley

In February 1961, the German Democratic Republic's news agency ADN reported that Kelley had been "harassed", "threatened" and then arrested by police in West Berlin whilst visiting the city in connection with his attendance at a conference for coexistence and disarmament in Warsaw.

Stahlmusik

One of the earliest and rarest Neubauten albums, Stahlmusik was recorded live-to-tape in a pillar of the Stadtautobahn Bridge in West Berlin on June 1, 1980, and was released on cassette in October via Blixa Bargeld's "Eisengrau" shop, where the earliest incarnations of the band would often rehearse.

Tauentzienstraße

During the Cold War era, the street formed part of the commercial center of West Berlin, along with the nearby Kurfürstendamm.

The Thin White Duke

As his drug habit ate away at his physical and mental health, Bowie decided to move from Los Angeles to Paris and then West Berlin, where he began recording the Berlin Trilogy (Low, "Heroes", and Lodger) with Brian Eno and Tony Visconti.

Thekla Carola Wied

Thekla Carola Wied (b. Thekla Wiedmann 5 February 1944 in Breslau, Germany) is a German actress educated in West Berlin at the Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster.