ABSTRACT

Early in the year 2000, I asked friends and colleagues in Berlin where they felt the most lively memory of the Berlin Wall. The answers differed surprisingly: for some, it was places where the authentic material substance had survived best, that is, the actual concrete border-wall topped with the asbestos tube, the death-strip and hinterland-wall, lanterns and watchtowers. These were the places our Historic Buildings Preservation Office had listed in 1990/91 and more or less preserved since then. I call this the ‘archaeological approach’. Others said, on the contrary, that they felt the Wall’s presence most strongly where no material remains are visible, for instance at the Brandenburg Gate where it interrupted the main axis of the whole of Berlin – a scandal, blocking the central entrance to the old city. This could be named the ‘image of remembrance’ approach. Others replied that the most interesting places were those where the former borderline is still present as a gap in the urban landscape, but everything else is changed, overgrown or developed, artistic interventions of the less heavy and dramatic kind showing that the history is past and that Berliners of the new post-Cold War city are allowed to laugh about the Wall. The former Checkpoint Charlie on the Friedrichstrasse (Fig. 21.1) or the rebuilt Oberbaumbrücke crossing the Spree between Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain can be named as examples. I felt myself inclined to the last way of thinking. I call it the ‘let the present/future take over’ approach.