Six original sections of the Berlin Wall are on display inside Kansas City's Union Station. This week, Chiefs Ambassadors Bill Maas and Deron Cherry, current linebackers Jack Cochrane and Cole Christiansen, local U.S. Marines and UMKC ROTC cadets toured the exhibit, which also connects to a Chiefs road trip in 1990.
The Chiefs hosted the tour on Tuesday, Nov. 3, as part of the NFL's annual Salute to Service initiative, according to KCTV5. Maas and Cherry traveled to Berlin with the 1990 Chiefs for a preseason game and spoke to the group about the trip, the station reports. Cochrane and Christiansen joined the tour; Christiansen is a graduate of a U.S. military academy.
A 1990 Preseason Trip Behind the Iron Curtain's Collapse
The Chiefs connection dates to Aug. 11, 1990, when Kansas City played the Los Angeles Rams in Berlin in what the Associated Press describes as the NFL's first game of any kind in continental Europe. The Rams won 19-3 before an announced crowd of 55,429, according to the Kansas City Star. The game was one of four American Bowl preseason games the Chiefs played overseas, including two in Japan and one in Mexico, the Star reports.
The game took place less than a year after the Berlin Wall fell on Nov. 9, 1989. The barrier had stood for nearly three decades and stretched nearly 100 miles, separating East and West Berlin, according to the Star. During the trip, the Chiefs practiced against the Rams several times at the Maifeld, near the 1936 Olympic stadium, and visited former East Berlin, the newspaper reports.
Equipment Manager's Memories and a Christmas Card
Mike Davidson was the Chiefs' equipment manager for the 1990 Berlin game and is now the team's co-historian, the Star reported. His role reflects one of the team's institutional links to the trip, which is part of the history recalled during this week's tour.
Marty Schottenheimer was the Chiefs' head coach during the Berlin trip, the Star reports. Maas and Cherry shared memories of traveling with the 1990 team during this week's tour.
Kansas City Ties Woven Into the Traveling Exhibit
“The Berlin Wall: A World Divided” is presented by the Spanish company Musealia in collaboration with the Berlin Wall Foundation, according to Visit KC, and features actual wall sections, uniforms, memorabilia, newspaper clippings and a Checkpoint Charlie display. Union Station officials added Kansas City and regional features to the traveling exhibition, the Star reports, weaving in archival Star coverage and Cold War-era local material.
Those regional additions include a look at British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's “Iron Curtain” speech in Fulton, Missouri, which the Star's report dates to 1945, while Westminster College, where the address was delivered, identifies the speech — titled “Sinews of Peace” and later known as the Iron Curtain speech — as having taken place on March 5, 1946. The exhibit also includes material on Harry S. Truman and the Berlin Airlift, which the Star notes occurred in 1948, and highlights Helen Stephens, the Missouri sprinter who set the women's 100-meter world record and won gold on the 4x100-meter relay team at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
A visitor listing from Visit KC originally scheduled the exhibition's Union Station run from May 29 through Dec. 13, 2026, but the Star reports it has since been extended into early January. The Star's report does not specify an exact closing date for that extension.
Wall Sections and Visitor Details
According to Union Station Kansas City, each of the six Berlin Wall segments stands 3.6 meters tall, weighs 2.5 tons and measures nearly 2 meters wide at its base. The station says the exhibition also offers a complimentary audio guide in English, Spanish and French.
