![]() I threw this over the wall with two more packs of Lifes. I wrote another note, telling them that I had also been a border soldier and had fled to the West, and that I would like to come to the Wall another day and see them again. One of them kept constant watch on the area behind them. The three of them shared the cigarettes and burned the packages. We’re married, with children, and that’s why we can’t jump over-we’ve just got to put up with this humbug. ![]() It said, “Thanks a lot for the cigarettes. A little later a note weighted down by a stone came flying over. The soldiers carefully scanned their surroundings before they picked up the cigarettes. I wrote a few words of greetings on a small piece of paper and threw it over with the cigarettes. I went to the nearest cigarette machine and bought some packs of Lifes, the favorite brand of border soldiers. They gestured to me to ask if I had a few cigarettes for them. On the other side of the Wall, three soldiers were sitting on a block of concrete. In the conclusion of his text-excerpted below-he describes a moment two years after his defection, when he wanders back to the wall and establishes a connection with a new crop of conflicted border guards:Ī few weeks ago, I was standing one evening somewhere near Checkpoint Charlie. ![]() Mara's own story of crossing over, however, is marked by a sense of circularity. He was neither the first nor the last guard to do so: By 1963, more than 1,000 guards had crossed over the Wall, including Conrad Schumann, who made his iconic "leap of hope" just three days into the barrier's construction. On Christmas Eve, 1961, an East German guard named Michael Mara defected to the West. In honor of the 25th anniversary this week of the Wall's fall, we've included three of the most remarkable reflections from Berliners whose lives were very much defined by one of history's most consequential barriers. In December 1963, The Atlantic Monthly published a 43-page supplement on Berlin, "the Broken City." The report was published just two years after construction began on the Berlin Wall, and many of the stories revolve around the rise of this new, tangible division between the city's East and West. ![]()
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