Wall Museum

The Mauermuseum - Haus am Checkpoint Charlie is a private Berlin museum on Friedrichstrasse documenting the Berlin Wall and especially the escape attempts across it. It was founded in 1963, just two years after the Wall went up, by human-rights activist Rainer Hildebrandt as a deliberately political platform directly opposite the border crossing. It displays original artifacts of successful escapes - modified VW Beetles, a hot-air balloon, a mini-submarine suit, a makeshift ski-lift cable - and during the Cold War became a meeting point for dissidents and Western diplomats. The sheer density of material and the deliberately unsorted character are part of the program; Hildebrandt's widow Alexandra still runs the house with the explicit aim of being a documentation site rather than a curated museum. Visitors thread through cramped multi-floor rooms full of panels, films and original objects and emerge at a replica of the Checkpoint guardhouse.