All states have frontiers. East Germany, aka the German Democratic Republic, became a frontier that had a state. When the frontier dissolved, the state followed less than a year later.
The Berlin Wall, which was breached 20 years ago on Monday, was only the most notorious segment of that frontier.
On August 13, 1961, after consultation with their Soviet patrons, the GDR authorities laid down 97 miles of barbed wire around West Berlin – an island of western Allied sovereignty and West German constitutional liberty 110 miles within East Germany – to sever it from the Communist-controlled territory that surrounded it.
Twenty-seven miles of the new barrier zig-zagged north to south, along the urban boundary that separated West and East Berlin.
Soon, the rolls of barbed wire were augmented with a high concrete barrier with watchtowers, floodlights, and a no man's land.
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