Berlin Wall a notable moment of the Cold War and a high point of the New Frontier. It was a great morale boost for West Berliners, who lived in an exclave deep inside East Germany and feared a possible East German occupation. In a speech at the Brandenburg Gate commemorating the 750th anniversary of Berlin on 12 June 1987, U.S. President Ronald Reagan challenged Mikhail Gorbachev, then the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, to tear down the Wall as a symbol of increasing freedom in the Eastern Bloc: In June 1989 the Hungarian government began dismantling the
Berlin Customs Wall thus turning Berlin into a central transport hub for Prussia and the German Customs Union. With the rise of Berlin, new suburbs were built outside the Customs Wall, which increasingly became a hindrance to the continued development of the city. In 1860 the Customs Wall was removed and on 1 January 1861 Berlin amalgamated its suburbs resulting in a doubling of the city's population. The remaining walls were demolished for the most part between 1867 and 1870 - including most of the gates. Only some imposing gates were kept, the Brandenburg Gate being the only one to be rebuilt after