Photo Gallery: The Wall in the Sky
Sky-High Berlin Wall Flies for Guinness Record
Hardened Berliners, who became used to living in the epicenter of 20th century geopolitics, saw something new on Thursday: the Berlin Wall flying through the sky.
A section of the wall measuring 3.4 meters by 70 centimeters (11 feet by 2.3 feet) swung from a 15-meter (50-foot) rope as it was lifted by helicopter about 100 meters (330 feet) aloft to its new resting place on the observation deck of the Kollhoff building on Potsdamer Platz in central Berlin.
The show was put on by Panoramapunkt, which operates the observation deck. The company believes that they've set a Guinness world record for the "world's highest segment of the Berlin Wall."
Panoramapunkt is still waiting for confirmation from Guinness on the record, and spokeswoman Christine Mühlenhof says that the process has been fast tracked in an effort to make it into this year's record book, which will be published in September.
A Symbolic Gesture
So why use a chopper? "It looks more beautiful," says Mühlenhof. "We wanted to show the wall flying. It's a symbol of division, but we wanted to turn it into a symbol of freedom."
It took about six minutes from takeoff to landing for the concrete slab. "The entire process was a little tricky and caused a bit of worry," Mühlenhof added.
The portion of the wall originated from a 2.5 kilometer (1.5 miles) stretch that ran from Invalidenstrasse in the north to the Brandenburg Gate and Potsdamer Platz in the south.
'No Way to Get It Down'
There are no plans to remove the 750-kilogram (1,650-pound) section of the wall. "It will stay on the deck as long as the tower exists," Mühlenhof says. "There's no way to get it down." The company's lease of the Kollhoff observation deck won't expire until 2025, so Mühlenhof says it will be on the observation deck until at least then.
Pastor and East German human rights activist Joachim Gauck made a speech to mark the wall's safe landing and signed the wall afterwards.
The section of the wall will be used in a new open-air exhibition on the observation deck about the history of Potsdamer Platz and present day Berlin.
Prior to World War II, Potsdamer Platz was a thriving meeting place for artists and the politically engaged. After being flattened by Allied bombs in 1945, the area was shortly thereafter divided by the Berlin Wall and laid undeveloped until after Germany's 1990 reunification.
