Museumsportal Berlin

Leave-taking and longing, hope and despair, joy and fear — the building constructed in 1962 at Berlin’s Friedrichstraße station is tied to a broad spectrum of personal emotions and experiences. Until 1990, the departure hall built under East Germany’s SED regime was a border crossing from the GDR to West Berlin. Berliners soon dubbed this modern steel-and-glass construction, the scene of so many painful farewells, the “Palace of Tears”.

This was where Germans from both East and West felt just how much the Cold War and the division of Germany directly affected their lives. The overwhelming emotion was the pain of farewell after seeing family and friends from the other part of Germany — a feeling mixed with fear and anger at the harassmernt of the checks and controls. Many East Germans who believed they could never cross this border were gripped by desperation and a yearning to leave. Those granted an exit visa to move to West Germany were happy and relieved, but these feelings were often clouded by sadness at the loss of a homeland.

This exhibition by the Stiftung Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland at the historic preservation site “Palace of Tears” presents the impact of division and the border on everyday life in Germany. An original checkpoint booth offers an insight into the strict border controls. With cases of people collapsing from exhaustion and over 200 deaths, even “legally” crossing the border here was an ordeal. Older people suffered especially from long waits in queues and the humiliating clearance process.

The atmosphere of this unique location between East and West is vividly brought to life by dramatic and everyday real-life stories. Here, for example, the paths crossed for East German cadre allowed abroad and expatriated activists, or Stasi personnel smuggled over the border into the West as ‘spies”’ and ordinary West Germans travelling for personal reasons.