GERMAN Chancellor Angela Merkel has marked the 52nd anniversary of the building of the Berlin Wall by giving schoolchildren in the nation's capital a lesson on the barrier that divided the city and became a symbol of the Cold War.
Acting as teacher, Merkel told a class of teenagers at Berlin's Heinrich Schliemann Gymnasium how Germany's traditions of freedom and democracy were strengthened in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Merkel's hour-long talk to the class came weeks before an election on September 22.
She began her lesson by writing her name on the blackboard. It was her first teaching experience, she said.
Culture Minister Bernd Neumann joined Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit in laying wreaths in central Berlin to commemorate the at least 136 who died attempting to flee from the east to the west.
Researchers are attempting to establish whether more people were killed making their bid for freedom across the heavily guarded no-man's-land that divided West Berlin from the communist east.
On August 13, 1961 the former East German state began building the 155-kilometre-long wall that would eventually surround Berlin.
The communist authorities' decision to build what they called "a barrier against fascism" was aimed at stopping people from fleeing to West Germany.
The daughter of a protestant pastor, Merkel became the first chancellor to grow up on the eastern side of the wall after being born in the west Germany city of Hamburg.
The fall of the wall, which followed a popular uprising in the east against their communist rulers, also opened the way for Merkel, 59, to launch a career in politics.
Merkel joined the conservative Christian Democrats shortly after reunification in 1990.
The chancellor's visit to the school marked her first public appearance since returning from a three-week holiday, which included hiking in the Alps between Austria and Italy.
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