The Berlin Wall - Then & Now

The Berlin Wall was torn down nearly 30 years ago. The Berlin Wall divided the city for 28 years. Then on November 9, 1989 the East German government announced that all East German citizens were now free to visit West Germany and West Berlin. Since that date most of the Berlin Wall has been destroyed.

The Berliner Morgenpost has published a series of before and after photographs which allow you to directly compare historical pictures of the Berlin Wall with how the same scenes look today. All the photos in The Berlin Wall - Then and Now story include a button which allows you to swipe between the before and after photographs, so you can directly compare each location with and without the Berlin Wall.

The Berliner Morgenpost's before and after photographs were created with Knight Lab's JuxtaposeJS, a JavaScript library for comparing two pieces of similar media. The library is a great tool for highlighting 'then and now' stories that explain how people or locations have changed over time.



Five years ago, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Berliner Morgenpost published an aerial view map of Berlin which allows you to compare the Berlin of 1989 with the Berlin of 2014.

In the first twenty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall large areas of Berlin were transformed. Using the Berliner Morgenpost's interactive map Die Narbe der Stadt (The Scar of the City) you can compare the Berlin of 1989 with the Berlin of 2014, using aerial imagery of the city from both years. You can pan and zoom the map and switch between the aerial views from the two years to compare the Berlin of 2014 with the Berlin of 1989. A menu in the top-left corner of the map provides quick links to some important locations in the city.

German speakers can also read a long-form guided tour of the Berlins Wall's boundary to learn more about how the city changed in the first twenty-five years after the collapse of East Germany.