The Wall at Potsdammerplatz

 “Former German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer was known not to mince his words when it came to the Soviets and their allies. He labelled the communist superpower the “deadly enemy,” called Kremlin Chief Nikita Khrushchev “a brutal fighter” and referred to East Germany as a “concentration camp.”… The catholic Adenauer had never liked protestant Prussia. As Cologne’s mayor in the 1920s, he used to close the curtains of his train compartment as soon as he crossed the Elbe river, the border to Prussia, while travelling to Berlin. He disliked what he called the “Asian steppe” on the other side of the river…
Released documents show that the chancellor was pursuing a different idea. The US should offer the Soviets a swap in secret negotiations: West Berlin for the state of Thuringia as well as parts of Saxony and Mecklenburg. He made the suggestion to Secretary of State Rusk a few days before the construction of the Wall started.
Had Adenauer got his way, the cities of Schwerin and Leipzig would have become part of Federal Republic West Germany in the 1960s rather than in 1990… Adenauer pursued the project further in the months after the Berlin Wall was built, and broached it to President John F. Kennedy…” 

Article – Klaus Wiegrefe – Spiegel – Germany.