West of the Wall West of the Wall "West of the Wall" is a 1962 song written by Wayne Shanklin, which was recorded as a single by Toni Fisher. The song tells of the sadness of lovers separated by the Berlin Wall which divided Germany into East and West at the time, and expresses the hope that the wall will soon fall. The Berlin Wall had been constructed in 1961, and in fact did not fall until 1989. The song was a Top 40 hit for Toni Fisher in the United States, where it reached #37 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 in July 1962.
Berlin Wall motifs were put up for auction in 1990 in Berlin and Monte Carlo. On 1 July, the day East Germany adopted the West German currency, all "de jure" border controls ceased, although the inter-German border had become meaningless for some time before that. The fall of the Wall marked the first critical step towards German reunification, which formally concluded a mere 339 days later on 3 October 1990 with the dissolution of East Germany and the official reunification of the German state along the democratic lines of the West German Basic Law. In some European capitals at the time, there