Timeline

Overview of some milestones during the Berlin Wall sell-off:

November/December 1989

  • just after opening of the border the GDR government receives purchase options
  • GDR border guards take over the command for the deconstruction of the border installations
  • Mauerspechte get down to work and prey out pieces
  • first segments are lifted out
  • GDR governement instructs VEB LIMEX to sell all exploitable parts
  • American Berlin Wall Commemorative Group take up contact with LIMEX

January 1990

  • first segments of the Berlin Wall are shipped to USA
  • Berlin Wall Commemorative Group is the exclusive trading partner for the US market of LIMEX
  • LIMEX founds LeLé Berlin Verkaufs- und Wirtschaftswerbung in West-Berlin for promotion in Germany and Europe

April 1990

  • for the first time three Wall segments are auctioned in Berlin

May 1990

  • first Wall artist takes legal action to participate in sales proceeds

June 1990

  • another 80 segments of the Berlin Wall are auctioned by LeLé Berlin and Galerie Park Palace on behalf of VEB Limex-Bau Import-Export in Monte Carlo

October 1990

  • GDR is history. German Ministry of Defence takes over the deconstruction and sell-out of the border installations

December 1990

  • the Wall has vanished almost entirely from the Berlin cityscape
  • the Berlin Senate keeps a reserve of several Wall segments for future special purposes

Since 1991

  • until middle/end of 1990s the worldwide interest in Berlin Wall segments is unabated
  • in the following years (last 2013 in Paris) , every now and then, whole segments or part of segments are auctioned
  • Wall segments are temporarily available even on ebay
  • the track of some Wall segments vanishes: they are missing
  • other segments are removing with their owners over the years (sometimes even more than once)
  • yet others are changing their owners, but not automatically their site…

Presence

  • The interest in German/German history, symbolised by pieces of the Berlin Wall, continues: new memorials are and will be built around the world, existing sites are enhanced or removed (or unfortunately deconstructed).

 

Photo:
„Mauer nahe Reichstag“ by Superikonoskop – own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.