ABSTRACT
The introduction begins with a historical vignette regarding the Berlin Wall, illustrating how this political monument became the potent icon of the Cold War division of the world, not just of Germany but of entire Europe, and indeed globally. Subsequently, two questions are posed and provisionally answered: why we should care about this history now and what we can learn from it beyond the main political facts. The Berlin Wall and the story of its epochal fall in 1989 points beyond itself in consequential ways, teaching important lessons about cultural logic of political revolutions, enduring significance of urban space and the impactful “social life” of material objects.
