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Long After Its Fall, Berlin Wall Is Focus Of New Protests

American actor David Hasselhoff speaks to protesters next to a remnant of the Berlin Wall last week. Thousands of people turned out to oppose a plan to knock down one of the few remaining sections of the wall. A small part was removed Wednesday.
Odd Andersen
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AFP/Getty Images
American actor David Hasselhoff speaks to protesters next to a remnant of the Berlin Wall last week. Thousands of people turned out to oppose a plan to knock down one of the few remaining sections of the wall. A small part was removed Wednesday.

Protected by scores of German police officers, workers removed sections of a key remnant of the Berlin Wall before dawn Wednesday despite earlier protests demanding the concrete artifact of the Cold War be preserved.

The removal came as a shock to residents, just as it did on Aug. 13, 1961, when communists first built the barrier that divided Berlin during the Cold War.

Tour guide Rolf Strobel, 52, was among the scores of people who came to gape at the holes in what had been the longest remaining stretch of the wall — about eight-tenths of a mile.

The wall remnant is a gallery of colorful murals created following the 1989 popular uprising in what was then Communist East Germany. One of the murals features Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev kissing East German chief Erich Honecker, who built the Berlin Wall.

"I'm quite disappointed. This is impertinence," Strobel said of the wall's dismantling. He argued that it belongs to the public and not investors like Maik Uwe Hinkel, who paid the workers to take down four panels from the barrier.

Hinkel is building a luxury apartment complex nearby along the Spree River and wants to create an access road through the wall. But he stopped his work following a number of protests this month, including one led by actor David Hasselhoff, who starred in the TV series Baywatch and Knight Rider.

Hasselhoff is a popular singer in Germany; his anthem "Looking for Freedom" was belted out by the generation who brought down the Berlin Wall.

During a protest he thanked people for joining. "This is a part of history," he said. He also pledged to hold a "huge concert" in Berlin to increase the pressure if talks to preserve the wall fail.

In an e-mailed statement to The Associated Press, Hinkel said he was tired of fruitless negotiations with city officials. He also said Wednesday's removal is temporary so trucks can reach the building site.

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Special correspondent Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson is based in Berlin. Her reports can be heard on NPR's award-winning programs, including Morning Edition and All Things Considered, and read at NPR.org. From 2012 until 2018 Nelson was NPR's bureau chief in Berlin. She won the ICFJ 2017 Excellence in International Reporting Award for her work in Central and Eastern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Afghanistan.
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