Why was the Berlin wall built and how it came to an end?

The Berlin Wall was built by the German Democratic Republic during
the Cold War to prevent its population from escaping Soviet-
controlled East Berlin to West Berlin, which was controlled by the
major Western Allies.

Berlin Wall, German Berliner Mauer, barrier that

surrounded West Berlin and prevented access to it from East
Berlin and adjacent areas of East Germany during the period from
1961 to 1989. In the years between 1949 and 1961, about 2.5 million
East Germans had fled from East to West Germany, including steadily
rising numbers of skilled workers, professionals, and intellectuals.
Their loss threatened to destroy the economic viability of the East
German state. In response, East Germany built a barrier to close off
East Germans’ access to West Berlin and hence West Germany. That
barrier, the Berlin Wall, was first erected on the night of August 12–13,
1961, as the result of a decree passed on August 12 by the East
German Volkskammer (“Peoples’ Chamber”). The original wall, built
of barbed wire and cinder blocks, was subsequently replaced by a
series of concrete walls (up to 15 feet [5 meters] high) that were
topped with barbed wire and guarded with watchtowers, gun
emplacements, and mines. By the 1980s that system of walls,
electrified fences, and fortifications extended 28 miles (45 km)
through Berlin, dividing the two parts of the city, and extended a
further 75 miles (120 km) around West Berlin, separating it from the
rest of East Germany.
The Berlin Wall came to symbolize the Cold War’s division of East
from West Germany and of eastern from western Europe. About 5,000
East Germans managed to cross the Berlin Wall (by various means)
and reach West Berlin safely, while another 5,000 were captured by
East German authorities in the attempt and 191 more were killed
during the actual crossing of the wall.
East Germany’s hard-liner communist leadership was forced from
power in October 1989 during the wave of democratization that swept
through eastern Europe. On November 9 the East German
government opened the country’s borders with West Germany
(including West Berlin), and openings were made in the Berlin Wall
through which East Germans could travel freely to the West. The wall
henceforth ceased to function as a political barrier between East and
West Germany.
On November 9, 1989, as the Cold War began to thaw across Eastern
Europe, the spokesman for East Berlin’s Communist Party announced
a change in his city’s relations with the West. Starting at midnight that
day, he said, citizens of the GDR were  free to cross the country’s
borders. East and West Berliners flocked to the wall, drinking beer
and champagne and chanting “Tor auf!” (“Open the gate!”). At
midnight, they flooded through the checkpoints.

More than 2 million people from East Berlin visited West Berlin that
weekend to participate in a celebration that was, one journalist wrote,
“the greatest street party in the history of the world.” People used
hammers and picks to knock away chunks of the wall–they became
known as “mauerspechte,” or “wall woodpeckers”—while cranes and
bulldozers pulled down section after section. Soon the wall was gone
and Berlin was united for the first time since 1945. “Only today,” one
Berliner spray-painted on a piece of the wall, “is the war really over.”
The reunification of East and West Germany was made official on
October 3, 1990, almost one year after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The Berlin Wall stood until November 9, 1989, when  the head of the
East German Communist Party announced that citizens of the GDR
could cross the border whenever they pleased.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was a pivotal moment, not just in the
Cold War but in the history of modern Europe. It was brought about
by political reforms inside the Soviet bloc, escalating pressure from
the people of eastern Europe and ultimately, confusion over an East
German directive to open the border.
Reagan called for the General Secretary of the Communist Party of
the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, to open the Berlin Wall, which
had separated West and East Berlin since 1961. The name is derived
from a key line in the middle of the speech: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear
down this wall!"
Though the “fall” of the Berlin Wall did not mean its complete
physical destruction, the consequences of its opening were
indeed lasting. Gorbachev agreed on negotiations with the U.S.
President George H.W. Bush and West German Chancellor Helmut
Kohl to permit the reunification of the two German states, almost
completely on West German terms. On a global level, the fall of
the Berlin Wall marked the symbolic end of the Cold War,
famously prompting the political scientist Francis Fukuyama to
declare it the “end of history.”
On Oct. 3, 1990, 11 months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, East
and West Germany became one state again. Despite the initial
euphoria, the road to recovery for East Germany was long and
difficult with economic and social dislocation. And the fallout
from the fall continues to this day: citizens were still paying
slightly higher taxes than before the merger in order to cover the
costs of unification.