American History

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A piece of the Berlin Wall , 1962. The Wall was topped with Barbed Wire that East Berlin from escaping, While most of the Berlin Wall anniversary coverage has fell on The Day the Berlin Wall , The Seeds of revolution were planted in the 1960s, and driven by America's civil rights movement, says James Jeffrey.

When the Berlin Wall thousands of people from All over The World converged fell, to celebrate the end of the 40 Years of divided Europe.

Among them, The American photo-journalist Flip Schulke, who had visited was on The Wall , many times, it was built for it in 1961, in an attempt to document what he described as "a man who would have the physical ability to build a bastion between himself and his own, if he tried hard enough".

As he mingled with The Crowd , he heard on her lips in a German protest song, but the famous American civil rights anthem "we shall overcome".

It was a song he knew well.

As a photojournalist in the 1950s and 1960s, Schulke captured many significant moments in The Nation in the fight for civil rights in the 1960s, such as the marches to the end of separation from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, and Martin Luther King at his funeral in 1968.

After the Berlin Wall went up in 1961, Schulke its citizens brought the rights of experience with him to capture as he tried The Wall , the symbolic and physical power.

"This is The Wall , built of fear", Schulke wrote in the remarks during his visit to The Wall in 1962. "That was The Wall , where there is hatred stood guard, and the men bowed, much lower than angels. On the one hand, it was bright and clean by The Sun of freedom. (On) The Other dark and bitter - rot of slavery. "

Consisting of brick, mortar, steel wire and jagged glass shards climbers frighten off The Wall , both horrified and shocked Schulke, described it as a "jerry-built" look.

"can't It just be real that," he said, adding that The Wall was a "monument to human misery" that "splits The World in half like a Melon ".

woman walking next to the Berlin Wall , circa 1962-1968, He recalled how on the Western side of the German children played tag in The Shadows of tank traps, while, on The Other hand, children dull "were-eyed and a pinch faced, the inputs in the dark house - questions, to laugh as you learn".

As East German border guards saw him through the binoculars, Schulke observed, the last East German refugees in West-Berlin near The Wall and the signaling to friends and relatives back in East Berlin have to wait, or to appear to be relatives.

"A woman waited wrote for five hours to see her mother, who never turns up," Schulke. "A few stood at the Spree river, The Girl is crying quietly, trying to catch a glimpse of her mother over The River . "

During the Schulke the early supply of the civil rights movement, he had a relatively balanced journalistic outlook and tried both sides to see, says Gary Truman, a longtime friend and former colleague.

"But that fades quickly, because he said that sometimes there is No Other reasonable counter-view, there were only right and wrong," Truman says.

"I think his reporting on the Berlin Wall stated that this is simply wrong. "

During the civil rights marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, protesters referred to themselves as the "Selma wall" Schulke saw The Wall and the civil rights movement as part of "a larger conflict about the universal human freedoms," said Truman, who as archivist of the Schulke photographic collection of The Photographer 's death in 2008.

"Similarities exist in The Artist 's Eyes . "

Schulke was far from alone in seeing what Parallels there are between the division in North America and in Berlin. Even before the famous "I Am a Berliner" speech of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert Kennedy came to Berlin as U.S. attorney General in February 1962.

"for a hundred years, despite All the protestations of equality, we had, as you know, a wall of Our Own - a wall of segregation erected against Negroes," said Mr. Kennedy. "This wall will come down. "

German soldiers on The Wall , circa 1960s ", which is visited For generations, a critically engaged Americans in Berlin to see The Wall , and think of The Wall , to think of it as a metaphor about the division in the United States," says the historian Paul Farber and author of the forthcoming book, A wall of Our Own : An American story of the Berlin Wall .

In the 1960s, it was a symbol of American racial segregation. In the 1980s for Nuclear Disarmament .

"Within days of The Wall until it was used to speak of the colour line in the United States," says Farber.

That the process of displacement and the representation continues to This Day for the Americans.

"The U.S. prison system, unfair housing practiced, All of these physical and social walls can be understood, if the drawing says the historic and current connections to Berlin," Farber.

"The idea of a border wall followed us today. "

Schulke was born in 1930 and grew up in New Ulm , Minnesota, a city with a significant German-American population, a fact that Truman says, has some Schulke interest in Berlin have driven.

Its got his nickname "Flip" through an early interest in gymnastics. Schulke also spent part of his childhood in The South , where he felt the conflict of the observation of the way his parents treated black servant, Truman says.

Muhammad Ali , 1961, After the Start of his freelance career as a photographer, he worked for the likes of life magazine and other American and European publications.

He covered the Cuban Revolution of Fidel Castro , as well as the triumphs and tragedies of American Life , spanning the room starts to hurricanes, as well as the chronicle of the leading entertainers and athletes of his time, such as The Boxer Muhammad Ali .

A Collection of 300,000 Schulke images are housed in the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas in Austin.

Schulke involvement in the civil rights movement began in 1956, and was influenced and often facilitated by his friendship with Martin Luther King, whom he met in 1958, when Schulke was On Assignment for Ebony magazine, for a rally in a Miami Church.

Schulke wanted to ask the king some questions. King, because of his busy schedule, asked Schulke, to wait and to come to a post-rally gathering at A House of a member of the Assembly.

"they ended up talking almost the whole night," Truman says.

Schulke's personal collection of 11,000 photographs of the king and His Family is the largest in The World , they remained in contact over The Years , and Schulke was invited to King's home for Sunday dinner several times, while on other tasks, which in the Atlanta region.

"history, justice, fairness, and emotion - what feels right - All played a role in his photography," Truman says.

Schulke was not the only American photographer, whose experience with the paradox of American freedom and the institutionalized racism influenced his work in Berlin.

In his book, Farber photographer Leonard Freed , visited Berlin discussed in August 1961.

In an image picked Freed, a black soldier up in The American sector of Berlin in front of the rudimentary wall.

"meet us in the background, and part quietly," Freed wrote that the meeting after that, in his book " Black in White America.

"Between Us , impregnable and as deadly as The Wall behind him is a wall. It is there on the trolley tracks, it crawls along the cobble stones, across borders and oceans, reaching back into our lives and deep into our hearts: we are disconnect, where we will meet. I Am White and he is Black. "

When the king was murdered in 1968, Schulke stopped the civil rights movement, cover, and turned to more commercial projects, the pioneering underwater photography work with the likes of the maritime Explorer Jacques Cousteau .

"It was just too painful to continue with the coverage after the loss of the king," Truman says.

The one-man-mini-U-boats of Jacques-Yves Cousteau. In these photographs, The Subs are diving in Lake Titicaca , at 12,500 feet in the Bolivian Andes, approximately 1967-1975, But Schulke returned to The Wall again and again in the course of his life, often self-funding his trips, because he could not stir the interest of the editors who see a story in which something that they considered, would always be there, Truman said.

in the 1970s, he photographed The Wall from the same angles that he had before, to illustrate the growth and strengthening of The Wall .

He saw how it was always "more of a blank as a wall," says Ben Wright , a researcher at UT Austin's Briscoe Center for American History , where Schulke's archive is housed.

"had to drop created by The removal of trees and buildings, a desolate strip 200 metres wide, with walls and guards strangled the whole of the Western area of The City . "

learn more about the GDR, 1989

Source of news: bbc.com