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The Berlin Wall, for decades the international symbol of the Cold War and the ideological split between communism and capitalism, met an abrupt end when jubilant crowds of East Germans began tearing it down in 1989. It signaled an end to the Cold War, and countless people wanted a souvenir chunk of the wall to mark the great occasion.
Two large concrete slabs of the Berlin Wall found their way to Mountain View and in 2013, were put on display outside the library after being donated to the city. To their surprise, Mountain View officials recently learned some of the history behind these pieces.
Berlin resident Robin Pohle emailed the library last week after one of his friends spotted one of the wall chunks while taking a virtual tour of Mountain View on Google. The wall segment is spray-painted with heart with the words, “Wir lieben dich,” which translates to “We love you.”
Pohle explained that he had painted it on a still-standing part of the wall with his friends in 1990 to bid farewell to their friend Polly, who was moving to Munich. In fact, the trio even snapped a photo next to the fresh graffiti.
Recognizing a piece of the wall is something akin to finding a needle in a haystack. Generations of graffiti covered the concrete segment of the wall, which measured about 12 feet high and 66 miles long, and pieces of the wall were scattered worldwide when it was torn down.
Library Director Rosanne Macek said she was astonished to learn the wall’s back story. A private collector, Frank Golzen, had donated the pieces to the city just two years earlier, she said.
“Out of the blue we get this email from this man,” she said. “Given the distance and the time, I think it’s amazing we were able to connect with each other.”
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What a cool story!
I’m delighted to see renewed interest in these pieces of the Berlin Wall. My husband served in the Army during the Cold War. The borders were very real and very serious. Sadly, members of the Mountain View City Council referred to these pieces as “ugly pieces of concrete” and seemed to feel burdened by the donation. Take your kids to see the Berlin Wall and talk about the blessings of freedom.
It’s good to know the background on “our” wall. I’ve sat in front of library and watched kids circle the slab and stare at it. On occasion I’ve asked them if they knew what it was or why it was. No! is the predominant answer. So I’ve told them what it was and why it was and they often don’t believe me. So I tell them to read the info posted with the wall. Usually they don’t.
It’s an odd thing to encounter kids whose curiosity stops with little info. What happening in our schools? is my thought.
I too think this is a wonderful story. It would be very interesting to somehow display the photograph along with the story at the site of the wall. I really feel that the information at the Berlin Wall exhibit is not adequate and could be made to be more visitor friendly.
Socialism comes down from one side of the world after many years of failure from it. Now thanks to our pres, he wants to bring it here.
You really have no idea what you’re talking about, do you?
Get. Lost.
What a great example of how connected we all are. Parents should explain the history, not schools alone. I like the idea of posting the photo and story nearby or on the panel.
What a neat piece of history! When I saw the wall segments in their old location on the other side of the freeway, my first thought was to wonder who the words “we love you” were directed at. Now we know!
Why not a follow up story of how the pieces of the wall came to Mountain View in the first place?
@Los Altos
> It would be very interesting to somehow display the photograph along with the story at the site of the wall.
I would urge caution before posting that picture at the public library where our children are bound to see it: there is a large penis spraypainted in the background (just behind the people’s heads).
Perhaps the penis could be photoshopped into something more child friendly, like a bunny rabbit?
Then I would be okay with posting the history.
I absolutely LOVED the day I was cruising my bike through the business park area around Garcia ave. One day I saw a cut through path and followed it
until I came up on these slabs in their original home. I couldn’t believe I’d never known they were there or even anywhere in MV.
I loved to bring my friends there and surprise them. It’s great that it has a more worthy place to be displayed now, but it sure was fun to on a ride with friends and be able to say “Hey, ya wanna see something cool I bet you never knew was here?”
Was pleasantly surprised to see the wall earlier today. However, I have to disagree with the manner in which the struggles of the German people have been usurped by America. The plaques at the site are obsessed with associating the history with “American Resolve”. I find this self-indulgent at best, and a misreading of history at worst.
I remember staring across the defoliated zone between two fences separating West and East Germany in the open countryside 30 years ago. (To the east, armed GrenzePolizei — “Grepos” — in guard towers peered back at us through binoculars.) The barren dirt between the two fences was a kill zone, with land mines and automated guns confronting anyone who dared leave, without permission, the alleged workers’ paradise of the eastern “German Democratic Republic.” Official GDR story was that this zone defended against invasions from the West — an Orwellian lie, laid bare when hard evidence revealed that the weapons between the fences pointed east, not west.
The Berlin-Wall slabs (from a version of the same border running through Berlin) are deeply symbolic. If, as reported above, children today don’t want to know the realities behind them, it’s only another reminder that each new generation has new history to learn, to understand the world they find themselves in — and is often blissfully clueless of that responsibility. Yet the responsibility is theirs, as is responsibility for any consequences of their ignorance of the history itself.
I’m embarassed, though, by the Mountain View sign glibly crediting the wall’s demise to “American resolve,” because I remember the circumstances.
In 1989, the Cold-War-era “Warsaw Pact” governments in Central and Eastern Europe had been liberalizing; 50th-anniversary publicity was also raking up European memory of events leading into World War II: Hitler’s and Stalin’s power plays against many small states. In May, the “Iron Curtain” began to tear when Hungary boldly opened its border with Austria to free travel. In one Warsaw-Pact nation after another, it seemed the people had had enough of heavy-handed constraints on their free movement to the West. In November, the East-German gov’t finally conceded, East Germans thronged across open borders, and Berliners gleefully vandalized the wall that had divided their city for almost 30 years.
The main actors in all that were local people. To attribute it just to “American resolve” — even though that contains a grain of truth — is a reminder of the parochial self-crediting that is another, less noble, behavior we Americans are internationally famous for.
If you’d like to read more about the history of Mountain View’s Berlin Wall sections:
Berlin Wall sections find permanent home by library: http://mv-voice.com/news/2013/03/20/berlin-wall-sections-find-permanent-home-by-library
City’s hidden tribute to fall of communism: http://www.mv-voice.com/news/2009/11/11/citys-hidden-tribute-to-fall-of-communism