Become a time traveller through our Mauerschau app: Eye-witnesses show you what they encountered at the Berlin Wall at the locations where the events really took place. You may start the tours separately – on site or from home.
Each tour has its own thematic focus and takes you to the places where history was made.
You will hear different voices - from East and West Berliners, from those who fled, those who helped, those who observed and those who acted.
Descend into history with Winfried Schweitzer: one of the most spectacular escape tunnels of the Berlin Wall is located where 57 people crossed the border underground.
7 Stations
linear Tour
45 Min
Barrier-free
In 1964, a group of West Berlin students dug a 140-metre escape tunnel from Wedding to the Mitte district in East Berlin.
20-year-old Winfried Schweitzer was one of them, who took part in the daring tunnel construction project out of political conviction and a thirst for adventure. In the end, 57 people managed to escape through the underground shaft to the western part of the city on three consecutive days. But on the third day, the tunnel was discovered by GDR border guards. There was an exchange of fire, which ended fatally for the border troop sergeant Egon Schultz.
Winfried Schweitzer takes you to the place where the spectacular tunnel was built, describes the dangers and efforts involved in its construction and bears witness to its tragic outcome.
7 Stations
linear Tour
45 Min
Barrier-free
At the Bernauer Street memorial site, pastor Manfred Fischer shows you the place where his church had to give way to the Wall - and tells you how it later became a symbol of remembrance.
13 Stations
60 Min
Barrier-free
The Berlin Wall had run along Bernauer Strasse since 1961. To make way for it, GDR border troops levelled all the buildings on this section of the border one after the other. Entire sides of the street were torn down, houses were walled up and later demolished, a cemetery was destroyed and a church was blown up.
Manfred Fischer witnessed this massive destruction. From 1975 to 2013, he was pastor of the Evangelical Reconciliation Parish, whose Reconciliation Church was blown up. After the fall of the Wall, Pastor Fischer was involved in the establishment of the Berlin Wall Memorial on Bernauer Strasse.
Let him guide you around the memorial site and find out how the Wall had a lasting impact on the neighbourhood. As each clip deals with a different aspect of the Wall's history, you can choose freely between the different clips on your tour.
13 Stations
60 Min
Barrier-free
Heinz Schäfer looks back on the moment when he stood alone in front of American tanks in 1961 - between the fronts of the superpowers, at Checkpoint Charlie.
13 Stations
linear Tour
60 Min
Barrier-free
In October 1961, American and Soviet tanks faced each other at the Allied checkpoint on the corner of Friedrichstrasse and Zimmerstrasse, known as Checkpoint Charlie, after the SED leadership attempted to restrict the rights of the Western Allies in Berlin. It was one of the most dicey moments in the Cold War and left the world holding its breath.
Heinz Schäfer, a former captain in the GDR border troops, was on duty at Checkpoint Charlie and stood directly opposite the American chain armour. In this tour, he reports on the armoured confrontation and the tragic death of border refugee Peter Fechter from his perspective as a GDR border soldier.
His stories are supplemented by photographs from his private collection, which were taken and commented on by one of his comrades and document the conflict between the two superpowers in a unique way.
13 Stations
linear Tour
60 Min
Barrier-free
Erika Schallert tells how the Wall separated her from her fiancé - and how she set off on her escape with a wedding dress in her hand.
6 Stations
linear Tour
30 Min
Barrier-free
On 15 August 1961, East Berliner Erika Schallert decided to flee the GDR at the Bernauer Strasse border crossing. Two days earlier, the borders between East and West Berlin had been abruptly closed. Suddenly she was separated from her fiancé, who lived in the western part of the city.
Accompany Erika Schallert on her daring escape and find out whether she made it to her fiancé in West Germany.
6 Stations
linear Tour
30 Min
Barrier-free
Holger Klein takes you to Friedrichstraße station - and on an escape where every second counted. From his hiding place, he jumps onto the Moscow-Paris Express heading west.
6 Stations
linear Tour
30 Min
In 1964, Holger Klein fled the GDR at the age of just 17. He was one of a group of students who made it to West Berlin one by one within a few weeks. Their escape was by train from Friedrichstraße border station, a station heavily guarded by Stasi employees and border guards.
Experience an extraordinary tour of the Wall: the contemporary witness reveals his adventurous escape route and invites you to return with him to 1964 and make the journey from the East station to the longed-for western part of the city by S-Bahn train.
6 Stations
linear Tour
30 Min
Experience the night of 31 December 1989 at the Brandenburg Gate – with original recordings, voices of contemporary witnesses and the electrifying atmosphere of a new beginning.
9 Stations
60 Min
Barrier-free
On 12 June 1987, US President Ronald Reagan gave a speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate in which he called on the Soviet head of state and party leader: ‘Mister Gorbachev, tear down this wall! - Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!’ No one could have imagined that two and a half years later, on 9 November 1989, the Wall would really come down.
On 10 November, several thousand West Berliners flocked to the Wall at the Brandenburg Gate and climbed to the top of the Wall. The border guards desperately endeavoured to stop people from jumping onto the eastern territory and running to the monument. It had been the symbol of the divided city since 1961.
This tour reflects the events at the Brandenburg Gate primarily from the perspective of the border soldiers who had guarded the Wall for decades - and for whom everything changed when the Wall came down.
9 Stations
60 Min
Barrier-free
After the Wall was built, West Berlin trains were no longer allowed to stop at East Berlin stations. At Potsdamer Platz, they just rushed through. Take a look at an original shot from one of these ‘ghost tunnels’ – right through the underground no man's land.
1 Station
10 Min
The division of Berlin on 13 August 1961 also had an impact on the city's S-Bahn and U-Bahn services: From that day onwards, trains on West Berlin's S-Bahn and U-Bahn lines, which travelled through a section of East Berlin on their way from one western station to the next, were no longer allowed to stop at the eastern stations. - This also applied to the Potsdamer Platz S-Bahn station. The GDR border police closed the entrances to the once lively station and walled up the restaurants and flower shops located in the halls.
The film was taken a few days after 9 November 1989. Although the Wall had fallen, the S-Bahn station was still guarded by GDR border guards. For the first time in 28 years, they allowed cameramen to enter the deserted and darkened railway tracks. Follow in their footsteps in this clip and get a unique look at the ghost station of yesteryear.
1 Station
10 Min
The Berlin Wall is gone – but the traces it left behind remain: in biographies, streets and our collective memory.
With the Mauerschau, we want to help keep this history alive – not just in archives, but in the middle of our public space.
Our app brings historical events to life – on site, from multiple perspectives and with easy access.
What began with the Berlin Wall can be applied to many contexts – from the history of the Enlightenment and Jewish life in Berlin to the Nazi era, even the Berlin S-Bahn that has shaped Berlin's contemporary history on rails like no other means of transport.
Mauerschau is more than an app – it is a platform for location-based memorial culture.
We are happy to provide our infrastructure and expertise:
Whether you want to contribute your own content or develop new tours together with us, we are flexible and adapt to your needs. Our interdisciplinary team brings technical, scientific, journalistic and cinematic expertise to the table – and a passion for authentic storytelling.
Do you have an idea or a topic?
Write to us – no need to formalise it. We look forward to hearing from you.
Postmodern historiography through transmedia storytelling.
Mauerschau is a project by Mauerschau Medienproduktion – an interdisciplinary team of filmmakers, app developers, designers, and humanities scholars.
We develop transmedia formats that combine journalistic storytelling with innovative forms of story telling. We are based in Berlin and are now part of the Law & Innovation Group.
The Mauerschau app was created in 2013, inspired by a video installation by artists Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller at Documenta13; the app’s first version was financially supported by the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg.
Our vision: to turn history into an immersive experience. Especially in a city like Berlin, where the past is increasingly disappearing from the cityscape.
With the Mauerschau app, we connect real places with virtual time travels.
Mobile cinema means that users stand at the historical site and experience an eye-witness appearing right in front of them via their smartphone, guiding them from place to place.
Augmented reality (AR) makes it possible to digitally overlay historical photo and video footage onto the real environment – the past and present merge right before your eyes.
In dramaturgically condensed videos, eyewitnesses recount their experiences. This is supplemented by scientifically sound background information, presented in an educational format. The result is a dynamic interplay of personal memory and objective historiography.
The specific added value: a profound, immersive historical experience that goes far beyond the mere transfer of knowledge. Many users report moments that get under their skin.
By making different perspectives on the division of Berlin visible, the app encourages reflection on history, memory and social/political responsibility today. Postmodern historiography through transmedia storytelling.
Read more about transmedia storytelling:
In our open access paper ‘Mauerschau: A Mobile Virtual Museum - Postmodern Storytelling through Digital Media’, we show how postmodern narrative theories can be transferred to digital history mediation. Instead of linear, fixed narratives, we focus on polyphony, interactivity and spatial localisation - an approach that makes historical complexity tangible and invites users to develop their own approaches to the past.
