The Ghostsof Berlin

Brian Ladd

itq;
TheUniversity
ol Chicago
Press Chicagoand London

In good and in evil, Berlin is the trustee
ol Germanhistory,which has left its
scars here as nowhereelse.r
-Bichard von Weizsicker. 1983
For me the visits t0 this city over the
past twenty years have been the only
g e n u i n ee x p e r ie n ce o
s f Ge r m a n y.
Historyis still physicallyand
emotionallypresenthere. . . . Berlin is
dividediust like our world, ott] time,
a n d e a c h o f o u r e xp e r ie n ce s.2
-Wim Wenders.1987
To put it crudely,the Americanfoot in
Europehad a sore blister on it. That
was West Eerlin. . . . We decidedthe
time had come to lance the blister ol
We st B erl i n.3
-N i ki ta K hrushchev,
recal l i ngt96l
When flowers bloomon concrete.lile
has triumphed.
-Berlin Wall grafliti
Greatestartwork ol all time.
*Berlin Wall grafliti
What are you staringat? Neverseen a
wall before?
-Berlin Wall grafliti
Berlin Walls
TheMonument
In a rarelyvisitedcorncrof northernBcrlin,pilesof concrete
debris {ill a vast lot. This is not an unllsLralsight in u'hat geogra-
pherscall the "gray zones" of a city, those tracts of lantl somc-
how disqualifiedfrom more valueduses.Herc, uhere thc tlistrict
of Pankolv meets neighboring Wedding, machinesare grin(linq
the huge slabs of mangled concrete into smaller pieces' frecing
up the land for some other use and turning the concretc:into
usablegravel. This orclir-raryindustrial sccne turns extraordinary
u,hen a closer look at the concrete revealsan unexPectedsight:
the famous spray-paintcd graffiti of thc llerlin Wall. ln 199l,
this lot is a graveyard [or a I'eu' of thc one hundred rniles o[
Wall that had encloseilWest Berlin two yearsbefbre.lt is indced
located in a "gray zone" of Berlin, one of many fringc arcas
createdby the presenceof the Wall that is nou' rcdtlccd to
rubble(hg. 1).
The llcrlin Wall had been one of the city's premicr tourist
attractions.More than that, it tvas probably the most lamous
stmctllre that u'ill ever stand in Berlin. The Pankou' lot, an(l a
I'ewothers, contained u'hat rvasleft oi it (u'ith a ferv excclltions,
asu'e shalisee).Yet such boneyardsu'ere not tourist attractions'
Indeetl,they rvere scarcelyknorvn at all. If a rnonumcntcan bc
decommissionecl, that is apparentlyu'hat has liappenedrvitl.rthe
Ilerlin Wall. Did the collcrcrtelose its attratr'henit rt as rcmoverl
lrom its original location?Or did that happen earlier,u'hcrr it
lost its power to kill, so to sPeak-that is, lr'hen thc guartls
steppedasitleancllet the crorvds through on November 9, 1989?
BerlinWalls
I
Piecesof
BerlinWall,
Brehmestrasse,
Berlin-Pankow,
tgltl
Tlie Wall retained a strange kind of magic in the days and
months that followed, as Berliners and tourists hacked away at
the concrete. Piecesof the Wall did indeed have a specialaura:
they were treated as holy relics that bespoke our deliverance
from the Cold War. For that brief moment, the Wall was in
demand precisely becauseit lvas disappearing.Detached pieces
of it were valued as evidence of an apparently spontaneouswill
to destroy dre Wall. The cold night air during that rvinter of
1989-90 was filled with the sound of pik-pik-pik.First Berliners,
then tourists hacked away at the Wall. They contributed in a
minuscule way to the removal of the concrete, but more signifi-
cant was their ritual participation in the removal of the symbolic
barrier. It was in this carnival atmospherethat the concrete was
divestedof its murderous aura and investedwith magicalproper-
ties (its high asbestoscontent aside) that made visitors take it
home to display on mantels around the world.
These magical properties translated into its market value. The
Wall, symbol of the epic confrontation between capitalism and
communism, became a capitalist commodity. Enterprising locals
sold hacked-off pieces of concrete from tables set up at Check-
point Charlie and the Ilrandenburg Gate (fig. 2). Others would
rent you a hammer and chisel so that you could chop your own.
Still other entrepreneurs,more ambitious and better capitalized,
filled crates and trucks with this East German state property and
supplied genuine Wall fragments to American department stores
B erl i nW al l s
i'
[.
2
Vendorselling
piecesof
BerlinWall at
Brandenburg Gate,
1991
in time for the Christmas shopping season.The result in Berlin
was a cat-and-mousegame as East German authorities tried for
a short time to enforce their ownership of the concrete,making
a few arrests in the process.
As it steppedgingerly into a market economy,EastGermany's
brief post-Wall regime recognizedthat the Wall had become a
commodity. It sought to assert its rights of ownership and to
sell piecesof the Wall in order to raise badly needed funds for
health care and historical preservation.A state-owned firm that
specializedin the export of building materials was given the
ii
job of marketing the defaced concrete, now separatedinto its
lt, prefabricatedsegments.An auction in Monte Carlo in June 1990
attracted wealthy collectors and drove prices for painted seg-
ments of Wall into the tens of thousands of dollars. As East
Germanypassedinto history, though, the Wall's aura faded and
its price fell. A final auction in Fort Lee, New Jersey,in 1993
attracted only three buyers.
Berlin
Walls What does it meau to btry a monument? A brochure prepared
for the Fort Lee auction described the segrnentsof Wall as the
perfect way to "decorate the entrance hall of your corPorate
headquarters,muscllm, or cstate."4 Some pieceswere re-erected
as works of art-or u'ere they just souvenirs?Others stood as
victory monuments or Cold War booty, such as the piece ("hated
symbol o[, yes, an evil empire") proudly unveiled by former
president Ronald I{eagan at the dedication of his presidential
library.s
It rvas difficult enough to define the meaning of Wall frag-
ments removed to sites w'here they stood alone' The idea of
leaving pieceson their original site made no senseat all to most
Berliners. Proposalsto preserve parts of the Wall, and to create
a Wall memorial in Berlin, faced organized and unorganized
opposition. Every suggestionto Preserveone section or another
was met rvith a chorus of objections,particularly from neighbors.
The overu,helming desire, it seemed,was to be rid of the hated
obstnrction. Before reunification, the EastBerlin office for histor-
ical prcsen'ation identified stretchesof tlie Wall worthy of possi-
ble preservation. But the signs identifying them as historical
monllments \r'ere promptly stolen, and the chopping continued
unabated. The assaultswith hammer and chisel preempted at-
tempts to save 1>iecesof Particular artistic merit, such as drat
painted by the American artist Keith Haring, u'ho had died of
AIDS early in 1990. Haring's section stood at the most popular
pilgrimage site, next to Checkpoint Charlie, and it u'as quickly
destroycd.
Even in its comical afterlife, the Wall continued to divide
Berliners. After November 9, 1989, at least tl-re non-German
press routinely refcrred to the Wall in the past tense. Yet only
at a l'cw tourist sites,such as Checkpoint Charlie, did the popular
onslaught come close to obliterating the concrete wall. Most of
the hunclredmiles of borcler lbrtifications remained largely intact
for months. What had clisappeared,rather, was the symbolic
Wall-\ rhich mcant that the concrete and the symbol were no
longer the same thing. To understand the Wall, then, we must
understantlrvhat it meant. S1'rnbolsand monuments are invested
with their meaning through human action, so we can best under-
stand the Wall (and its physical and metaphoric demise) by
looking at the rvay it has been treated.
Wherever hutnan beings live, they endor,r'the things around
drem with cultural meaning. Placesand objects becomeresonant BerlinWalls
symbolsthat embody hopes, fears, and value. That is, they be-
come monuments, as the Wall did. Often a monument defines
a group's identity, marking a place honored by, s"y, all adherents
of a religious faith or all members of a community. Such monu-
ments are rarely controversial.In Berlin, by contrast, the land-
scapeis politicized in the extreme, and undisputed monuments
are the exception.The Wall and other Berlin monuments recall
controversialdeeds,mostly of the recent past, deedsthat prevent
any consensusabout the sort of things monuments are supposed
to embody, such as a national iclentity or a common ideal. It is
this deep uncertainty that makes Berlin such a contestedland-
scape,and createsa chargedatmospherethat foreignersfintl hard
to grasp.One controversyin recent U.S. history that approached
the intensity of feeling in Berlin was the desgn proposed for
the Vietnam VeteransMemorial in Washington, u'hich reopened
wounds in the nation's sense of itself. In Berlin, Germany's
wounds still lie open everywhere.
More than a century ago, the young Friedrich Nietzsche la-
mentedhis fellow Germans'overdevelopedsenseof history. Only
by selectiveforgetting, according to Nietzsche,can we overcome
a senseof helplessness in the face of historical destiny.He argued
that only the ability to forget makes creative action possible.6In
short, if I cannot select certain lacts from history ancl discard
others, I will never have any beliefs firm enough to act on. In
the u,ake of Bismarck's unification of Germany in 1871,
Nietzschewas appalled by Germans' blind Hegelian confidence
that the forces of history were on their side. But the events of
twentieth-century German history have given a nerv coloration
to his thoughts. Today's historical paralysisis a product not of
complacencybut of fatalistic angst. Some Germansfear that the
weight of past misdeedshasmade their f'ellowGermansuncertain
what it means to be German and afraid to act in the name of
Germany.The Germansthus accuscdsee things differently: they
saythat any move to discard the burdens of the past rvill return
Germany to blind confidenceancl thus to disaster.
Monuments are nothing if not selectiveaids to memory: they
encourageus to remember some things and to forget others.
'fhe processof creating monuments, especiallywhere it is openly
contested, as in llerlin, shapes public men-rory and collective
identity. fhat process can take very different forms, horvever.
BerlinWalls
'fhcre is an obviolrs dilference betu'een the Berlin Wall and a
monument like the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D'C': the
builders of the former did not intend to create a monument;
they had other purposes in mind. But the Wall, too, became an
important monument becauseit took on a meaning of its own'
Both kinds of monuments, the "intentional" and the "uninten-
tional," give form to the collective memory of a city'7
The Wall becamean unintentional monument to the remark-
able era in rvhich two rival statessimultaneouslyclaimed Berlin.
'fhe ilivision marked by the Wall, in turn, grew out of the
shattering era of German history that culminated in World War
II. Thus the Wall was built-literally and {iguratively-atop the
ruins of war, terror, and division. And it, too, is now among the
nrins and merqories o[ Berlin' The Wall-from concrete' to
monument, to rfubble-gives form to the story of Berlin and of
Germany in our time.
The Barriet
When East German border trooPs and construction rvorkers
sealed the border with West Berlin on August 13, 1961, they
put an end to a peculiar episode in the history of the Cold War'
During the 1950s, Berlin had been the one place in Germany
where East and West truly met. Families and friends scattered
acrossthe two German states could rendezvousin Berlin' Ber-
liners lived astride the Iron Curtain that divided the rest of
Europe. Two currenciesand two political systemscoexistedawk-
u,ardiy, with people and goods passingfrequently, if not always
smoothly, Lretlveenthem. On August 13, that changedabruptly'
Sixty thousand people who livecl on one side and worked on the
other lost their jobs. After 1951 people and vehicles in lJerlin
circulated rvithin one half of the city or the other. Neighbors
who could no longer see one another grew aPart.
West Berliners, now walled off from their poor cousins in
East German), began to share in the prosperity of West Ger-
many's postwar "economic miracle," thanks in part to enormous
subsidiesfrom the Bonn government' West Berlin never became
quite like West Germany, however: its subsidizedeconomy, pe-
culiar legal status, ancl frontier allure meant that artists, draft
dodgers, and nonconformists (but also pensioners)were over-
represented,businessmenancl f'actory workers underrepresented
ir-rits population. Nevertheless,the city displayedthe neon signs,
shop windows, new cars, and most of the other trappings of BerlinWalls
postwar Western prosperity.
East Berlin certainly looked different. Its gray buildings did
not merely lack a coat of paint that their Western counterparts
had; there were fewer new buildings, and fewer of the old ones
were being renovated. Fewer cars, fewer shops,less advertising,
and less bustle gave most Western visitors the impression of a
dreary and lifelessplace.The colors were more drab, the sounds
were more 6p16d-3nd the smells were different too. Two
distinctive aromas pervaded the streets of East Berlin. One rvas
the exhaust of the Trabant (or Trabbi), the tiny standard-issuc
EastGerman car, whose two-stroke engine burned an acrid mix-
ture of gasolineand oil. Trabbis were not as numerous as Volks-
wagensand Opels in the West, but many were about, despite a
typical wait of ten yearsbefore a citizen could becomethe proud
owner of one. The other familiar smell came from the burning
of soft coal, East Germany'sonly domestic source of energy and
hence the main fuel both for industry and for home heating. It
turned the winter sky brown in both Berlins, but its aroma was
most pungent in the quiet residential streets of the East'solder
neighborhoods,where (as in much of West Berlin) most apart-
ments were still heated by coal-burning tile ovens.
Berlin had been divided into twenty districts in 1920 (fig. 3).
The four occupying powers apportioned them in 1945: eight to
:r
the Soviets,six to the Americans, four to the British, and two
i to the French. The zigzagcourse of the Wall acrossthe city was
thus largely determined by arbitrary administrativedecisionsin
I
1920 and 1945. The district of Mitte (Middle), the historical
center, lay in the Soviet sector, but after 1951 it bordered the
Wall on its southern, western, and most of its northern side.
Across the Wall to its south, the tenementsof Kreuzbergwere
cut off not only from the city center but also from the parks in
Treptow, to the east. East Berliners who lived just north of the
center could no longer walk across the sectoral boundary to
Wedding's many small shops and cinemas.Those businesses, in
turn, lost their customersin 1951 and many soon closed.
By severing long-establishedpaths of inner-city circulation,
the Wall created peculiar urban backwaters in the center of
Berlin, devoid of the usual bustle of pedestriansand-what was
often more noticeable-of automobiles.This was true, in differ-
ent ways, on both sides. The crucial difference was that the t3
Berlin
Walls dropouts, artists, musicians,punks, anarchists,
and squattersir.r BerlinWalls
abandoned buildings. The marginal location of
West Berlin in
generaland easternKreuzberg in particular nurtured the
Kreuz_
berg "scene." (When the Wall disappeared,Kreuzberg
became
centrally located, and real estate speculation
clooiied the
"scene.")
The act of crossing the forbidden bortler naturally
became
wrapped in its own aura of liminality. The
ordeal of u l"gul
border crossing was experiencedat least once by
many p"opT",
even, by the 1980s,many East Germans.Within
duv, of
the border in 1961, the East German authorities "lori.ro
iud ,.du..i
3 the number of checkpoints within the city to
Berlin's
districts. seven, most of
which they designatedfor exclusiveuse either by
Courtesy
of German West Berliners,
West Germans,or foreigners.The most famous was
lnlormation
Genter. the crossing
for foreigners,Checkpoinl elrallis-as the Americans
(and ev_
eryone else) had named their official gateway to
the Soviet sec_
tor.8 Becausecrossinginto East Berlin"repre.ented
a iournev far
approachesto the Wall's Eastern side were carefully controlled. greater than the short distance across ihe street,
Checkioint
Apart from official ceremonies,Easternerswere discouragedfrom Charlie became associatedwith mystery and intrigue,
a reputa_
approaching the Wall and even taking note of its existence. tion enhancedby dozensofspy novels.So, too,
didlhe Glienecke
Those East Berlinerswho lived in the streetsnext to the Wall had Bridge, which connected West Berlin with potsdam,
the place
to adjust to special restrictions, intrusions, and inconveniences. where East and West exchangedspies.
Friends from outside the neighborhood could never just drop Westerners could also travel by subway or elevated
train to
by, for example: pernission had to be obtained from the police. the Friedrichstrasserail station in East Berlin
and formally cross
Unlike Easterners,West Berliners were free to heap scorn the border there. Friedrichstrassewas the typical
departure point
upon the Wall, or to gaze over it, but in the end they, too, for the flortunate East Germans who received p".mirrion
to travel
mostly sought peace of mind by accepting the Wall or ignoring to the West, and for Westerners ending family
visits. Departing
it, by coming to think of their city as an island connected by travelers were processedthrough u n* annex
to the station.
causewaysand air corridors to a Western mainland. The com- The building, a place of painful leave-taking,acquired
the nick_
monly used "island" metaphor is an apt one, since the Wall name "Palace of Tears."
created quiet recreational spaceson the nevr4yestablishededge th]r suitably depressed-lookingbuilclingstoocl
. on a triangular
and, more generally, came to be seen-or rather not seen-as lot whose fate had long been in lrmbo. FJr a
.,22 architecturar
the edge of the world. competition for the site, Ludwig Mies van der
Rohe had sketched
In contrast to the East, the Western side of the Wall was a a revolutionary glassskyscraper.His sketch has
founcl a place in
notably disordered space. Neglect of the streets, bridges, and every history of modern architecture,but neither
it nor anything
other structures abutting the border was apparent to anyone elsewas built on the site for decades.In 1992a
group of.investors tr/
coming from other parts of West Berlin or West Germany. The proposedto tear dovrn the empty palace of T"u.,
und finally to
proximity of the Wall devalued old neighborhoods,particularly build Mies'sglasstower. Ironically, they shared
the samemotiva_
in Kreuzberg, and their working-class populations were increas- tion as the sponsorsof the 1922 competition,
rvho had spurned
ingly supplanted by an odd mix of Turkish immigrant rvorkers Mies's design in favor of another. In both cases,
an attentlon_
and the growing West Berlin alternative society of self-styled getting designwas supposedto bring an exemption
from munici_ t5
BerlinWalls pal height limits for the construction of a more profitable office In other words, the "Berlin wail" came to signify alr the
building. But the authorities proved unwilling on both occasions. conse- Berlin Walls
quencesof the division of Berlin and of Eurooe.
Instead,the Palaceof Tears was left standing for the time being
It is a well-known fact that the Wall was put up in a
and converted into a nightclub, which kept the notorious name. single
day. virtually the entire perimeter of west Berlin-a
One of the oddest incidents in the Wall's history was the hu.,did
miles-was indeed sealedon August 13, 1961, but with
only mass flight frorn West to East. It was the unwanted result barbed
wire. The first pieces of concrete wali were put up
of a minor diplomatic bargain intended to smooth East-West two days
later (fig. 4). Over the years the first, hastily erected
relations. In 1988 the two sides agreed to exchangeseveraltiny block_ancl_
mortar wall was in turn replacer.l,more than once, by
parcels of land in order to regularize their borders. One parcel taller and
stronger barriers built with prefabricated concrete ibrms. 4
transferred from East to West lay in the city center, between And
the wall itself was only part of the border fortifications. The Wall
Potsdamer Platz and the Tiergarten. l'his "Lenn6 triangle" pro- By
gradually removing structures and hindranceson their side, thl beingbuilt,
tmded so awkwardly into West Berlin that the East had left it Harzerstrasse,
East German authorities establisheda security zone
on the west side of the Wall in 1951 rather than bother to accessible August16,1961.
only to guards. Here was the so-called death strip, of varl,ing
enclose it. As a result, these ten acres had sat completely ne- Courlesy
ol German
width, punctuated by observation towers; .rr.lor.j by
*ull. oi Information
Center.
glected for years. But the West wanted the land for a long-
planned expressway.During the summer of 1988, Green-minded
West Berliners began protesting the expresswayand counting
rare plant and butterfly speciesin the wild growth of the triangle.
Joined by anarchists for whom this ungoverned place was a
utopia and an adventure, they set up tents to occupy the land.
The annoyed West Berlin authorities were helplessto intervene
on this foreign territory, the relevant Allied powers (British and
Soviet) chose not to interfere, and the East Germans loudly
denounced the "inhuman police terror" and the violations of
their sovereignty as Western police and protesters clashed re-
peatedly along the border between West Berlin and the tempo-
rarily autonomous enclave. When the territory was officially
transferred to the West on July 1, the West Berlin police seized
it by force. The protesters thereupon scaledthe Wall to the East
to escape arrest. Eastern border guards escorted them away,
served them breakfast,asked them to use a regular border cross-
ing for their next visit to the German Democratic Republic, and
sent them home on the subway.

The Symbol
The story of divlded Berlin is more than a story of concrete and
construction workers. But the Berlin Wall remains at the center
of that story becauseit was more than mere concrete. After all,
the Wall that ceased to exist one night in 1989 was not the
concrete but rather the system of East German border security.
Be rlinW alls f'enceson either side; and secttredwith bright lights, barbed wire, Walls fell or were riddled with openingsfor roacls,
canals,and B erl i nW al l s
tank barriers, dog runs, and carefully raked sand. Contrary to its railroads.In other words, in an earlier age,u,ith
much lesshuman
name anclreputation, then, the security systemwas it-tits essence mobility, rulers lvould not have n"".l"J and subjects
rvould r.rot
less a rvall than a controlled sequenceof empty, visible spoces. have noticed this barrier to mobility. But that
is precisely the
More than that, "thc Wall" signified a set of activities-searches, sensein rvhich the Berlin Wall of 1961 connoted
an utt"mit, by
patrols, observation, and identification checks at the crossing political fiat, to reversethe grolving economic ancr
social,-,-r"r,itia,
points-that protected the border. of the modern world.e The name "wall," shunnecr
bv its burlders.
The name stuck, horvever. From the Western side it was dre called attention to this anachronismand came
to siinily a crime
concrete rvall that marked the border's mcnacing presence.And againsthistory as well as humanity: a ,,wall of
'flie competing $amel1 fsetsld,
only on that side rvas it olficially a "wall." Eastern officials description "antifascist
"*:?:), protective ram-
rlubbed their new edifice the 'antifascist protective rampart." part" becamefarcical and fell into disreputc.
lly the 1980s, they rarely referrcd to any- jlhy-siEal-st]uetrire, It was immediately obvious that the fuall n,as antithetical
to
speakingrather of "the border" or of "border security." Use of the mobility an<l circulation characteristicof a modern
city. In
tlre rvord "wall" (Ilauer) was strictly forbidden in the East. This Berlin a political decisionhad disrupted invisibrefort
rs of .rroi"r.,
rule has usually been ir.rterpretedas an Orw'ellian denial of reality, circulation usually taken for granted-gas and water
mains, for
but we must also consider it as an attempt-perhaps equally example. More visibly, it blockecl streets, ancl streetcar
tracks
Onvellian-to control the dangerous implications of figurative led straight into the Wall (see fig +). Most of Berlin,s
intercity
language. rail stations became uselessand were abandoned.
fhe cle'ated
Why was the name "Wall" embracerlby some and eschewed rail stations above Nollendorfplatz a'd Biilowstrasse,
on a rine
by others?The notion of a wall carrieshistorical baggage:through that 'r'r'entnowhere,becanrefleamarkets.And how u.asa subway
many ccnturies of European history, u'alls r,vere basic to the system supposeclto rvork in a rvalled city? Two
sulrruaylirr",
identity as well as the security of European cities. Berlin itself connectednorthern and southern parts of West lJerlin
by pussing
rvas a r,valledtolvn for most o[ its history, until the 1860s.Both under central East Berlin, gliding through ghostly ,tutiorrr;
,"h".!
East ancl West Berlin honored this tradition. A remnant of Ber- no train had stoppedsince 1961.
lin's medicval wall u'as excavatedand displayed in East Berlin's Meanwhile, other products of modern technology
^ passetlef_
Waisenstrasse,and during the 1980sWest Berlin's archaeological fortlessly over the Wall: air pollution ancl broaclcai' ,ignulr.
So,
office excavateda segment of the city's eighteenth-century cus- for shorter distances,dld the ampllfied sounds o[ interiationally
toms rvall in Stresemannstrasse. The fact that the course of the famous rock musicians lvho played at outdoor concerts
by thl
latter vvallcoir-rcidedfor a distancewith the border between East Reichstag.East Gerrnanyouths gathered behincl
the Wall to hear
and West Bcrlin, and hence rvith the 1961 wall, offered the the stars they rvere unable to see; altercationsensued
vvhen the
nov Berlin Wall a historical pedigree.The official Easternname, police drove drem away.
"antif'ascistprotective rampart," also invoked the traditional wall, Heightening the poignancy of the Wall's limits
on mobilitv
if r-rotthe traditional cnemy, by alluding to the kind of fortifica- was tl.reimportance of traver in the mintrs of East
Germa. citi'-
tion that had protected earlier towns. The same u'ent for each zens.Their educationand relative prosperity made
them espe_
side's descriptions of West Berlin: "imperialist bridgehead" for cially eagertravelers even by the standardsof the
late tu,entieth
some, "bastion of freedom" and "bulrvark of the Western world" ...n,ury, and their government knerv (and acknorvledgecl)
that
for others. otherwise obedient citizens demandecl the ,,right
to= travel.,,
But a yau,ning historical caesura divided the wall of 1951 Many became obsessedrvith the Wall that visili\,
barred thenr
from its antcceclents.Thc nineteendr and trventieth centuries from West l3erlin, West Germany, and beyon,l.,6
L-astGennan
have been an age of mobility, communication,and integration. leadersknew that their citizens were temptecl by-anil
hacl to
18 Modernitv lias tended to free cities frorn all traditional fetters. be protecte<lfrom-the f'uits of capitalism.The
wall helcrback
 BsrlinWalls
Be rl i nW alls

6
Thefour A l l i ed
5 sectorsof Berlin.

Postcard:"Greelings Courtesyof German

rm Berlin."CourtesYol InlormalionCenter.

GlaudiaKatz-Palme.

free trade the Berlin blockade of 1948-49, rvhen American and British
the seductive bustle and mobility that accompanied
planesfoiled a Soviet attempt to detach Berlin from the sphere
and bourgeois societY.
shocking of tlre Western powers. More than any other event, the trium-
When-we think of the Wall, then, we think of the ,/
we kncw phant Berlin Airlift made the city a symbol of Western resolve
division of Berlin in all its ramifications' And l'tecause
Wall became in the Cold War. As a practical matter, horvever, the airlift
ClolclWar Berlin above all as a divided city' the
evidence of this link reinforced rather than resolved the Berlin anomaly. It hastened
inseparablefrom the city's identity' Clear
A picture the creation, in 1949, of two separateGerman states, leaving
is a popular postcard sold in Berlin since the 1980s
simply' "Greetings from only Berlin's status in limbo. The United States and its allies
of the Great Wall of China, it reads
(fig' 5)' In the were deterrnined to hold West Berlin, despite its vulnerability,
Berlin"-Berlin being the place with the Wall
the signi- while the Soviet bloc wished to remove a painful embarrassment.
languageof semiotics, the Wall is the signifier; Berlin'
commentary on the During the late 1950s,the Soviet Union under Khrushchevagain
n.i. fi" postcard also served as an ironic
Tourists sought to force the Berlin issue. Its East German ally pressed
relative insignificanceof the Wall as a physicalstructure'
find a more imposing structure: for urgent action becausethe virtually unrestricted freedom of
u'ere often disappointed not to
thirteen feet movement rvithin the city was enabling thousandsof its most
it was, on its Western side, a plain concrete wall
skilledworkers and professionalsto flee west. The Western pow-
high, not at all like its Chintse namesakc'
-The Not only did ers would not back down from the commitment to Berlin they
plain concrete wall brimmed with meaning'
it also came had made at the time of the airlift, despite fears that the Berlin
it signify the carefully maintained division of Berlin'
Europe, as crisis could not be solved by any means short of war.
to Jonnote the division of a German nation, or of
Hence Western leaders b.eaih"d a secret sigh of relief on
otherwise known by Churchill's metaphor of the "iron T1!qT'.- / I
I
Cold War August 13, 1961, when a midnight action by the East German !,/
,'l'he Wall became most famous as the preeminent
ironic' since the Wall army sealedoff the sectoral lines in Berlin and began the con-
'/ symbol. That syrnbolic linkage is itself
struction of a barrier all the way around West Berlin, ostensibly
c nulc l b e s a i d to m a rk th e e n d o fB e rl i nasaC ol dW arbattl efi el d.
to foil an imminent Western invasion.Becausethe West did not
B er lin b e c a me a n i n te rn a ti o r-ra l p ro bl emasthedi vi si onofGer'
intervene,this sudden move eff'ectivelyresolveclthe conflicting
m any h a rrl e n e d a fte rl g 4 5 ,s i n c e th e W esternal l i es' sectorsof
zone (fig' 5)' claims to the entire city: the West implicitly accepteddivision
the city lay in the middle of the Soviet occupation
conflict during and the East surrenderedits claim to West Berlin. It could thus
The ciiy then becamea flasl'rpointof international
BerlinWalls lte saicl that the Wall, by rcmoving Berlin fiom center stage rn rounded by the Wall, felt they were the ones
penneclin. But so BerlinWalls
thc Cold War, marked tl're city's irrelevance. But it also gave did most East Germans.
divitled Bcrlin a visible signifier. In the end, both sidescame to think of the Wall as
a temporal
The political rituals of Cold War leadersadded important new more tha'a spatialbarrier. western leacrersdenouncecr
the wall
connotationsto the Wall's meaning. Immediately after the Wall's as anachronistic: a relic from an earlier age,
it was built to
constructiorl, Berlin represented something of a political embar- keep progressout, and people in. Meanwhile]the
Wall,s builders
rassment,a place to avoid, since Western leaders-Adenauer of justified their work as a necessarydefense
againstthe ata'istic
West Germany, Macmillan of llritain, Kennedy of the United Ibrces of the West. According to this view, in-formed
by Marxist
States-r,vere criticizecl for their failure to respond to it, and theoriesof historical deveropmcnt,the proletariat
was defendins
since they could scarcely admit to being relieved at its construc- itself againstlingering influencesof the bourgeoisie.
Specifically],,,
tion. llef<rrc long, however, West Germany and its allies began it was "fascism" that threatened the marcli
of sociahst prog-
to exploit the propaganda value of the Wall as a symbol of ress. Marxists usually defined fascism as a degenerate
fonn lf
Communism'sI'ailure.rrBy dre time of Kennedy'striumphal visit ,i*.f.:.q*is capitalism.The,,antifar.*, p;;U*-;p;;:
in June of 1963, a pilgrimage to the safely fortified forward post shielded the triumphant proletariat from the remnants
of,ore_
had become a favoritc photo opportunity. Every state visitor in 1945 Ger-rnanfascism(that is, fiom Nazism).The
Weste.n ui.*
Bonn was if possible brought to Berlin to view the infamous was different, of course,but there is a striking
parallel:according
Wall. Presitlent l{onald Reagan's visit in 1987, for example, to it, too, the wall's necessityarosefronr a historical
,lir"r"pu.r.i
soundeclthe metaphor of mobility and connectedness.He stood betweenthe two systems.Liberal narrativesof
history, llk. i,tu.*'_
bcfbre the rvalled-off Brandenburg Gate and demandecl,"Mr. ist-ones,describea progressivedevelopment:the
-- uniolding of an
\. Gortrachev,open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev,tear dclwn this wall." individualistic and democratic order. part of
that devero"pment
\ The East could respond in kincl: it declared the statementsof is the growing lieedom of movement mentioned
above. Thus
Western politicians at the Wall to be a provocation showing the the construction of a wall turned back the crock
to a constricted
necessityand the efficacyof the border fortifications, which they, and authoritarian age. The West has often
defined that age as
too, proudly displayed to guests-at least to carefully selected "totalitarian." Theories of "totalitarianism,,,a rvord
.o.rroi.g u
One of the old guardhousesflanking dre llrandenburg Gate
or"res. fundamental similarity between Nazism and
Communir_, plr_ V
houscd an exhibition justilying the "modern border." An occa- trayed the Cold War as a continuation of the
West,s str,,qglein
sional Western journalist rvas admitted, as were delegationsand World War II and, in the German context,
tast German Com_
dignitarit'sfrom friendll' countries.r2Someof the latter lclt their munist leader Walter Ulbricht as Hitler,s successor.
u'ords of praisein a guest book now preservedin a Berlin archive. Again, the
implication was that enemiesfrom the
past hid behind tie Wall. _I
East (lern'ranyritually commemorated the heroic defenseof the
and West agreedthat the Wull *u, a temporal
border every Augtrst 13, granted the border guards an annual T.n::.tr., tur.i.., i
dividing past from present' ancrthat rhe other
.ia"'hu.uor.a ii* 1
clay of honor, antl taught all schoolchildren the correct interpre- unredeemedheirs of Hitler.
tation o[ the events of 1961, when alert securitymeasureshacl -__J
On an official level, the ideologicalinterpretation
of the Wall
stavedoff war.ll thus becamepart of the Cold W^r', p.op.ganda
battle: ,,antifas_
In this battle to define a symbol, each side was trying to make cist protective rampart" versus"wail of shame."
It is difficult to
the Berlin Wall comprehensible in rvays that would justify its gauge the extent to which popular vievvsaffirmed
official posi_
cause. Each side knerv it had to redefine u'hat a wall meant. tions, particularly in the East. In the West, however,
'frarlitionally, a rvall has an inside and an outside; it protects the officiai and
P:P:lut- views certainly convergedin treating the Wall as a place
peoplc on one side from those on the other. But which r,l'asthe of death. The attentio., of th"
and their prou..,
outside of the rvall that encircled West Berlin? Who was being ideas about newsworthy topics explain -ur. -.di".
the attention given to
wallecl in, and w,ho kept out? West Bcrliners, physically sur- unsuccessfulescapeattempts, most of which
ended inlapture
 and imprisonment, some in death. The first fatal shooting came
B erl i nW al l s
BerlinWalls
u,ithin claysof the border closing. The most famous death oc-
curred a year later, '"r'heneighteen-year-oldPeter Fechter, shot
just short of the final obstacle, bled to death while crying lbr
help iust beyond the reach of American soldiersanclWest Berlin
policemen.Just as ner'vsworthy,though, were those who success-
lully cle{iedcleath. A privately rr-rnbut officially sanctionedmu-
serlrn on the Western sicle of Checkpoint Charlie drew crowds
of visitors by displaying the paraphernaliaof imaginativeescaPes:
hot-air balloons, cars with secret hiding places,homemade Red
Anny r.rniforrns,and debris from tunnels clug under the Wall and
trucks that crashetl through it. The museum's founder, Rainer
Hilclebranclt,a human-rights campaigner' sought to draw public
attention to the plight of those trapped behind the Iron Curtain'
At least seventy-eight people died in confrontations at the
Wall during its twenty-eight-year existence' The Wall rvas not
among the leading causesof mortality in East or West Berlin,
but tlie political context of the suffering of familiesand neighbors
lent the Wall its aura of brutality and inhumanity. West Berliners
put up crossesand simple markers to commemorate many of
8
Memori alto s l ai n
ih. .l"ud, rvhether their identities were known or not' These
borderguards,
became a part ol the landscapeof the Wall, and clearly marked
E as tB erl i n
its western side as a memorial (fig z) western politicians could
key their visits to the Wall to the tone set by the crosses'
exhibiting an appropriate combination of'solemnity and outrage' of commernoration on the Eastern side, although the officially
Much less known in the West was the correspondingProcess controlled Eastern media gave similar prominence to its stories
of heroism and suffering. Several East German border guards
vs died in confrontations at the inner-city border, and they were
7
officially honored as martyrs to the defenseof the socialiststate.
Grossesat the
Wall near the
Four stone monuments in East Berlin commemorated their
Reichstag deaths(lig. 8).ra Despite the regime's lack of credibility with its
ou'n people,the pathos of victimhood could sway their emotions.
Ordinary East Germans found it plausiblethat "bandits" in the
West took potshots at border guards doing their duty, a story
not corroborated by Western accounts of any of the incidents.
And not only ordinary citizens: even as he awaited trial for
murders at the Wall, Erich Honecker, when askedif he regretted
the deaths there, rvould only reply that he lvas sorry for the
murders of trventy-five East German border guards.
Graffiti added a different dimension to the Western side of
the Wall. Kreuzbergboastedthe most impressivedisplayof Wall 25
24
 f lw fl)J'

ffiA;uu99l,
fltr ' to heap scorn on the Wall. That was obvious in the caseof the
rnany pictorial and verbal denunciationsof the Wali itsell and
BerlinWalls

fl$/ $tr
#ssffrsff
the regime behind it. More subtly, one recurring theme of the
Wall paintings highlighted the senseof historicai anomaly de-
* hifr,
lfi$HBu scribed above. This was the attemPt to disrupt the soliditv and
continuity of the Wall by suggestingthe existenceof openings
in it or the processof breaking through it. Many artists painted
climbing or jumping figures; others employed trompe I'oeil (fig.
10).The effect of this graffiti was to call attention to the injustice,
anomaly,or artificiality of the barrier.
At the same time, hou'ever, the levity of much Wall art
threatened to blur the Western message.The scuiptor Joseph
Beuys, enfant terrible of postwar West German art, aimed to
confound official opinion w'hen he declaredthat it would be best
to increasethe Wall's height by fir'e centimetersto give it more
aestheticallypleasing proportions.rs This set the tone for many
of the more sophisticatedgrafhti artists, u'hose work, lvhile giv-
ing scant comfort to the builders of the "antifascist defensive
rampart," subvertedthe categoriesof Western as well as Eastern
political posturing. Did lovers, angels,or bathroom fixtures have
I graffiti, if that word may be used to encomPassthe personal anything to do with the Cold War? The very Processof appropri-
The Wall in Lutbursts, political slogans,Posters,painting' attachments,and ating the Wall as art made it, arguably, less ugly' less obscene,
Niederkirchnerstrasse, occasionaldestruction wrought upon the Western side of the lesscriminal. The kaleidoscopicWestern slde of the Wall became
Behindit is the
19&1.
Wali. The Wall attracted painted expressionsof defiance in its either a showcaseof Western freedom or emban-assing evidence
lormerThird Reich
early years, but it began to flourish as a mural only in the of Western decadence.Whereas in earlier years the East periodi-
aviationministry.
courtesyof
1970s, u,hen it (that is, the original, western perimeter of the
10
[andesbildstelI e. fortifications) was rebuilt rvith huge prefabricatedconcrete slabs
Wall gratfiti,1983.
that created a smooth canvas (frg 9) The entire West Berlin Courtesyot
side of the Wall, actually within East Beriin territory but effec- l e.
[andes bi l ds tel
tively free of anyone's political control, sen'ed as an all-purpose
bulletin board as lveil as an experimental stuclio for art r'r'ith
political overtones. The Western wall of the cleath strip thus
became a short'caseof spontaneity and a tourist attraction The
sharp contrast with the purposes of the Wall's builders l'ecame
part of the Wall's fascination antl meaning. A small element of
risk acldeda further tinge of excitement: on rare occasionsEast
German border guartls slipped through concealeddoors in the
Wall and nabbed graffiti artists del'acingthe borcler fortifications'
By making the Wall rrsibla,the colorful graffiti (or art) also
counteracted West Berliners' inclinations to ignore it. Much of
the graffiti underscored the efforts of Western political leaders
BerlinWalls cally rvhitervasherl
the Western side of the Wall, in 1987 it was
thc Western authorities rvho hurriedly obliterated anti-American
and anti-Rcaganslogansbeforc the president's visit to the llran-
dcnburg Gate.
The German Democratic l{epublic (GDll.) knerv how to pre-
vent gralfiti and other spontaneousdisplaysof private sentiment
at honre. Apart from officially sponsored commemorations,this
side of the Wall-of the borcler, that is-was not availablefor
contemplation. Easterners were compelled to tlrrn their backs
or.rit and buikl their lives u'ithin "Berlin, capital of the German
l)ernocratic Reptrblic," as the city rvas officially known. Official
Eastern parlance kneu' no "East Berlir-r," only a remote and
infr-equentlymentioned "Westberlin," rvhich appearedas a blank
spaceon the GDR's city maps. On Western maps, by contrast,
it w,asthe Wall that rvas often inconspicuous,indicated only by
a stripe barely distinguishablefrom those dividing the districts
r,vithin East or West Berlin. The maps on each side serve as
evidence of denial and r,r'ishfulthinking.
Although \4/e cannot look at any Eastern eqr.rivalentof Wall
graffiti, we can learn something about Easterners'reactions to
the Wall l}om a book published in 1973 by a prominent East
Germar' psychiatrist rvho had fled to the West two years before.
J'he title of his book, \\'rote Dr. l)ietfried Miiller-Hegemann,
u,as a term already in common use in llerlin.r6 The BerlinWall
Disease (Die Berlinerlldue*rankheir) is a collection of casestudies
\,' of paticnts sulfering fiom depressionand other psychologicalills,
often expresscdin physicalaihnentsand, according to the author,
attributableto the border closingin 1961. These casestudiesof
divided families ancl of pressures for ideological conformity
clearly reflect the stressesof life in a police state, in u'hich the
Wall had become establishedas the paramount symbol of control.
Ilut Mi"iller-Flegemannsaw a more direct connection between
the Wail anrl "rvall disease." He found that patients reacted
directiy to the shock of the Wall's appearance-that is, to the
sutlden imposition of strict limits on mobility that left them no
possibility of leaving the country or even, in many cases,seeing
chiltlren, parents, spouses,or lovers. Without trivializing these
people's slrnptoms, we can see "lvall clisease"as an extreme
version of the widely shared sensethat the Wall violated normal
and accepted possibilities. Miiller-Hegemann links the pain of
the Wall more closely to its violation of expectationswhen he
contrasts the 1950s,an era of peace and growing prosperity in Berlin Walls
tlre GDR, with times of war and mass sulfering. Incleecl,rnany
of his patients had suffered similar setbacks during a'd after
World War II without the psychologicalconsequencJs,precisely
becausetheir expectationsand hopes were appropriately
^od"st
then.lT "Wall disease" thus takes to pathological extremes tl.re
more general senseof historical inappropriatenessstirred by the t,"
Wall.
The Zipper
l'he concrete barrier in Berlin stootl as a signifier in rnany dis_
courses:psychopathology,families'grief, political ideology,urban
identity, and modern art. And it loomed large in the debates
over German national identity that raged throulhout the decatles
of division and stili persist today. Since both German regimes
claimed Beriin as their city a'd their capital, it was inevitable
that the Wall, Berlin's preeminent structure and syrnbol, rvould
be drawn into these rlebates.In divided Germany, Berlin (espe_
cially west Berlin) was ahvaysthe front line. -I'he citizensof the
divided city were the most prominent victims of division.
The suflering of these victims recleemedall Germans. Sincc
the airlift oF 1948*49,Ilerliners, more than other Gern.rans, had
been able to claim the hearts of their former enemies in the
west. In a famous speechduring the airlift, West Berlin's mayor,
ElEst Reuter, demanded,"Peoples of the world, look upon this
cjty!:: At least in the West, thit 6;k;d, ind thiy su*, fi"",lb-_
loving heroes where only a few years before they had seen Hit_
ler's minions. It was a tlirilling moment for Germanswho, Iike
Reuter, haclopposedthe Nazis.They had been sustainedthrough
the years of the l-hird Reich by a belief in a better G.*lur,"y;
now the Western world endorsedtheir cause.But former N"zi,
also basked in their redemption: all anticomm'.ist Berliners
stoocltogether, and bygonescould be bygones.West Berlin cele_
brated its new identity with its firrt major post\4,armonument,
the Airlift Memorial cledicateclby Reuter at Tempelhof airport t-'
i n 1951.
The Wall later supplantedthe airlift as the symbol of Berlin's
role as Cold War victim. T'he most celebrated visit to the
walled city was probably that of president
John F. Kennerly on
June 26, 1953. Aller reviewing the Wall, he proceederlto ttre
SchcinebergTown Ilall, home of the West Beriin government,
Be rlinWalls where he gave a speech l'amous for the German pl-rrasewith
rvhich he concluded. His words underscoredthe political symbol-
ism of Berlin: "All free rnen, wherever they may live, are citizens
of Berlin. And therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words,
'lch bin ein Berliner."'What did it mean for Kennedy to call
'hlmGlt
a Berliner? Certainly he rvas not about to pronounce
himself a German. "Berliners" were victims of Communist tyr-
anny and virtuons exemplars of a noble steadfastness, and they
were portrayed as sur:h in American Cold War propaganda.
fhe adoption of tlrc victim's perspectivemade it possible to
turn the shame of the Wall into a position of moral superiority.
For Western opponents of the division of Germany, the Wall
came to represent the justice rather than the futility of their
cause.West Berliners first saw the Wall as a defeat, driving a
wcdge between them and their allied protectors, who had not
acted to stop its constmction. But the Wall could become a
Western political symbol r.r4renits existence was interpreted as
proof that only force could keep Germany divided. Incidents like
dre cleatl-rof Peter Fechter convinced most Westerners that the
Wall rvas both cruel and absurd. l'he Wall. then, showed the
division of Germany to be "unnatural," meaning that Germany
was "naturally" and properly a single nation.
In thc peculiar state of Ger-rnannationalism after World War
II, the Berlin Wall-the looming obstacle to national unity-
the West's fayorite nationalist s)Tnbal. The ritual de-
,became
nunciations
.,,/ of the Wall-speeches, demonstrations, graffiti,
crosses-lvere the most acceptableexpressionsof German na-
tior-ralfeeling in the West. At the same time, the very existence
of the Wall served to dispbc_e3nyanxietiesabout German iden-
tity onto it. It was "g zipper,'l,bbserved the East Berlin writer
Lutz Rathenorv, linking|G-riffians even as it divided them.rs The
separation enforced by the Wall made it easy to explain away
any apparent disunity among Germans and to render harmless
tlie whole idea ol' German identity. This is the point made re-
cently by the West Berlin writer Peter Schneider: "it was the
Wall alone that preserveclthe illusion that the Wall w4! th. only
thing separatingthe Gcrmans.l'le
The Wall, then, signihed both division and unity. Under the
circumstancesit lvas an ideal national syrnbol,affir.minga divided
German self as well as an underlying unity. The Wall seemedto
30 explain the existence of apparently irreconcilable characteristics
of "Gennans"-1e1 only in the form of the simplisticbut persis- B erl i nW al l s
tent categoriesof "good" and "bad" Germans.Many analysesof
Gennan national character-a favorite topic for decades-resort
to images of dualism, division, exclusion, and separation.The
existenceof the Wall at once confirmed these beliefsand offered
a way to account for them without denying an essentialbond
between all Germans. The East-West division embodied by the
Wall permitted Germansthemselvesto project "otherness" onto
their fellows. On the one hand, Germanscould interpret official
propagandaas implying that the people on the other side of the
Wall monopolizecl the prejudiced, predatory, or authoritarian
traits of the bad old days. On the other hand, it rvas common
in both Germaniesto characterizethe East as the "old" Germany
or the "real" Germany, implying that the GDR was the reposi-
tory of traditional German virtues, unspoiled by foreign (espe-
cially American) influences.
As a counterpoint to assertionsof German unity, the GDII,
offered its official ideology of German antifascism-looking not
to the old Germany or the whole Germar-ry,but to the better
Germany. Obviously, antifascismwas also (like anticommunism
and opposition to Germany's division) defined by what it r,,,as
not. The "antiflascistprotective rampart" becameits most famous
symbol, but since hardly anyone in East or West long took
seriously its "antifascist" purpose, the Wall also did much to
discredit the entire notion. In other words, as the idea of an
"antifascist protective rampart" became an embarrassment,the
state that built such a "rampart" (or "wall," or "modern bor-
der") lost its legitimacy. In 1951, Communist leaders saw the
Wall as crucial to the survival of the "antifascist" German state;
by 1989, the Wall had failed-and so, apparently,had the state.
With tlie demise of the Wall, the imagined unity of Germany
yielded to a real embrace of East and West Germans.
The R el i c
East Germany is now gone, and most Germansseem to want to
forget it. The sameholds true of the Wall. Since 1989 the former
death strip has bit by bit been reintegratedinto the city. Within
two years it was difficult to tell u'here the Wall had stood. That
was only natural and proper, in the view of most Berliners:with
the Wall would vanish the painful memory of division. An early
proposal to mark the Wall's former course acrossthe city re-
l erl i nW alls ceivedlittle support. (By 1995, hor,r'ever, the Wall had become
suf{icii:ntly historical for the plan to be revived.)
Most people rvho hated the Wall as an obstacle to German
trnity rvanted to see all traces of it disappearas quickly as possi-
ble. Their senseof triumph expresseditself in the spontaneous
rlestnrction of the Wall. But others could c-'oncecle the necessity
of preservinga little pierceof it. For exarnple,the Berlinertllorgen-
posr,of the conservativeand nationalist Axel Springer newsPaPer
chain, editorialized:
A few meters of Wall should remain stantling as a memo-
rial. That may be painl'ul to some, but this decision is un-
a'r'oidable.This structure of concrete and barbed wire has
causecltoo much inhumanity and too much suffering, too
many people striving for lreedom were murderecl at it,
lor its complete removal to be rvarranted. "fhe small rem-
nant of the Wall-at r,vhicheverlocation it may stand-
must forever admonish that a people nray never again be
arbitrarily,li'nided.2"
-fhe rcason for preservation was thus to
Protect a place of na-
tional memory and to keep alive the lesson of the Wall: the
r-rnbreakableunity of the German people.
\ or
This u'as a remarkably rare position. Most citizens in East and
West rvho called for preserwationof part of the Wall certainly
u.cre not motivatetl by conventionai patriotism. Indcecl, they
u,ere likcly to be seen as disgr-untledopponents of trnilication
seeking to spoil the triumphant Inoment. Insteatl of a victory
monument, they had in mind a place of solemn remembrance.
Although the,llorgenpostrvasnot really proposing a victory monu-
ment either, the attempt to enshrine the Wall as a s)'rnbol of
national strength was bound to leave that impression. And any
proclamation of German strength remains a touchy subject at
home anrl abroad. A Wall memorial that proclaimed the message
wantetl would be enormously controversial.Na-
ilrc ,4,lorgenpost
tionalists thus found it easier to thir-rk of the Wall as a symbol
of division than as a symbol of unity. -fypically they wished not
to preserve dre Wall, but to destroy 11-1[11 is, to forget it.
It was not easily forgotten, however. l-he Wall, now invisible'
1/ [',..unl" thc s1'mbolof Germany's identity crisis in the 1990s as
well. In his novella of divided llerlin, 'the Wall
Junper(19g2), BerlinWalls
Peter Schneider had prophesied that "tearilg- doii'n iii""wuil
inside or-rrheadswill take longer than any ,I"-1lition job on
the
visibleWall."2r After 1989 the .,*,all inside our heacls,,became
the way Gcrmans described post-Wa-ll-problem.rcrf German na_
tional identity-specifically, the growirg senseof differenc:ebe_
tween Easterners and Westerners (,,Ossis" and ,,Wessis"). In
another use of the same metaphor, the slogan ,,1 want rny r,r,all
or
-b-gckl' lips and T-shirts in 1990 .*p."r.J som.-Wa:t-serlin__-
ers' quixotic flight froni the specter of unification. In the fairy-
tale versior of unification, the disappearanceof the murderous
system of border security was supposedto lead to the happily_
ever-after marriage of East anrl west. But the
loyful emb.a.e ut
the Wall soon gave u,ay to grumbling about overbearing and
exploitati'c wessis and shiftlessand uncouth ossis. Berlin-with-
out a Wall in the 1990swas not a coherent rvhole, rvhich meant
that dre Wall had betrayedthe hopesinvestedin it. Its disappear_
ance raised new questionsabout Berlin's identity.
Whar, then, to do with the Wall? Which of its meanings
desened preservation or remembrance?proponents of u Wu-tt
memorial fbced serious problems: securing the physicalremains,
overcoming the desire to forget, ancl somehow presenting an
interpretation of the Wall that satisfied a sufficiently large
influential constituer.rcy.J"he German Historical tvtur",ro'
ln".-
lin's new national museum) proposed to preserve a block_long
sectionof the border fortificationsas part of a wall memorial.
SI
that the very possibilityof a memorial woultl not be preclucled,
ir.r
1990 the museum fenced off the hacked_upstretch of Wall.
In
addition, it dismantled and storecl the fences, lights, tripwires,
and watcl'rtowers that had separated East from West Berlin.
Museum olficials planned to reconstruct the entire border
o' a
thircl of the block. This was the key to the entire
project, they
argued: the famous Wall alone could not give futire visitors
a
sense of the the border functioned. ihe rest of the site
'r'ay
would then be devoted to a solemn menroriar to victims
of the
Wall.
'rhe museum
had chosen one of the most famous poi'ts ir-r
the Wall, despite its location outside central Berlin. picturcs
lrom Bernauer Strassehad captured the attention i.
'r,orld's
1961' The street divided the district of Mitte
from the west
BerlinWalls Berlin clistrict of Wedding, and by historical accident the actual untouched for years. Neither popular nor
commercial pressures BerlinWalls
bortler was the East Berlin side of the street. Here the front created a senseof urgency. This Wall
memorial w,oulclnot ollbr
windows of hundreds of Easterners' apartnrents faced a West the samekind of tourist attraction as either
the functioning Wall
Berlin street. In the days after August I 3, as the border trooPs or the crumbling Wall. The drama of
unresolvecl.or,fli.]t, th"
scaleddoors and ground-floor windows' many residentson uPPer senseof active participation, ancl (if the
museum had its way)
floors climbed or jumped into the street, aided by West Berliners the overt commerciality would lrc iacking.
and hindered by Easternguards. With the improvements in bor- Meanwirile, Wall tourism did find a
p-laceto thrive into thc
der security, the street's fame faded, although one of the most 1990s,thanks to a private initiative. During
1990,tourists seeking
famous tunnels under the wall, through which fitiy-seven people to relive the Wall experience wand.r.J
through the derelic?
cscaped in 1964, passed under Bernauer Strasse.Long before death strip and sprayedgraffiti on interior
sectioni of Wall previ_
that, the famous lvindows were bricked up and the residents ously inaccessible.Greetingsfrom and to
Amerca were common:
relocated, ancl in the mid-1960s the buildings were torn down "Tamm), Mike, John, and everyone else
from New Jersey,you
(cxcept for the lront f'acadesuP to a height of trvelve feet) to clear are now on the Wall." But soon those
walls *... jon".'#hu,
the way for the border security zone. Until their replacement in ! now the.longestintact piece of the Wall standsalJng Mlihlen_
the 1980s, the bricketl-trp first-floor facadest:ontinued to serve t!tu:.:, a busy six-lane street connecting
central Berlii- widr
as the Wall in llernauer Strasse,and the neo-Gothic Church of 'isoutheasterndistricts. The street parallels
a stretch of the Spree )
thc l{econciliation stootl inaccessibleir-r no-man's-land until it River that had marked the border. .fhe
was blown up in 1985. West Berlin tourist buses could be
counted on to drive dor,r'ntlie street.
Mtihlenstrasse
,
wasthusthe inner*.' ,rr",?$ti';t:,:*:.:'::?
of the_security zone, a blank, invisibl.,
,l"solute ,p... ;-;;ld
I,
The desireto forget the Wall manifesteditself in severalclif('er- arvay from the colorful grafliti on the
Western side. Its out_of_
cnt forms of opposition to the memorial proposed here' Some the-way location made possiblethe ,,East
Side Galler1,,(the name
local officials pronounced the wide swath of open land an ideal is in English,a Scottishgallerist, ChrisEitt,atf_..r,
frr"i"n fr"",.,
site tbr nerv inner-city housing.The city's traffic plannersquickly instrumentalin its creation)(fig 11). In
the courseof t9db, the
designatedit as the site for a multilane thoroughfare-also badly "gallery''..took shape in a mural. First a few
artrsts came, then
ncedetl, in their view. Across llernauer Strasse,on the West others followed, each claiming a section
of the nearly *rif"_f."g
Berlin side o[ the proposed memorial, stands the Lazarushome stretch of rvall. In the end 1 1g artists
from around the world
lor the chronically ill. Its director announced that to Preserve produced 106 paintings while breathing the
iumes from thou_
the Wall outsicle their front windows u'ould damagethe health sandsof East German cars and trucks
Ind negotiating the cars
of the patients by causing depressionand anguish.[{is prognosis parked or even junked on the siclewalk.
Much of the work
seernedto imply that "u'all disease"rvould persist until its visible featureswidely recognizedmotifs. Many
of the artists r.r,erefiom
causewas eradicated. Further obstaclesarose from the fact that the former Soviet bloc, a1d tfell paintings
proclaim the messages
the deatl'rstrip included land the GDR had expropriated from of Eastern European political dirsid"r-r"J.
bth"r. recall traumas
private o\rrners. Among those rvho came forward with clain-rs of German history, especiallyKristallnacht
ancl other events in
after 1989 was the church of St. Sophia,whose cemetery had the Nazi persecution of Many
Jervs. paintings, like much of the
includecl part of the proposed memorial's site. The church's old Wall graffiti, illustrate eventsor fu,lturj"r-of
breakingth.ough
pastor declaredthat the Wall memorial would rePresenta second or Jeaping over the Wall itself. Gradually
this mural came to
tlesecraticlnof tl-recemeterY. wider public attention, ancl Miihlenstrasse
loinecl the short list
The local and federal governments neverthelessapproved the of segmentsslated for possiblepreservation.
*Wall
memorial. But property claims as rvell as financing ancl design By 1993, when the East Side Gallery's
preservationrvas offi_
long remained unsettled, and the fenced-in piece of Wall sat cially decreed,word had spreaclthat this nuu,
th. place to experi_
34

'fourists (mostly Americans, at least in
ll cnce the l'ristoric Wall.
EastSide Gallery, thc summer) clodgcd tralfic to photograph themseh'esantl their
1991 li'icnds in frorlt of the painted r,r'all.At a kiosk they coulil buy
postcanls and 'f-sl-rirts of the paintings. Some could not resist
the ten'rptationto inscribe som(: traditional Wall graffiti-much
to the dismay of the gallery's creators and their nerv mur.ricipal
lrackers,rvl'ro rvisl-redto preservethe site and its art. Unlike the
Bernauer Strassememorial, harclly anything here u'as an authen-
tic rcmnant of rlividecl Beriin. J'he cttncrete was real enough,
but lbr the tourists it illustratetl something that had happenecl
on the Western siile of the Wall. The artists' sentimentsand
images,ir.rterestingas thcy were, belonged to the post-Wall era.
As a historical site, this rvas a rvelter of confusion; btrt as a
popularattraction,it rvorked-briefly. By 1995,the artists'paint
rvas pceling or \vas disappearingunder uninspired graf{iti. Re-
moverl tiom a politically liminal space and a sellseof transitory
creation, the Wall became a mere ghost of its lormer self.
Thr.rsone might argue that the best lvay to reproch-rcedre
experienceof the Wall lvould be a theme-parkreenactment,such
as has been offerccl or proposetl by entreprenettrsin Manchester,
36
Englancl,Fort I-auderdale,Floricla,and in the Branclenburgcoun- B erl i nW al l s
tryside outside llerlin. J'ourists could visit a rebuilt Wall and be
interrogateil by actors in border-guard uniforms. Hou,ever, the
director of the German Historical Museum, Cl"rristophStcilzl,
argued that the Bemauer Strassememorial retained the authen-
ticity of the original site and thus rvassnpcrior to a "Disneylancl"
project tlrat could be built an1'rvhere.22
Authenticity is, after all, r,hat Berlin has to offer. At the
height of the Berlin crisis,in 1960,a British journalistproposed
diat West Berlin be abandoned and a ner.r,Berlin be built in
West Germany on the empty land of Liineburg lleath. Of coursc:
the idea of moving West Berlin lock, stock, ancl barrel u'as too
absurd to deserveserious thought (aldrough tlie GI)R's official
party nc\'!'spaperchimed in r,r,iththe suggestionthat all problcms
rvould bc solved if only a handful of spies, Nazis, and Cold
Warriors u,ere Packedup and sent to tserlin, Wisconsin;.2rA
l-ristoriccity is not Disneyland, and it is indeed as an authentic
site that Berlin lascinatesvisitors: herc stoorl the Wall; here
walked Hitler; here spoke Bismarck;herc rolled the tanks. Berlin
rvill long remain the city of the Wall, even if the concrete ends
up in Florida,becausethe Wall, as an unintentionalmonument,
came to define thc urban spaceof Bcrlin. It u'as thus an exem-
plary, i[ by no means typical, case of a monument giving lorm
to collectiveidentity.
The fate of the Wall since 1989 dramatizesa diffcrent link
betr,veenplace and identity, as it is caught in a strugglebet."veen
clestruction,or forgetting, on one hand, and preservation,or the
establishmentof an intentional ntonument, on the other. In a
sensc it is {itting that Berlin's most fan-lousstnlcture has norv
been dcmolisheil. Bcrlin is a city associatedrvith destruction,
mainly but not exclusivelybecauseof tl.rehorrors unleashedfrom
here by Hitler. ln happier times as rvell, before and after the
Third Reich, Berlin has practiced the <lestructionthat is sup-
posed to Lrringrenerval.Many of the buildings tl-ratsurvived the
war did not survive the peace:by the 1950s,preservationists
were charging that the "second destruction" of Berlin hacl ex-
ceeded that of the war. And even before the Allied bombers
came, Berlin, like New York, had a reputation as a city that
quickly consumedits own past, a city of great buildings that no
longerexist. Europeansbelieve-not without reason-that U.S.
 has destroyed the national u'ill to act, or a healthy skepticism
,rlinWalls cities are showcasesof the American practice of planneclobsoles- Berlin Walls
has developed about the deeds of nations and human beings,
cence. But u'hereasNerv York supposedlycastsoff the shackles
dynamic particularly Germans.Although the late-twentieth-century crisis
of the past in order to forget them and to live in a
II has ceased to be a city that of historical confidenceis not unique to Germans,they may lead
p."rer-rt,Berlin since World War
the world in agonizedself-examination.
forgets.
ior half a century, Berlin has struggled in vain to purge itself
of the ghost of Ftitler. At times the will to forget has manifested
itself in acts of destruction: when the Soviet authorities quickly
when
leveled Hitler's chancelleryafter the war, for example,and
the West Berlin government razed SS and Gestapo headquarters'
In 1989 a similar fate loomed for the Wall, s)''rnbolof the division
of
that came in Hitler's wake. Berlin also offers many examples
rulers
the lessradical act of forgetting that takes place when new
Berlin'
appropriate a building for thelr own use' In post-Wall
often impede any smooth disposal of
hoi"',,,"r, painful
-".r-rori",
the detritus of history. The desire to forget Hitler or Honecker'
to
the SS or the Stasi, struggles in vain against a determination
remember.
Stmctures and sites are preserved for all kinds of practical
and
reasons.In some places where the Wali followed a street'
to
the street has since been reopened, it lvas simply practical
keep the lights of the death strip as streetlights'This is a decision
fo, the few who notice it, but it implies no wish
rich with i.-ror-,y
set
to commemorate the Wall. Similarly, a Toyota dealer who
up shop behincl the Reichstag used remnants of the border forti-
fications to enclose a sales lot-a fascinating snapshot of East
judg-
Berlin's urban spacein transition, but an act devoid of any
ment about the Wall. Preservation becomes an act of remem-
of
brance through some further gestllre, such as the staging
the
ceremonies, the establishment of a memorial, or at least
In 1945' no one
erection of an explanatory or hortatory plaque'
Nazi
in Germany thought o[ preserving the memory of most
sites in this way. But after 1989, nearly evelJ ProPosalto sweep
away a relic of the East German state was met with opposition
been
in the form of cails for remembrance' This should not have
toward the Nazi past' and
a surprise. As we shall see, attitudes
and
toward Nazi sites, hacl in the meantime undergone a long
world u'ars
painful transformation. The cumulative efl'ectsof two
excruciat-
plt.s u cold war have made Ger:rnanhistorical memory
ingly sensitive,at least in Berlin' Either a Nietzscheanparalysis
38
Notes

One:BerlinWalls
1. Richard von Weizsdcker,quoted in Reinhard Riirup, ed., Topographie
des Terrors(Berlin: Arenhtivel, 1987), 205. Unless otherwise noted, the
translationsfrom German are my own.
2. Wim Wenders, foreword to first version of screenplayfor WingsoJ
Desire,reprinted in the pubilclty materials for the lilm. I am grateful to
Christian Gcildenboogfor furnishing the citation.
3. Strobe Talbott, ed. and trans., KirusichevRemembers:
TheLast Testa-
menr(Boston:Little, Brown, 1974), 501-4.
4. New Yorkfimes,April 30, 1993.
5. New IorA limes,Nov. 5, 1991.
6. Friedrich Nietzsche,"The Use and Disadvantageof History for Life,,
( I 872).
7. This distinction between "intentional" and "unintentional" monu-
ments was first made by the Austrian art historian Alois Riegl in Der
moderneDenkmalkuhus (1903), translated by Kurt W. Forster and Diane
Ghirardo as "The Modern Cult of Monuments: Its Character and lts
Origin," Oppositions 25 (fali 1982): 21*50.
8. The name meant simply "Checkpoint C" in U.S. armyspeak.The
Russianwriter YevgenyYevtushenko'sassertion-in a poem-that it was
"named in honor of a black soldier" is merely proof of a cultural gap that
dwarfed the Wall.
9. Dieter Hoffinann-Axthe]m and Ludovica Scarpa,Ser.liner Mauern und
Durchbrijche
(Berlin: Verlag Asthetik und Kommunikation, 1987).
10. On the sense of confinement, see Paul Gleye, Behindthe Wall: An
Ameilcan in EastGermany,1988-89(Carbondale:SouthernIllinoisUniversity
P r e s s , 1 9 9 1 )I,3 5 - 4 9.
11. On the shift from weaknessto strength in Western rhetoric, see
Michael S. Bruner, "Symbolic Usesof the Berlin Wall, 1951-19g9,,,Com-
munication
Qtarterly37 (1989): 319-28.
Iotes 12. For example,NeuesDeutschland, Nov. 5 and Dec. 1,1963; and see 7. Ibid.,194. Notes
o Pogas22-56 l)avirl Shears,'lhe Ugly Fronticr(Lonclon:Chatto and Windus, l97l), ll, 8. tbid.,186. to Peges57-71
75-79; and Peter Wyden, lValt:'lhe InsideStoryoJ'Dtvided Berlin(New York: 9. This discussionof the Hol-renzollernpalace and the Communist
Simonand Schuster, l9B9), 566-58. palaceis confusingenough in any language,but more so in Englishthan
13. On the border guards, see Mues Deutschland, Nov. 30, 1985. Ex- in German. In German, the word for a royal palace(Sciloss)is entirely
cerpts from schoolbooks are reprinted in Jiirgen Petschull, Die fulauer,2d distinct from the name the EastGennansgaveto their parliamentbuildirrg:
ed. (Hambnrg: Gruner uncl Jahr, 1989), 256-51, and Thomas Davey, ,4 Palastder Republik.Perhapsthis linguisticconfusionhamperedthe propo-
GenerationDir'ded:GermanChildrenand the Berlin Wall (Durham: Duke Uni- nents of rebuilding the royal palacein their attempt to gain tbreign sup-
versityPress,1987),17-18. port. Appended to a brochure they issuedin 1992 (Fcirdervereinftir die
14. NeuesDeutschland, Sept. 10, 1953, and Aug. 13, 1966;Tagesspiegd, Ausstellung,D)eBedeutung
desBerlinerStodtschlosses
Jilr dietrlitteBerlins-Eine
Sept. ll, 1990. Official versions of their deaths are disputed by Peter DokttmentationIBerlin: Fcirderverein, 1992]) arenumerous letters of support
Boris, "Grenzsoldatender DDR Mordopferrvestlicher Banden?"Deutsch- solicited from prominent Gennan scholarsancl cultr-rralfigures.Also in-
lond Archiv22 (1989):925-31. cluded are three letters in English,all from prominent architects.Two of
15. Fleiner Stachelhaus, JosephBeuys,trans. David Britt (New York: these-frorn Frank Gehry and Michael Wilford (partner of the late James
Ab be ville ,1991)l31.
, Stirling)-oppose rebuiidingthe old palace.In the third, the Americanarchi-
(Herford:
16. Dietfried Miiller-Heqemann, De Berlinerl'lauerkrankheit tect Robert Venturi comesout firmly againsttearingdown the royal palace!
Nicolai, 19'13),6. 10. JoachimFest,"Pliidoyerliir den Wiederau{baudes Stadtschlosses,"
r7. tb id., t 21- 28. in DasneueBerlin,ed. Michael Mcinninger(Frankfurt: Insel, 1991), I18.
18. In Lutz Rathenow and Harald Hauswald.Ostberlin: Die ondereSeite I 1. Heinrich Moldenschardt,"Marx' und Engels'Schloss-Freiheit," in
der Stadtin 'fextenundBildern(Munich: Piper, 1987), 154. Akademie der Kiinste, Zur historischen llitte Berlins,25.
19. Peter Schneider, The GermanComedy:Scenes oJ Llfe aJter the WalL 12. Peter Findeisen,"Anmerkungen, auch zum Thema Neubau des
trans. Philip Boehm and l-eigh Hafrey (New York: Farrar, Straus and Berliner Schlosses,"Kritische Berichte22 (1994): 56.
Girou x, 19 91) ,13. 13. Frankfurter
Rundschau, April 10, 1993.
20. Jochim Stoltenberg,"Eine neue Zukunft," Berlinertr'lorgenpost,
June 14. Friedrich Dieckmann,"Staatsrdurneim Innern Berlins:Ein Streif-
14 ,19 90 . zLrg,"ArchiLekturin Berlin:Jahrbucht992 (l-Iamburg:Junius, 1992),32.
(Darmstadt:Luchterhand,1982),
21. Peter Schneider,Derfulauerspringer 15. Der no. 51, Dec. 14, 1992,206.
Spiegel,
I 02 . 15. Wolf Jobst Siedler,"Das Schlosslag nicht in Berlin," in Forderver-
?2. Berlinerllorgenpost,August 13, 1991. ein Berlir-rerStadtschloss,Das Sclloss?Eine Attsstellung iiber die llitte Berlins
23. Sylvia Conradt and Kirsten Heckmann-Janz,Reichstriimmerstadt: (Berlin:Ernst und Sohn, 1993),20.
Lebenin Berlint945-196l (Darmstadt: Luchterhand, 1981), 206-7. 17. FrankftrterAllgemeineZeitung,March 19, 1993
18. Fest,"Pl?idoyer,"I l0-11.
Two: Old Bedin 19. Riidiger Schaper,in Sriddeutscfie Zeitung,Dec. 15, 1992,
l. Letter reprinted in Hans llerzfeld, "Berlin als Kaiserstadt und 20. Klaus Landowsky,quoted in TageszeitLng, lan. 29,1992.
Reichslratrptstadt," in Friedrich-Meinecke-lnstitut,DasIlauptstadtproblem
in 21. Tageszeitung,Jan. 28, i992.
tler Geschichrc (Tiibingen: Niemeyer, 1952), 168. 22. Wolf Jobst Siedler,"Das Schlosslag nicht in Berlin-Berlin war
l. Alfred Ddblin, Schichsalsreise, quoted in Akademie der Ktinste, Zur das Sclrloss,"in Forderverein,Die Bedeutung desBerlinerSrodrschlosses, 11;
historischenlllitte Berlins(Berlin: Akademie der Ktinste, 1992). Fest,"Plddoyer,"ll5; Boddien,quotedin A3000,no.3 (1993):11.
23. Michael S. Cullen and Uwe Kieling, DasBrandenburger -[or:Geschichte
3. Friedrich Fiirlinger, "City Planning in Divided Berlin," in Berlin:
Pivoto-fGermanDestiny,ed. Charles B. Robson (Chapel Hill: University of einesdeutschen Symbols (Berlin: Argon, 1990), 108.
North CarolinaPress,1960),189. 24. Jiirgen Reiche, "Syrnbolgehaltund Bedeutungs\\'andeleines poli-
4. See, for example, Giinter Stahn, Dos Nikolaiviertel(Berlin: Verlag Iiir tischen Monuments," in DasBrandenburger Tor:Einetrlonographie,
ed. Will-
Bau rve se n,
I 991) , 52. muth Arenhijvel and Rolf Bothe (Berlin: Arenhcivel,l99l), 304.
5. Quoted in Bodo Rollka and Klaus-Dieter Wiile, Das BerJiner 25. Peter Mobius ar-rdHelmut Trotnow, "Das Mauer-Kornplott," Dre
(Berlin: l{aude und Spener, 1987), 95.
Sradtschloss Zeir (overseas
ed.),Aug. 16,1991.
5. Reprinted in Gerd-H. Zucliold, "Der Abriss des Berliner Schlosses," 25. FriedrichMorin, BerlrnundPosdamimJahre/1i60(reprint, Braunsch-
Deutschland,,lrcAiv 18 (1985): 192. weig: Archiv-Verlag,1980), 16.