Berlin before the wall, you can see it now

Mon 9 November 2009 09:00, Bas van den Beld

Its an historical day today. This year in Germany they celebrate the twentieth birthday of the fall of the Berlin wall. Today exactly twenty years ago people from East Berlin 'jumped' the Wall when Günter Schabowsk, one off the bigger leaders in East Germany at the time announced at a historical press conference that 'starting now' every East German could pass the border if he wanted to. The German city would never look the same again.

It's an historical moment and, believe it or not, some people are sad that they have never visited Berlin before the Wall went down. They now won't know what it looked and felt like in the 'old' German capital. As usual its "Google to the rescue" however. In Google Earth you can now go back in time and look at Berlin long before 1989. You can actually see the Wall being built: Google added material from 1945 to 1953.

In the beginning of this year Google launched the possibilities to 'go back in time' in Google Earth. Using a slider you can go back in time and see what the place you're looking at looked like years ago. That doesn't work for every place yet, but it does for many.

The photos used for Berlin just after the war were taken from the US National Archives and the "Luftbilddatenbank Würzburg".

Google wouldn't be Google if it wouldn't have a special doodle today in honor of the historical events.

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