Protest Fails to Halt End of Berlin Tribute

Workmen began demolishing a makeshift memorial at Checkpoint Charlie yesterday, dedicated to those who died crossing the frontier with East Germany, after a bank that owns the land enforced an eviction order on the site.

The private Checkpoint Charlie museum had set up a field of more than 1,065 large wooden crosses - one for each victim - just north of the original border in Berlin's Friedrichstrasse, together with a rebuilt strip of the Berlin wall. Yesterday police and security guards encircled the site after the museum lost a court battle for the plot. The bank wants €36m (£24m) for the land.

Several hundred people jeered as workers carted off the crosses in pouring rain.

"This is terrible," said Alexandra Hildebrandt, the museum's director, to the Guardian yesterday. "They are destroying a historic part of the wall. We are trying to buy the plot. But we don't have the money."

The Checkpoint Charlie museum is one of Berlin's most popular attractions. It includes photographs showing how the wall sprung up overnight in 1961 and how East Germans escaped over it in tunnels, hot air balloons, and hidden inside specially modified cars. More than 15 years after the wall came down, Berlin's government has shown little interest in building a proper memorial to the wall's victims.

The museum had been leasing the land for the memorial from BAG bank, but the agreement expired at the end of last year and a court ordered the memorial removed.

The museum, which had 700,000 visitors last year, is not in any jeopardy.

The US established the checkpoint in 1961. It was the main crossing for the Soviet sector of the divided city, with signs warning: You are leaving the American sector. Ms Hildebrandt has ruled out a memorial elsewhere. She said she would put the crosses in storage and continue efforts to buy the land.