f you want to impress someone from western Germany with your German-language ability, or frighten an elderly eastern German, try out this mouthful: Stacheldrahtsonntag. Translation: “Barbed-Wire Sunday.” Most Germans still know what it means—and Germans over the age of sixty-five cannot forget the day it happened, and where they were and what they were doing. It is a marker of generational consciousness, comparable to how Americans over sixty can still recall exactly how and when they heard that President John F. Kennedy was shot.
August 13, 1961. This was the day East Berliners woke up to find their half of the city encircled by barbed wire—and themselves incarcerated in a state-wide prison, separated from friends and families. Stacheldrahtsonntag. On that shocking day, the military and police of East Germany—officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR)—closed the border between East and West Berlin and began the construction of what would, within weeks, become the towering Berlin Wall, complete with 296 watchtowers and thousands of army snipers. Why the barbed wire? It was a fast and relatively cheap way to prevent border crossings until the big construction crews got to work on the concrete wall itself.
