Nostalgia for aspects of life in the GDR, it seems, is still current. In modern Berlin one can buy any number of products that once graced East Berlin households; the Trabant car has acquired cult status; even the humble Ampelmann â?? which stood guard at pedestrian crossings in the East â?? has become an icon.
For all that apparently innocent â??Ostalgiaâ??, Pertti Ahonenâ??s book Death at the Berlin Wall, is a powerful antidote. He examines a selection of the 136 individuals killed at the wall in its 28-year lifespan; from its earliest victim, Günter Litfin, in August 1961, to its last, Chris Gueffroy, in February 1989, who was shot and killed just nine months before the Berlin Wall fell.
Some of the stories that he relates are well known; such as that of Peter Fechter, whose fatal shooting in August 1962 unleashed a wave of outrage in the West; or that of the Wallâ??s youngest victim, 11-year-old Jörg Hartmann, who was killed trying to escape to his father in the spring of 1966. Others are much less prominent, at least in the West, such as the stories of the â??socialist hero-victimsâ??, border guards Peter Göring, Reinhold Huhn or Egon Schulz, who were killed in shootouts with West Berlin policemen, or desperate would-be escapers.
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