Berlin Wall "Our lives have lost their spirit...we can do nothing to stop them." On 6 June 1987, David Bowie, who earlier for several years lived and recorded in West Berlin, played a concert close to the Wall. This was attended by thousands of Eastern concertgoers across the Wall, followed by violent rioting in East Berlin. According to Tobias Ruther, these protests in East Berlin were the first in the sequence of riots that led to those of November 1989. Although other factors were probably more influential in the fall of the Wall, on his death, the German Foreign Office tweeted "Good-bye,
Berlin Wall East German border guards shot and killed would-be defectors. Such fatalities were later treated as acts of murder by the reunified Germany. The Berlin Wall was more than long. In June 1962, a second, parallel fence was built some farther into East German territory. The houses contained between the fences were razed and the inhabitants relocated, thus establishing what later became known as the "death strip". The death strip was covered with raked sand or gravel, rendering footprints easy to notice, easing the detection of trespassers and also enabling officers to see which guards had neglected their task; it offered