| German I, Semester I; Das Wetter |
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| Sections: |
Introduction | Section 1 | Section 2 | Section 3 | Dictionaries |
| Section One: |
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Section One - Part B Die
Jahreszeiten
 Let's talk about it...Go to the discussion board and answer the questions... Welche Jahreszeit ist es? Wie ist das Wetter? Wie ist die Temperatur? Respond to another student's post on the discussion board. This assignment is worth 8 points.
More about Berlin
Here are some websites where you can take a look at historical photos of the Wall. | |||||||||||||||
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Practice Writing Activity
Did you know that Berlin had a wall that surrounded West Berlin, dividing the city in half? It sounds crazy, but it's true! As you know, after World War II the Allies (U.S. France, Britain, Soviet Union) divided Germany into four zones of occupation. Since Berlin was such an important city it, too, was divided into four sectors. The Soviets occupied the eastern half of the city while the U.S., France and Britain each occupied one third of the western half. As the western allies began providing money and resources to rebuild the West German economy, Germans in the eastern Soviet zone began to realize that living under Communist occupation would be strikingly different, and they started migrating to the west. Between 1949 and 1961, 2.5 million East Germans crossed into the West, draining East Germany of much of its work force, including many professionals and skilled workers. Faced with the threat of economic collapse and the embarrassment of losing its citizens, the Soviet-controlled East German government decided to virtually lock them in. While the citizens of Berlin slept on August 13, 1961, East German troops sealed the borders and began uncoiling the barbed wire barrier that would become the Berlin Wall. Berliners watched horrified as bricklayers built the Wall that divided families and even buildings in addition to a city, country and people. The Wall's 96 miles of cold concrete greatly increased the tensions between the Soviet Union and the U.S., and became a major symbol of the Cold War. Over time, the Wall would be reinforced and modified to include 45,000 sections of reinforced concrete, barbed wire, a “death strip” booby trapped with land mines and trip wires and more than 300 watchtowers in which guards stood ready to shoot to kill anyone who tried to escape. 
In the 28 years that the Wall stood, at least 100 people were killed in their attempts to escape East Berlin. Many more were imprisoned and wounded, yet 5,000 succeeded in escaping to freedom. As Communist regimes crumbled in the Soviet Union and East Germany, the fall of the Wall finally came on November 9, 1989, granting long-denied freedom to all East Germans. Germany was officially reunified into one country on October 3, 1990.