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After the Berlin wall fell, the local German club in Canberra purchased a piece of the Berlin wall and mounted it o the wall over its entrance. There are markets and everything, including historical icons of liberty.
Within hours of the fall of the Berlin wall, a buddy German entrepreneur or two noticed that a lot of people will want to buy a piece of the Berlin wall, including expatriate Germans. One way these entrepreneurs would have noticed would have been local Berliners sticking pieces of the wall in the boots of their cars to take home as souvenirs.

There were 184 kilometres (114 miles) of concrete, or 45,000 individual segments, and its commercial value was recognised early.

Showing a notable nascent capitalist instinct, ministers of the provisional GDR government passed a resolution to take commercial advantage of the Berlin Wall on December 29, 1989, before official demolition even began.

An East German foreign trade company, Limex-Bau, received the job of marketing the individual segments, which it apparently did with some success. Three-hundred-sixty segments were taken for their artistic value and sold all over the world for prices as high as 40,000 marks.
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There are segments in Las Vegas casinos, South Korean parks and on Caribbean islands. The city of Berlin has also kept a few dozen segments to give away as ceremonial state gifts.
HT: spiegel.de










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