GERMANY:The removal of one of the last pieces of the wall has instigated a row, writes Derek Scallyin Berlin
A ringing phone turned Good Friday into Bad Friday for Berliner Erich Stanke. He was eating breakfast in a cafe when he got a call from a friend telling him that his bit of the Berlin Wall was missing.
Mr Stanke's bit of the wall wasn't just a souvenir on a bookshelf, like one of the other countless lumps knocked out of the structure by tourists in 1989: Mr Stanke owned an 18m-long stretch of the Berlin Wall on its original site on Potsdamer Platz.
"I bought it from a border officer in 1990 and I have the documents to prove it," he said.
The site on which the wall stood, however, is owned by the federal government and Mr Stanke had been fighting a running battle with authorities for more than a decade to keep it standing.
In the last three years, officials made repeated demands that he remove the wall to make way for a new environment ministry building.
They even promised to reinstate the wall on the same spot inside the finished building.
But every time they threatened to remove the wall, Mr Stanke organised all-night vigils to defend what he calls "the last piece of hinterland wall".
"From here on, the border guards started shooting," he said.
He says he will start legal proceedings to get his bit of wall back.
It's just another episode in the schizophrenic memory politics pursued in the German capital. Nearly two decades too late, city fathers realise that the Berlin Wall, like it or loathe it, is one of the city's greatest tourist attractions.
The problem is that visitors can rarely find it.
The most prominent stretches, at the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag and Potsdamer Platz, were the first to be demolished and Mr Stanke's piece was one of only three original stretches in the central tourist mile.
Last June the longest stretch, the 1.3km "East Side Gallery", was breached - with planning permission - to give river access to a stadium being built nearby by American investors.
A day before the sections of the East Side Gallery were removed, the city's mayor held a press conference to present a glossy new concept about how better to memorialise the Berlin Wall.
Gerd Glanze, who sells souvenirs at the East Side Gallery, said: "The politicians talk about how important it is to preserve the Berlin Wall. Stop tearing down what's left, that would be a good start."