Berlin wall 50th anniversary - in pictures

Residents of West Berlin, right, watch East German construction workers erect a wall across Wildenbruchstrasse and Heidelbergerstrasse in August 1961. Built with barbed wire and concrete, the wall stretched for 31 miles, separated East and West Berlin as a cold war divide, preventing East Germans from crossing to the west Photograph: AP

The first guard house at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin. The Berlin Wall was built on 13 August 1961 Photograph: Hand Out/AP

Man peering over the newly built Berlin wall in August 1961 Photograph: Sipa Press/Rex Features

August 1961, from the West Berlin side, a young woman, accompanied by her boyfriend, stands precariously near the top of the Berlin Wall to talk to her mother on the East Berlin side Photograph: Corbis

Defecting East German soldier Hans Conrad Schumann leaps over a barbed wire barricade at the Bernauer Street sector into West Berlin on 15 August 15 1961. Schumann died tragically on 20 June 1998 by hanging himself from a tree near his garden, police reported Photograph: Peter Leibing/AP

A West Berlin policeman stands in front of the concrete wall dividing East and West Berlin at Bernauer Strasse as East Berlin workmen add blocks to increase the height of the East German barrier on 7 October 1961 Photograph: AP

The dying Peter Fechter is carried away by East German border guards who shot him down when he was trying to flee to the western part of Berlin on 17 August 1962 Photograph: AP

East German soldiers work on a second layer of the Berlin Wall at the allied Checkpoint Charlie crossing near Friedrichstrasse in 1964 Photograph: AP

A British soldier stands guard on the western side Photograph: Keystone/Getty Images

East Berlin border guards stand on top of the Berlin Wall in front of the Brandenburg Gate on 11 November 1989 when the wall was beginning to be torn down Photograph: Staff/Reuters

An East German border guard looks through a hole in the wall towards West Berlin the divide began to fall in November 1989 Photograph: Sipa Press /Rex Features

Crowds climb on top of the wall in November 1989 Photograph: Tom Stoddart Archive/Getty Images

Original parts of the Berlin Wall stand on an area of a construction material company in Teltow, Berlin. On 13 August 2011 Germany celebrates the 50th anniversary of the construction of the wall and commemorate victims who were killed trying to cross from East to West Berlin Photograph: Markus Schreiber/AP