Wall of shame
† September 26, 1961"
Schandmauer was a dysphemism officially used by the West Berlin Senate until the late 1960s for the Berlin Wall . It was first used by Willy Brandt .
The term expresses the strongly negative attitude towards the border system and thus stands in contrast to the euphemism " anti-fascist protective wall " used in the GDR .
The dead ends created by the wall in West Berlin were often given the additional sign “caused by the wall of shame”. Memorial plaques for the victims of the Berlin Wall from this time also contained this formulation.
The term Schandmauer found its way into the general vocabulary of the population in the 1960s. With the introduction of the policy of détente at the beginning of the 1970s, however, the term largely disappeared from everyday language and was no longer used officially, as it was intended to prevent the endangerment of German-German relations from overly harsh language use.
Web links
- West Berlin dead end sign (here the walled-up Ackerstraße at the corner of Bernauer Straße with the Church of Reconciliation, which was blown up in 1985 )