The year marks the beginning, not one day when everything was completed.
The GDR leadership wanted to prevent people fleeing to the West through Berlin. During the night leading into 13 August, routes were blocked and border installations erected. People who had previously moved between the city’s halves faced a new, guarded division.
The familiar concrete wall was built and altered over a longer period. The answer “1961” therefore does not mean that every later wall segment, watchtower and barrier was already present on the first day.
The other three answers
The three earlier years do not mark the start of the Berlin Wall.
1953
1953 belongs to the GDR uprising of 17 June. Wall construction in Berlin began eight years later.
1956
1956 is five years before construction began. Germany was already divided, but the Berlin Wall had not yet been built.
1959
In 1959, the GDR added its state emblem to its flag. That was a different event; Wall construction did not begin until 1961.
Construction and opening are different steps.
1961 is the year construction began. The Berlin Wall opened on 9 November 1989. Confusing the Wall’s fall with its construction reverses the beginning and end of the sealing of the border.
The Wall did not merely divide individual streets between East and West Berlin. The border system surrounded West Berlin. The question asks for the year, not a complete geographical or architectural description.
The Berlin Wall · Berlin Wall Foundation ↗Wall construction: 13 August 1961.
The year 1961 is enough for this task; the precise date helps connect it with the start of the border closure.
Three words for this question
- der Mauerbauconstruction of the Wall
- The construction of the border installations from August 1961.
- die Abriegelungsealing off
- State forces blocking routes and crossing points.
- der Stacheldrahtbarbed wire
- Wire with sharp points used as a barrier.