What life at the Cold War frontier in divided Germany was really like. Part three in a series of three videos commemorating the 20th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin wall.

 

 
For 28 years, a nearly insurmountable barrier kept people from fleeing East Germany. But the dramatic night of November 9, 1989 saw the fall of the wall that divided Germany. Today, it is difficult to imagine what was bitter reality just over two decades ago.
 
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Virtually experiencing history
To recreate the border in the utmost detail, the animators generated 130,000 pictures according to historical models. It took some 100,000 hours for the computers to calculate the data necessary for the high-definition production. Each individual object had to be copied with so-called polygons - around 500,000 were necessary for the Church of Reconciliation on Bernauer Strasse in Berlin.
 
Thanks to the intensive animation process, the border can be "virtually experienced," said Axel Klausmeier, director of the Berlin Wall Foundation - an experience that the 300,000 annual visitors to the Bernauer Strasse Memorial will also benefit from.
  
  
Text and video: DW-TV. Deutsche Welle 2009 - www.dw-world.de
 
With support from the Berlin Wall Foundation and the Hötensleben Border Memorial.