Berlin Wall collectors leave no stone unturned

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the desire to own a concrete reminder of the capital's painful, divided past shows little sign of abating.

In a warehouse under the flightpath from Tegel airport in west Berlin, Volker Pawlowski is busy turning pieces of the wall into chunks of tourist kitsch.

Whether affixed to a postcard or mounted in a display case, visitors to the German capital apparently cannot get enough of the stuff. Those with deeper pockets can buy a 3.6-metre high section of wall for €4,000 ($6,000, £3,500).

"After the wall fell I saw that there was demand there," explains Mr Pawlowski, whose company bought 150 complete segments and remains the world's biggest wholesaler. "We're selling a piece of history."

Before the wall fell, the idea that one day people would wish to have a piece above their fireplace would have seemed perverse.

The 165km reinforced concrete edifice and the so-called death-strip with its watchtowers, barbed wire and armed guards, were symbols of division and death. At least 136 people were killed at the wall between 1961 and 1989.

The exuberance that greeted the opening of border crossings on the night of November 9 1989 was matched by a desire to eradicate this dark chapter of east German history.

Although many Berliners chipped away their own keepsake - earning themselves the nickname Mauerspechte , or wall peckers - at least two-thirds of the wall was shredded and most of it was recycled to pave roads.

A few sections have been preserved, with the East-Side Gallery - a 1.3km long painted section of wall adjacent to the river Spree - perhaps the best known.

"An overwhelming majority of people wanted to get rid of it," says Manfred Fischer, a pastor, who campaigned to preserve a 64-metre section of the wall and death-strip near Bernauer Strasse. "But it's like when there is a crime, the police preserve the evidence, they tell you not to touch anything. The questions only come later, you can answer them only if you know how it was."

Today the wall tends to be seen more as an emblem of liberty brought about by the peaceful revolution.

"The Berlin Wall around the World", published this year, documents 120 segments of wall in about 40 countries. They include a 2.6-tonne segment bought at auction in 1990 by an Italian businessmen and donated to Pope John Paul II.

"There's so much wall, it doesn't need to be faked," Mr Pawlowksi says. "I won't live to see the day that I sell all my bits of wall."

Editorial Comment, Page 14 John McCain, Page 15 www.ft.com/berlinwall