51 years ago today.
Soviet-bloc communism disabused us of a lot of ideas, including pointing out that when the amplification was turned up a lot, even Robert Frost could be wrong in the voice of his farmer and neighbor character, because high, concrete and concertina wire fences don’t make good neighbors.
A rock wall in Vermont, like the one Robert Frost wrote about -Wikimedia image
Of course, even in demonstrating Frost in error, the communists made the opening clause of “Mending Fences” more poignant: “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall . . .”
Residents of Berlin awoke on August 13, 1961, to discover that the Soviet-dominated East Germany had begun constructing a wall across Berlin, to keep East Berlin residents from escaping the clutches of communism and walking to freedom in West Berlin.
This year I saw a mock up of part of the Berlin Wall next to an exhibit honoring Winston Churchill at the Trout Museum of Art in Appleton, Wisconsin. A few days later I saw actual portions of the wall, mounted for permanent display at the National Churchill Museum on the Churchill Center in Fulton, Missouri. A few days later, I saw more sections of the wall, with one of the 300+ guard towers, at the Newseum, in Washington, D.C. On Each occasion I was reminded of my own trip to the Wall in 1987, finding next to the boarded-up Reichstag eight wreaths, honoring the eight people who were known to have died trying to cross the wall in the previous six months.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall. That something is freedom.
Please see other Bathtub posts on the topic:
- “Berlin Wall’s 50th anniversary”
- Berlin Wall’s 46th
- Berlin Wall’s 45th
- “Kennedy said we are all citizens of Berlin”
- Quote of the moment: John Kennedy, June 26, 1963
- Cold War hero Günter Schabowski
- “20 years ago the Berlin Wall fell — reverse domino effect” (November 9, 2009)
And remember the poet’s telling, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.”
A wall Robert Frost would not love – Berlin Wall at Potsdamer Platz, November 1975, from West Berlin – Wikimedia photo
Other resources:
- Great Divide: The Birth of the Berlin Wall (life.time.com)
- The Berlin Wall (socyberty.com)
- the wall (ourownsweettime.com)
- By 2023, most people will be too young to remember the Berlin Wall! (rightsaidjames.wordpress.com)
- Comic book on Germany’s painful past targets youth (gulfnews.com)
- Project to name victims killed at Cold War border (thelocal.de)
- Tear Down That Wall! (sarasmusings.wordpress.com)
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 