A View To A Living Daylights

Cameron_Mott

These are photos from 1960 to 1965 of the site of the Berlin activity in The Living Daylights.

Bond's street level view from the corner of Kochstrasse and Wilhelmstrasse.



This is Trigger's view from the Haus der Ministerien on Zimmerstrasse. That is Bond's "ugly six-storey building" in the middle of the photo.



I think.

j_w_pepper

Interesting, @Cameron_Mott. You may be interested in this context to have a look at the following thread:
https://mi6community.com/discussion/21358/the-great-bond-geoguesser-game/p1
About in the middle of the "page" there is a Google Earth shot of what is now the federal finance ministry.

RichardTheBruce

Very cool @Cameron_Mott I was in Berlin for the first time this year and took these photos.







Reverse side of street.

j_w_pepper

@Cameron_Mott

This is Trigger's view from the Haus der Ministerien on Zimmerstrasse. That is Bond's "ugly six-storey building" in the middle of the photo.
...
I think.

It's definitely close to the sniper's view, and it is definitely from the Haus der Ministerien. And the date of that picture can also be pinpointed exactly. It was the morning of 13 August 1961, when the East Germans had begun to build the wall in the early hours, and in several places West Berliners came to protest against that, in this case on Wilhelmstraße. The photograph was actually taken by a Stasi officer to record those protests, which is why it is credited to the BStU (Bundesstelle für Stasi-Unterlagen = Federal Office for Stasi Documents).

The house on the far side of Kochstrasse in the middle of that photo is indeed the only one that Bond could have used for the purpose. He must have aimed and shot over the roof of the corner Kneipe "Zum guten Happen" ("The Good Bite"). But then, his apartment was on the fourth floor of that Kochstraße building, while the Kneipe was a one-story shack, apparently in what was left as the ground floor of an otherwise destroyed building.

The date of the other photo is not so clearly defined, but it must be after the original wall was finished since one can also see it in front of the Haus der Ministerien, running along Niederkirchener Straße and Zimmerstraße towards Checkpoint Charlie a bit further east.