The BBC Archive has released a collection of audio visual materials focusing on one of the defining moments in post-war history – the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall. It is available at: www.bbc.co.uk/archive/berlinwall

The collection includes broadcasts spanning the period from the Soviet Blockade in 1948 to the formal reunification of Germany in 1990, and explores how the city came to represent the political stand-off between East and West during the Cold War. The materials, released to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the fall of the berlin Wall, include:

• a special news broadcast on the hardship endured in West Berlin during the 1949 blockade
• Panorama in 1959 as Robert Key hears from young Berliners
• Peter Woods reporting from Berlin in 1961 whilst witnessing the boundary between East and West being sealed with a concrete wall.
• Edward Kennedy’s visit to the city in 1963
• Richard Dimbleby reporting live from West Berlin in 1965 on the historic visit there by The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh
• Specials news features from Panorama and Newsnight including a special report from Peter Snow in 1989 as the Berlin Wall starts to be taken apart
• A studio discussion, from East Berlin, about the immediate and long term prospects for the future of Germany is interrupted by reporter Olenka Frenkiel who brings in a piece of the wall
• Two 1990 reports as Martin Bell witnesses the celebrations overnight outside the Reichstag, while Ben Brown experiences a calmer city the morning after. Philip Hayton speaks live to veteran reporter Charles Wheeler as he stood at the Brandenburg Gate to consider the cultural differences between East and West Berliners.

News footage relating to the Berlin Wall can also be found through the BUFVC News on Screen resource including items on its construction and on Berliners dramatically escaping from the East into the West.