The Berlin Wall: A World Divided

By: Hope M. Harrison, The Great Courses

Narrated by: Hope M. Harrison

The Berlin Wall is perhaps modern history’s most infamous edifice.

For 28 years, it divided postwar Germany into communist-controlled east and democratic west. Then, in 1989, it collapsed - transforming a symbol of communist oppression into a potent emblem of freedom.

Why, and how, was the Berlin Wall constructed? How did Germans adapt to its presence or try to escape it? What political and social forces were responsible for its destruction? What still remains of the Berlin Wall, and how do today’s Germans grapple with its legacy?

The Berlin Wall: A World Divided is more than just the story of brick, concrete, and barbed wire. It’s the story of a city, a country, and a world - all of them divided. To hear how the Berlin Wall exemplified this division is to gain insights into a central tension of world history: between the human drive for freedom and the political will that would control and repress that drive. Drawing on years of research using former top-secret communist archives, Hope M. Harrison has crafted a riveting Audible Original that brings to life the political, social, and cultural history of the Berlin Wall. She shares the story of the millions of people who lived in its real shadow - and still live in its figurative one.

©2021 Audible Originals, LLC (P)2021 Audible Originals, LLC.

An excellent course on German history

The title of this course is somewhat misleading, as it is so much more! This is a well structured, concise and captivating journey through the history of Germany, from the end of the second world war to the present.

As a German immigrant living in Berlin I find this very useful. It's given me colour to fill in all the lines around me.

comprehensive and direct

real stories and a streamlined story. this book gives you a good gaze into east and west Germany from its conception, through the wall building, life and fall.

Educational

Got a good history of the wall and it’s events. Usually history is dry. This was not. I enjoyed it.

We'll worth the listen. Clear and precise account of all that the Berlin Wall was and stood for in the Cold War.

I really enjoyed this series of lectures on the Berlin wall and its role and what it symbolized during the years after WWII.

Worth audible subscription!

This audio alone satisfies this month's subscription to audible. I generally get bored with history, but this course is so intriguing and mesmerizing. I highly recommend it

Learn history that’s relevant to today

I was a young adult when the Berlin Wall fell, and paid attention to events. Yet I learned a lot listening to Harrison’s well-researched and well-told chronology. The individual stories kept it engaging.

Great Historical Summary About the Wall

There is so little offered by Audible about the old Warsaw Pact countries, and E Germany and the Stasi especially. I appreciated the personal stories intertwined with the historical narrative. My one criticism would be the closing the statements. The professor advocates open borders and the criticism of those opposed to open borders as racist or xenophobic. Comparing modern opposition to unlimited refugee admissions from the Middle East is not the same.

I was alive when it fell but

I knew so very little about how, when and why it was built. this is all the more embarrassing where the cold war was central to my graduate studies. she argues in the last chapter that the Berlin wall has great relevance to us today. I quite agree. reading this book is a worthy undertaking well worth your time.

Great lecture series, terrible narration

The story told by this book was incredible. The history of the Berlin Wall is both intriguing and historically important.
The lectures themselves are fairly well written, and do a great job of censoring on specific topics.
the lecturer, however, has a dull, yet strangely affected voice, that takes some SERIOUS greeting used to. Even by the end of the book, it was not comfortable to listen to.

A Great Overview

Harrison provides a quick overview of the Berlin Wall, starting with the political situation that led to its creation and ending with the aftermath of its demolition. The account is punctuated with both exciting and heart-wrenching tales of real people who risked (and often lost) everything in an attempt to move from east to west. Harrison provides a lot of details I didn’t know. Perhaps most striking was that the wall was initiated by the East Germans without the approval of the Soviet Union—that sort of independence is not something the stereotype of the Iron Curtain led me to expect. I was also surprised by just how much official transit went on between East and West through the wall and how dependent the East German government was on the revenue that they gained from taxing those they let visit from the west. I was also surprised to learn that West Germany was in the habit of “purchasing” the freedom of many East Germans convicted of trying to escape to the west. On this level, communist East Germany was actually quite capitalistic.