Berlin Wall pieces at embassies, foreign ministries and international institutions
Segments on diplomatic ground: German embassies, foreign ministries, the United Nations, the European Parliament, NATO and the European Court of Human Rights.
Separately from the commercial trade, the Senate of Berlin kept a stock of segments to give away on state visits, reported at around thirty and later at forty, and the German federal government has gone on giving pieces since. That is the channel behind most of the sites here, and it is why so many of them carry a round-numbered anniversary rather than the date 1990: the segment in the garden of Argentina's foreign ministry came for the tenth anniversary, the one outside the German embassy in Zagreb for the twentieth. One arrived by no channel at all: Berlin gave a piece to Chilean students in the city, a shipping line carried it home free, and the German embassy in Santiago bought it from them on the dockside at Valparaíso. The pattern the records themselves notice is that these objects are public in the sense that they face the street, and restricted in the sense that the ground they stand on is not.
The international institutions hold the larger pieces and the stranger stories. The three Leipziger Platz slabs in the United Nations garden were released only after Berlin undertook to leave the rest of that stretch standing. The four segments at the European Court of Human Rights were given by the German Democratic Republic itself in 1990, one of very few gifts made by the East German state rather than by Berlin after unification. The pair at NATO headquarters were chosen by the foreign ministry to be unlike each other and unveiled in 2017 by Stoltenberg, Trump and Merkel. Brussels has assembled, without planning to, the densest cluster of institutional segments in any capital outside Germany, including two put under glass beside the plenary chamber in 2021 expressly to stop them deteriorating. In Washington the Signature Segment at the State Department's museum of diplomacy carries the names of twenty-seven people who had a part in 1989 and 1990. And one record, Kyiv, carries a caveat the others do not: the segment's condition has not been confirmable since February 2022.
Santiago
Given to Chilean students in Berlin, shipped free, and bought from them by the embassy on the dockside at Valparaíso.
Zagreb
Unveiled outside the German embassy in 2009, for the twentieth anniversary.
Kyiv
Outside the German embassy; its condition has not been confirmable since February 2022.
Bangkok
Two segments given by a Berlin businessman and painted at a street-art festival in the embassy garden in 2018.
Buenos Aires
In the garden of the Palacio San Martín, a Berlin Senate gift for the tenth anniversary; open only on guided visits.
San José
On the north-east side of Costa Rica's foreign ministry, in the country that abolished its army in 1948.
Washington D.C.
The Signature Segment, carrying twenty-seven signatures, at the State Department's museum of diplomacy since 2015.
New York
Three Leipziger Platz slabs given to Kofi Annan in 2001, in a garden generally closed to the public.
Strasbourg
Four segments the GDR gave the Council of Europe in 1990, raised outside the court in 1997.
Brussels
A section in front of the Paul-Henri Spaak building at the European Parliament.
Brussels
Two segments gathered under glass beside the plenary chamber entrance in 2021: conservation rather than display.
Brussels
A section put up near the Parliament in November 2014 for the twenty-fifth anniversary.
Brussels
Two elements chosen by the German foreign ministry, carried by the THW and unveiled in 2017 inside the security perimeter.
Sources
- Remnants of the Berlin Wall — where are they now? — ShareAmericaThe Senate of Berlin reserved a stock of segments to give away on state visits, reported at around thirty and later at forty.
Each site says what its evidence rests on, from Listed to Confirmed, and whether the piece can be seen today; a listing in a source inventory is not a confirmation that anyone has seen it. The research methodology explains how claims are weighed.