years it was the most tangible symbol of the cold war and during that time author and journalist peter schneider was one of the 1st west germans to write a novel about it 30 years ago i could have been shot to death just for standing here for space on the east side of the berlin wall it was called the death street. people risk their lives. trying to escape from the communist east so the west but who would have been crazy enough to try to jump over the wall from the west to the east. the wall is about germans from both sides trying to overcome the border. mr who was in his mid forty's and on welfare 1st came to the attention of the police when with a running start from the west he jumps the wall heading east the guards of the other german states arrested as a border violator he wore out his interrogators who wanted to know why he hadn't used a border crossing by pointing out time and again that he lived right across the way and had taken the only direct path over the wall when the book came out in 1902 the wall was already part of people's d.n.a. hardly anyone here believed that east and west ger