Walled in! - The inner German border An animated video by Deutsche Welle
Remnants of the old wall and barriers between East and West are growing scarce today.
A section of the Wall stood next to the Church of Reconciliation.
Deutsche Welle painstakingly recreated every object in this project with 3D polygons.
"For the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Deutsche Welle has developed a unique project in cooperation with the Berlin Wall Foundation: an animated depiction of the former German-German border.
"The HDTV computer animation maps out portions of the former borders in Berlin and between West and East Germany in an effort to show what a divided Germany was really like.
"Today, remnants of the Wall and of the no-man's land that separated East from West are too few and far between for their meaning to be passed on to future generations.
"Historians and television makers worked together in this Deutsche Welle project to create a detailed reconstruction of the no-man's land from the early 1980s, including new views of the border area.
Virtually experiencing history
"We want to convey to the people who see it what we suffered in Berlin and on the German-German border between the GDR and the Federal Republic," said Deutsche Welle's Director General Erik Bettermann.
"Christoph Lanz, head of DW-TV, said that the HDTV animation is particularly accessible to younger audiences, for whom a divided Germany is just another piece of distant history.
"To recreate the border in the utmost detail, the animators generated 130,000 pictures according to historical models. It took some 100,000 hours for the computers to calculate the data necessary for the high-definition production. Each individual object had to be copied with so-called polygons -- around 500,000 were necessary for the Church of Reconciliation on Bernauer Strasse in Berlin.
"Thanks to the intensive animation process, the border can be "virtually experienced," said Axel Klausmeier, director of the Berlin Wall Foundation -- an experience that the 300,000 annual visitors to the Bernauer Strasse Memorial will also benefit from.
Shown around the world
...DW-TV broadcast the animation around the world in German, English, Arabic and Spanish. The film is also be available for viewing at the Berlin Wall Foundation memorial in Berlin and was also shown at German embassies and consulates as well as at Goethe Institutes around the world.
...The project is available for use by the Federal Center for Political Education (BPB) and the state ministries for culture and education.
...The animation is part of the DVD "Walled in! What the Cold War frontier in divided Germany was really like" which can be purchased at DW's online store or at the Berlin Wall memorial on Bernauer Strasse in the German capital." (With some timing edits in final 3 paragraphs by fb)
I highly recommend watching this 3D video reenactment!
Please share your comments here.
It's amazing how well these people put this together in such great detail...including the "Stalin's lawn". I don't understand though why they separated Germany and Berlin into an East and West sector...I just don't understand why. I think though this would be a cool Call of Duty map like in Black Ops' "First Strike", except larger.
ReplyDeleteDas ist interessant. Why couldn't the Germans just get along.
ReplyDeleteeast germany at this time seems like such a waste of life!
ReplyDeleteEvery picture is perfectly placed.
ReplyDeleteI agree.. why couldn't they just get along?
ReplyDelete