Our Europe. Ethnography – Ethnology – Anthropology of Culture
Vol. 2/2013
p. 145–160
Miglena Ivanova
Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Graffiti and the Symbolic Dismantling
of the Berlin Wall
Abstract: Many inscriptions, drawings and paintings on the Berlin Wall appeared on its western side in the
period between the 1960s and the 1980s. Later, when the Wall ceased to exist, a lot of new and sometimes quite different graffiti were written on some of its replicas. All these images are nowadays often
re-used to signify both the former presence of the Wall and its Fall. Yet, they appear to be poorly – studied.
The present article aims at analyzing some of the specifics of these images and at revealing their strong
power. The author also interprets them as an important precedent opening unexpected possibilities for
legitimating graffiti production as a type of imagery capable of signifying human presence and attitude and,
at the same time, of representing a city, an idea or a key historic event.
Keywords: graffiti, Berlin wall, symbolic dismantling
Contemporary urban graffiti tend to generate either love or contempt. The same
holds true for images that copy their style specifics or simply resemble them. Nevertheless,
architects and sculptors increasingly use such images as a stylistic device in shared public
spaces because these images have a specific connotation, making them capable of calling
forth important messages such as “voices” of individuals, local color or even local history
(Chmielewska 2008). At the same time all the new buildings, monuments and memorials
which make use of artistic devices based on graffiti writing, regularly trigger long-lasting
public debates.
A clear example in this respect was the famous Monument against Fascism and War in
Hamburg – one of the first monuments (or rather counter-monuments) of this type, opened in
1986 and lasting until 1993. The basic idea for this “disappearing monument” was to erect a
12-meter high column and to invite passers-by to write down their personal or political inscriptions on it. The monument was equipped with a special mechanism allowing for downward movement of the column. The more graffiti were written, the more often the mechanism
was put into motion. After eight years the column finally disappeared from public sight. Created as a political and artistic challenge to national memory, the Hamburg counter-monument
provoked long-lasting international discussions on memory and commemoration (Siegel
2005). At the same time, it caused discontent on the local level. Even the youngest residents of
Hamburg considered the “graffiti method” intolerable. Some of the more radical negative attitudes included statements that the artistic decision was inappropriate because it encouraged
graffiti writing not only on the monument surface, but also in the vicinities (Young 1992:
271–283). Nevertheless, all the ardor of the debates surrounding the Hamburg counter-monument could hardly be compared to the debates about the graffiti writings on the Reichstag.
The Reichstag graffiti were discovered on the walls of the building during its reconstruction. Written by Soviet soldiers, they are in Cyrillic and contain their names and messages.
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Thus, for the greater part of the contemporary German residents the Reichstag graffiti were
just scribbles, restoring in a painful way the old traumas of the Second World War. At the
same time, the main architect of the reconstruction decided to preserve them as part of the
general concept of turning the building into a museum of its own history (Baker 2002: 22–
37). The debates that immediately followed the realization of the idea, spreading even outside Germany, were predominantly centered on the questions of appropriateness or inappropriateness: problematic was actually the unprecedented attention and care paid to the
restoration and conservation of the unwanted graffiti remains (Chmielewska 2008: 8-10).
Another core question was whose history was worth preserving on the walls of the Reichstag, inasmuch as it was not an ordinary building but one symbolizing German statehood
(Baker 2002: 20–38).
Although triggered by a particular architectural decision, the debates revealed some
widespread attitudes, rejecting graffiti in principle. Thus, for example, the German politician Wolfgang Zeitelmann declared: “I think it is an illness of our age that we keep scribbles
as if they were holy. I don’t care what Russian veterans think about it. This is a German parliament and I don’t see why it has to be covered in smears” (cited after Baker 2002: 20).
By contrast, the graffiti of the Berlin Wall had always been valued in a completely different way, gaining enormous popularity because of their efficiency as transgressive symbols.1
Later, they were re-conceptualized as predictors of the Fall of the Wall. Today, the non-existent giant fortification continues to live in the popular memory as a specific lieu de memoir,
usually associated with death, tragedies, ruins and painful loss. At the same time, it is also
very well remembered as a place for graffiti (Feversham & Schmidt 1999: 10). In addition, in
the last decades many new graffiti have been created as a result of the many attempts made
to join symbolically in the dismantling of the Wall.
The Berlin Wall graffiti have been carefully documented. Yet, it has proved to be extremely difficult to outline their specific nature. Many early analytical endeavors ended up
pointing out merely metaphors. They were quite emotional and helpful in raising general
interest in the graffiti on the Wall and in legitimizing their collection and exhibiting, but they
hardly helped to explain systematically the phenomenon of the writing on the Wall. Thus,
for example, Kuzdas (1999: 16) saw the graffiti as a form of tattoos tagged directly on the
concrete, Stein (1989: 85–108) likened their effects to the functions of political jokes about the
Wall in the former DDR, while Feversham and Schmidt (1999: 10) compared them to a dynamically changing gallery space.
Berlin Wall graffiti have also often been mentioned in the analytical works dedicated to
the construction, overcoming, preservation or memorialization of the Wall (Baker 1993: 720–
723; Ladd 1997: 7–12, 25–30; Greverus 2000: 16–19; Light 2000: 164–165; Dolf-Bonekämper
2002: 240; Till 2005: 116; Van der Hoorn 2003: 191–198, Neef 2007: 426–430; Manghani 2008:
20, 40–46, 124–130; Kimvall 2010; Drechsel 2011: 9–13). Some of them contain important
statements. Baker (1993: 731) argues how the impressive material and visual nature of the
Wall graffiti makes them stronger memory loci than memories of the victims who died when
trying to cross. Ladd (1997: 8) makes an important observation that immediately after the
collapse of the Wall its pieces turned into holy relicts precisely because the Wall was quickly
disappearing. Dolf-Bonekämper (2002: 20) mentions that the Wall graffiti were the sign and
the analogue of the joy experienced in its overcoming. Very important are also recent investigations in the field of visual culture with its contributions to the analysis of the graffiti.
1
Transgressive symbols are symbols located on a wrong place – i.e. they are illegitimate symbols which
consciously or unconsciously profane the existing, legitimate symbols at a certain place; graffiti images are the
classic example of transgressive symbols (cf. Scollon R. & Scollon S. 2003: 143, 217).
Graffiti and the Symbolic Dismantling of the Berlin Wall
147
Neef (2007: 429–430) for example interprets the fact that the Berlin Wall graffiti are collected,
sold and exhibited as art as testimony to their present-day artistic status; Manghani (2008:
124–130) concludes that the sight of the collapsing Wall is the strongest image of our times
and one which implies graffiti images on itself; Kimvall (2010) interprets the graffiti as an
important visual contribution to the identity of some of the contemporary public spaces; finally, Drechsel (2011: 4) states that while the Fall of the Wall, with all the graffiti on it, was
turned into a true transmedia event and broadcasted to an extremely wide audience.
For all these attempts, it remains unclear to this day how the Berlin Wall functioned as a
graffiti wall and what factors contributed to the specific power of its graffiti. All that can
actually hamper attempts at investigating the symbolic mechanisms that have made the
graffiti images the main carrier of the memory of the missing Wall. The aim of this article is
to reveal and analyze some of these specifics as well as to explain the strong and lasting
power of the Wall images. The author interprets them as an important precedent opening
unexpected vistas for legitimating graffiti production as a type of imagery capable of expressing human presence and attitude and, at the same time, of representing a city, an idea,
or a key historic event.
The Berlin Wall as a Graffiti Wall
Being extremely famous as a graffiti wall, the Berlin Wall was quite different from
other urban graffiti walls, as well as from the walls of metro stations, which were also typical
places for graffiti writing at the time (Ausfeldr 1990: 12). First of all, the main difference was
in the origin and nature of the Berlin Wall as a borderline wall. Added to that was the fact
that it was the main symbol the Cold War. Even when already dismantled, it continued to be
a place of memory whose importance for the history of Berlin, Germany and the world
could hardly be overestimated (Ladd 1997: 12).
The Wall was actually erected in 1961 by the German Democratic Republic (further
GDR), driven through the heart of Berlin in order to fill a gap in the Iron Curtain which was
still allowing escapes to the West. Immediately after the collapse of Germany in the Second
World War the country had been divided into four occupational zones: the Soviet, the American, the French and the British ones. At the same time, Berlin, which fell entirely within the
Soviet zone, was also divided, so that its western part was under the control of the Western
Allies, while its eastern part was controlled by the Red Army. In 1949, when the GDR was
finally created in East Germany and the German Federal Republic (further GFR) was created
in the western parts of the country, West Berlin remained under the jurisdiction of GFR. Yet,
it was like an island, fully surrounded by the territory of the GDR.
From the very beginning, the German-German frontier was not only a state frontier, but
also a border between two different political systems. The citizens of GDR were still able to
cross the border and to migrate to GFR in search of a better life, but soon the GDR authorities incriminated trespassing and ordered the border troops to shoot point-blank. Even
more, they introduced special border fortifications (Ritter & Hajdu 1989). At that point, the
refugees flooded into Berlin, where the border line was still easy to cross. This last lapse in
the Iron curtain was finally closed with the erection of the Berlin Wall.
It is often believed that the Berlin Wall was a monolithic, static construction, while actually it showed considerable variation: somewhere it was a mental line crossing water expenses; somewhere else it was a system of fences; and of course at some places it was a wall
on the territory of GDR. Actually the erection of the stone wall started first in the eastern
direction – i.e. at these places where the demarcation line went through the historical center
of Berlin or through the residential districts. Even this monolithic fortification underwent
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several fundamental reconstructions and many reinforcements. At the very beginning the
place of the wall was marked with barbed wire, but soon after that the first wall was erected
– constructed of cement blocks, each of which was about two meters high. In 1962 these
fortifications were additionally strengthened. Three years later a new, higher and stronger
wall, made of concrete pillars and blocks, was erected on the same place and finally, between
1975 and 1980, the third generation of the Wall was erected. It was built of 3.6 m high, 1.2 m
wide and 0.15 m thick blocks, made of reinforced concrete (Baker 1993: 713–715). This wall
could be reached from the territory of West Berlin, but on its eastern side there were additional fortifications and restricted areas, often followed by a second wall (Ladd 1997: 11).
The so-called dead zone between the inner and the outer wall was formed by way of demolishing buildings, parks and streets. They gave way to a special military road, watch towers,
barrier fortifications and wide strips of raked sand where every single footprint could be
easily seen. The inner zone was strictly forbidden for everyone else except for the East German border troops.
For twenty-five years on end the citizens of GDR were stopped at the second wall. On
9 November, 1989, the check points were opened under social pressure and crowds of easterners entered the GFR territory. Thus, the Berlin Wall lost its practical function, but continued to exist as a physical entity. Its future was ardently debated and in the period between
1990 and 1991 the Wall was in the end dismantled. Today, memorial plaques or special signs
on the pavement mark the place of the former Wall and only small parts of the Berlin Wall
sections are re-used as parts of museum exhibitions or memorial complexes (Light 2000:
163–165; Van der Hoorn 2003: 167).
The Wall was a border fortification, but at the same time it was, and continues to be, an
ambiguous symbol. While the GDR authorities officially referred to it as the “Anti-Fascist
Protection Rampart” and expected the Wall to stop western influences in the country, for
people living in West Berlin it was a symbol of their defeat in the Second World War and of
the resultant division of Germany (Ladd 1997: 32–33). After its dismantling, already as a
place of memory, it became the most prominent symbol of the crisis of German identity.2
Parallel to that, the Wall had been a very important symbol of the Iron curtain, marking the
division of Berlin and Germany but also that between the East and the West. Later, at the
end of the Cold War period, the dismantled Wall itself became a symbol of the processes of
integration increasing within the globalizing world. In addition, today it is also considered
an inspiring emblem of the fight against all the walls that continue to divide people and
sometimes nations in certain places of the world.
When the Berlin Wall was still a functioning border fortification, it was a huge, insurmountable barrier on its eastern side (Ausfeldr 1990: 71). By contrast, the western side was
accessible from West Berlin, but – at the same time – it was a place behind which extended
a totally different world, seeming almost beyond the grasp of the mind. Thus, for the westerners the Wall was a powerful symbol of the “end of the world” and yet also something that
you could touch with your hands (Dolf-Bonekämper 2002: 238).
According to Stein (1989: 100), until the 1980s graffiti writers undertook serious risks
when creating whatever images or inscriptions on the Wall. There were several city legends
telling about disappearing graffiti writers or those who were arrested by the GDR border
troops. Actually, the GDR authorities, who were otherwise extremely efficient in effacing all
private messages, were almost indifferent to the graffiti writing on the western side of the
Wall. Thus, despite the fact that tagging on the Wall was soon incriminated and declared
2
In the period immediately after the unification of Germany a new expression was introduced. It said “the
wall in our hearts”, marking the invisible but long lasting differences between the citizens of the two former
German states (Ladd 1997: 33).
Graffiti and the Symbolic Dismantling of the Berlin Wall
149
defacement of GDR property, western graffiti writers were rarely arrested or punished. They
were nevertheless afraid and used to helping each other in avoiding the GDR border guards.
At the same time, the threat of being caught gave an adrenaline rush which made the act of
writing on the Wall special and unforgettable.
Several days before the opening of the Wall and immediately after that, the political and
governmental crisis in GDR made it much easier to create new layers of graffiti. The border
troops in particular were not so watchful. Even more – in this period some graffiti writers
from West Berlin would cross the border passing by near the guards (True.2.the.Game 2003).
Soon the East-Berliners erroneously started to rumor that the writers were entering the East
through the tunnels of the metro, risking their lives. These urban legends unquestionably
contributed to the growing fame of the West Berlin graffiti writers all over the world.
Today, in Germany, and in Berlin in particular, graffiti writing is illegal (Chmielewska
2008: 5; see also Nemskata politsia 2005). Nevertheless, the municipal authorities in Berlin
have never cherished the idea of totally eradicating graffiti writing, especially that connected with the Wall (Arms 2011). They have instead tried several times to control the graffiti
production by designating special places for writing or by organizing graffiti writing events.
As a result, some of the graffiti images, inspired by the memory of the dismantled Wall, are
legal. Yet, there is a much bigger part which is definitely illegal. Thus, the difference between the legal and illegal graffiti is totally blurred.
Some of the graffiti images are more than 30 years old. Over those thirty years, the Wall
underwent several consequent changes which had altered it and the conditions of writing
on it. Nevertheless, there is obvious continuity between the graffiti produced before and
after the radical social changes that led to the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. This continuity
can be clearly traced on several levels, such as those of general evaluation, imagery and
symbolism.
Art Challenged Concrete and Art Won
The ex-mayor of Berlin, Walter Momper, paid special attention to the graffiti writing on the Wall and to their mighty symbolic power. Evoking nostalgic feelings about the
Wall art of the 1980s, he said: “Art challenged concrete and art won” (quoted after Manghani
2008: 128).
Student protest movements of the late 1960s were the first to discover the Wall as a medium of social protest. At that time its surface was still uneven, making writing extremely
difficult so the first who tried it could scratch nothing else but a few simple inscriptions or
drawings (Kuzdas 1999: 10; Baker 1993: 721). The last and most solid modification of the
Wall, built by the GDR authorities in mid 1970s, was really smooth and easy to write on.
It helped to turn the western side of the Wall into a “canvas”, serving at the same time as a
window of the western freedom and as an embarrassing testimony to western decadence
(Ladd 1997: 27).3 This was especially true for the graffiti of Kreutzberg – a well-known region situated in close proximity to the Wall. Being immediately next to the Wall, it experienced a long period of decline during the Cold War. Thus it was gradually abandoned by its
initial residents and inhabited by homeless musicians, punks and anarchists instead. They
used to do picturesque graffiti directly on the Wall and to leave there personal messages,
3
At the very beginning, the official authorities of West Berlin tried to take some measures against graffiti
writing. They were afraid that it in the end might result in unwanted complications in the German-German relationships. However, by the middle of the 1980s it became perfectly clear that the measures against graffiti writing were doomed to complete failure so they were ceased shortly afterwards (Baker 1993: 723).
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political slogans and drawings. Several times these graffiti were completely destroyed, but
in each case new inscriptions and images appeared instantly in place of the old ones (Ladd
1997: 14, 25; Girot 2004: 35). Later the region of Kreutzberg was the place where some of the
most prominent West Berlin alternative movement artists used to paint. Their works made
it really famous as a place for Wall art. In addition, another very successful piece, dating
from 1988 – the ‘hole’ with the see-through effect of restoring “the torn view on a church of
which the tower [had] been disconnected from the nave” (Neef 2007: 427; see also Kuzdas
1999: 64–65) – further spread the fame of the Wall art from the region of Kreutzberg.4
While the bulk of the graffiti on the Wall were done without big artistic pretensions,
there were also more complex pieces. In order to do them the authors needed to concentrate
on their works for a comparatively long, uninterrupted period of time. Kimvall (2010) notes
that there were a few groups which worked on the western side with similar deliberate artistic ambitions – the hip-hop graffiti writers, representatives of this movement, as well as
some of the artists invited by the private Checkpoint Charlie Museum.
The European vogue for the big, colorful and impressive hip-hop graffiti names in the
1980s was evoked by the American hip-hop star-performances, engaging well-known American hip-hop musicians, dancers and graffiti writers. Soon the European teenagers started to
write passionately their own tags. In less than a decade the new type of graffiti, more often
than not based on the English language, was already popular in Western Europe. The Wall
attracted some of the West Berlin hip-hop writers. They preferred its suburb regions such as
Märkisches Viertel, Frohnau and Schönholz in the North and Marienfelde in the South. The
Wall was also tagged by some visiting writers, who left their signatures there (Stahl 2009;
Kimvall 2010; see also Burkhardt 1997–2006). All this contributed substantially to the increasing fame of the city as the new Mecca of graffiti writing.
At the same time, the Wall had been turned into an “exhibition” space for modern art,
attracting also prominent artists working at the edge of graffiti writing and professional art
– Keith Haring, but also the already mentioned West Berlin alternative group, including
Thierry Noir, Christophe Boucher, Nora Aurienne and Kiddy Citney. On the western side of
the Wall they created pieces containing deformed human figures and faces, reminiscent of
naïve cave art, or popular symbols such as, for example, the Statue of Liberty. Their works
effectively turned the concrete into a “gallery space” (Neef 2007: 429; Wolfrum: 2009: 112;
Stahl 2009; Kimvall 2010).
Probably the most important piece of this kind was the big painting by Keith Haring,
whose initial street style had been steadily giving way to the career of a modern star. Haring’s characteristic style, which was still quite close to graffiti writing, made him tour round
Europe and all over the world to demonstrate art. When the private Berlin Wall Museum
invited him to paint on the Wall in 1986, Haring was at the peak of his career. An almost 100
meter length of the Wall located close to the historical center of the divided city was designated for his work and an American military helicopter was sent to patrol above him. The
artistic event was a major success – even the GDR troops crowded on the Wall to see and to
photograph him (Keith Haring 1986; Berlin Wall Mural 2009; Stahl 2009). The result – a huge
chain of human figures holding hands, painted in the German national colors – was a work
which can hardly be placed among his masterpieces; nevertheless, it still is a remarkable
work as far as it is one of the earliest examples of street art.
Haring had been officially invited to Berlin by the Checkpoint Charlie museum. In addition, throughout the 1970s and the 1980s, several competitions for art projects of painting
4
Luckily, this interesting work was not smashed into pieces. Today it decorates the Vatican gardens (see Mur
1995).
Graffiti and the Symbolic Dismantling of the Berlin Wall
151
Photo 1. Artist in action (Kiddy Citny’s graffiti hearts on the right). Photographer: Cactusbones, Berlin, 1985
the Wall were organized (Wolfrum 2009: 113). Many of the art works proposed in these competitions popularized the symbolic images already explored by graffiti written on the wall
– the symbols of the overcoming of the wall such as, for example, stairs, holes going through,
zippers and even human figures jumping over (Greverus 2000: 17; Manghani 2008: 128).
Most of them were reminiscent of the various attempts by GDR citizens to overpass the Wall
by leaping, digging holes underneath or even flying over it. Thus, one of the projects, for
example, represented the Wall as the sector of a giant athletics stadium for a high jump contest – mixing the idea of the overcoming of the Wall with the famous high jump champions
of East Germany (Baker 2005: 34).
Although being works of professional artists, these images were by no means intended
to decorate the Wall. On the contrary, quite like the original graffiti, they were done to “bite”
its concrete (Noir n.d.).5 At the same time, the images were also the main cathalyst of the
increasing fame of the Wall as a tourist destination.
In addition to the above, there were numerous graffiti added by ordinary visitors. They
were personal slogans, names or messages written in haste and without pretension, but
nevertheless important for their authors and for the general public as signs of personal presence at the Wall. In some of the regions, these images occupied every single inch and piled
up in layers, sometimes even covering the works of the renowned masters (cf. Stahl 2009).
Thus, those segments of the Wall which bore traces left by visitors from all over the world,
also turned into spectacular sights, and special tourist platforms were built to offer views of
both the graffiti and the space beyond the Wall. Often photographed for personal purposes,
but also for reproduction in the media, as well as in tourist brochures, their inscriptions,
5
In this respect, it is not always possible or necessary to make a sharp distinction between graffiti and Wall
art in that their functions were more or less the same.
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Photo 2. West meets East (A tourist platform next to the Berlin Wall, which allowed visitors to see both some
graffiti and part of the eastern side). Photographer: Gregorywass, Berlin – Moabit quarter, 1988
scribbles and drawings became well-known as a tourist attraction.6 The reason for that was,
actually, the fact that the transgressive power of the graffiti on the Wall was believed to be
able to foresee the end of the Cold War division between East and West. In fact, this specific
understanding of the nature and impact of the graffiti of the Berlin Wall survived even after
the demolition of the border wall. It is present today in the attitudes of several different
generations towards these graffiti, bridging all the various feelings and experiences connected with the Wall.
When the checkpoints at the Wall were finally opened in 1989, millions of TV viewers
in Western Europe and in the USA watched these unprecedented events live. Literarily on
the next day huge crowds of tourists set off for Berlin with the hope of joining their efforts
in the symbolic dismantling of the Wall. Their token contributions included, for example,
dancing, celebrating, or climbing the Wall on ladders or by stepping on the arms of their
fellows. A very popular symbolic expression was the act of digging a small hole in the segments – a tiny personal contribution to the Fall of the Wall and an expression of strong
discontent with its prolonging physical existence. Some of these were unquestionably symbolic actions, which had earlier been known from the Wall art and graffiti. Precisely at this
particular point, they were once again re-conceptualized as symbols and forerunners of the
Fall.
6
Baker (2005: 34) notes that in 1986 a group of East German dissidents painted a thick white line between
Mariannen Platz and Potsdamer Platz of the by-then colorful Wall in order to show their indignation at the fact
that it had been turned into a tourist attraction. Thus, Baker concludes that even before the Wall fell, there was a
difference in the perception between the Easterners, for whom it was a barrier, and the Westerners, for whom it
was a canvas, a wonder of the world. At the same time, cases like the joining of the guards into the excited atmosphere of Haring’s visit clearly point out that it might be useful to evaluate more carefully some of the specific
Eastern attitudes to Wall art. However, these matters fall far beyond the scope of my article.
Graffiti and the Symbolic Dismantling of the Berlin Wall
153
“I Went to Berlin to Write on the Wall, but the Wall Was Already
Demolished”7
The Belgrade graffito, which I have cited above, was invented after the Wall had
ceased to exist. Full of self-irony and nostalgic feeling, it testifies to an interesting paradox:
even after its complete demolition, the Wall continues to be a popular place for graffiti. This
paradox is possible due to the old fame of the Wall, but also due to the scope and scale of the
radical political changes that brought about its dismantling, as well as to the new and extremely effective TV and photographic images made during the Fall, which showed extensively the places of the concrete barriers densely covered with graffiti.
Immediately after the opening of the checkpoints on 9 November, 1989, the Wall became
valuable because it was on its way to disappear (Ladd 1997: 8). At that time its pieces were
quickly acquired as relicts and souvenirs, symbolizing the end of the Cold War. For a short
period they were readily available – something which, as Baker (1993: 719) rightly notes, is
rare in the contemporary world, where history is in the hands of the professional historians
and its artefacts are safely locked in museums. At the same time, the most precious were
precisely these pieces of the Wall which were covered with graffiti (Baker 1993: 720–721).
Students, pensioners and emigrants started to sell them on the streets of Berlin (Baker 1993:
720–721; Neef 2007: 430). When the colorful Wall units disappeared, retailers sprayed gray
segments and broke them into pieces for sale (Baker 1993: 721).
Those Wall segments which had not been tagged were never valued as relicts and many
of them were recycled (Baker 1993: 724). By contrast, the pieces covered with graffiti had a
totally different fate. Already de-territorialized and de-fragmented, they reached various
parts of the world: from faraway private homes to the front yards of the European parliament buildings, from the Vatican to the CIA Headquarters, from the Museum of Modern Art
in New York to a well-known Las Vegas casino (Baker 1993: 731; Van der Hoorn 2003: 197198; for a comprehensive list of the various places where these pieces have been preserved,
see Burkhardt 1997–2006; see also Photo 3). At the same time, the possession and exhibition
of large fragments acquired a strong political potential. It enabled public demonstration of
a symbolic joining in the processes of dismantling the Wall and in the resultant changes in
the political order of the world (Van der Horn 2003: 197).
When in 1991 the border wall was finally demolished, only small fragments of it were
preserved on their places. At present, these are integrated into different memorials and museums, but as a rule there are no graffiti on them. All these fragments are severely damaged
as a result of attempts made to obtain souvenirs of the wall (Dolf-Bonekämper 2002: 240) All
the same, those fragments have been turned into exponents and one may not write on them.
Yet, a big part of the inner wall, which was actually graffiti free until early 1990s, continues
to stay on its place, and has recently been used for writing instead.
The most prominent place where this second wall was densely covered with graffiti was
the so-called East Side Gallery It was started in the early 1990s, when a group of international artists worked jointly on a long segment of the inner wall situated on the bank of the
river Spree (Baker 2005: 35). Some of the resultant pieces re-use images from the vanished
western side (Manghani 2008: 128). The predominant majority of these works could be easily classified as modern examples of Wall art (Ladd 1997: 35–36). One could list here the famous piece by the Moscow artist, Dmiti Vrubel, which depicts the welcome kiss of the Soviet and German party leaders Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker, the work by
Iranian-born Kani Alavi showing thousands of people entering through the checkpoints,
7
Quoted after Bogavac (2001).
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Photo 3. Berlin Wall memorial in Sofia. Photographer: Miglena Ivanova, Sofia, 2008
Photo 4. Chipping away at the remains of the Berlin Wall. Photographer: NatalieMaynor, Berlin, August 1990
Graffiti and the Symbolic Dismantling of the Berlin Wall
155
Photo 5. East Side Gallery (detail). Photographer: Miglena Ivanova, Berlin, 2004
Birgit Kinder’s famous Trabant driving through the Wall, etc.8 At the beginning, the Gallery
was intended to tour round the world as a travelling exhibition, but since interest in it never
ceased, it stayed in Berlin. It continues to be a very important site as far as the tourists “
get in contact” with the Wall and with its graffiti there, even if what they see is actually
inner wall imagery of the vanished graffiti on the western side of the border wall. This has
naturally been leading to confusions, which got especially strong when the municipal authorities established the East Side Gallery as a Wall memorial (Ladd 1997: 35–36; Greverus
2000: 16).9
A second important replica of the border wall appeared on the inner wall close to the
stadium of the former Dinamo football team. This new replica is situated in Mauerpark
(i.e. the park by the wall), which was designed by the German architect Gustav Lange as an
open space intended to fill in the void left after the demolition of the Wall. In a comparatively short period of time, the park was turned into a youth zone well-known for its late
night parties, drug consumption and heavy drinking (Girot 2004: 35-36). The images created
there are works of hip-hop writers, often covered with new graffiti. Sometimes one can find
ideas which are already well-known from the East Side Gallery, but there is nevertheless
strong predominance of the big, colorful hip-hop graffiti names. Some of the pieces there are
occasionally done by visiting writers from all over the world. Usually these guests take
snapshots of their Mauerpark graffiti and publish them online, proudly announcing that
they have left some traces on the Wall.
All this clearly shows that the different practices connected with the covering of the Wall
with graffiti and artistic works did not stop after its demolition. Today, almost twenty years
later, Berlin still offers wall places where both residents and guests can write graffiti. Unquestionably, this continues to be possible because of the extremely big size of the Wall. At
the same time, in the recent years there have been several projects aiming at the erection of
different artistic substitutes for the Berlin walls.
Thus, at the beginning of the twenty-first century Christof Blaesius suggested building a
huge plastic copy of the Berlin Wall on its initial place (Aris 2003). The basic idea was to
show that the forthcoming Football Finals in Berlin would unite the world rather than dividing it like the Wall did (Guy 2004: 88-89). However, the idea was considered too expensive.
Later, Korean artist Lee Eunsook installed her Vanished Berlin Wall light installation, sym-
8
Immediately after the opening of the Wall on 9 November 1989, many GDR citizens crossed the border on
their Trabants. Thus later these cheap cars became the emblem of the opening of the Wall.
9
The images in the Gallery were strongly damaged by weather conditions and by tourists, so many of the
pieces were whitewashed and re-painted in 2009.
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Miglena Ivanova
bolizing divided Korea (Patterson 2007; Sunoo 2013). Another idea of a huge copy of the
Wall was realized in 2009 by the Berlin based Kulturprojecte group with the support of the
Municipality of Berlin and Goethe Institute. It was a temporary installation where segments
of the Wall were represented by giant dominoes painted by thousands of children and artists in Germany and abroad. On 7 November 2009, two days before the twentieth anniversary of the Fall, the segments were displayed as an open air gallery. Two days later, on
9 November, they were symbolically toppled down during the official celebrations of the
twentieth anniversary. This spectacular enactment of the effect of the domino symbolized
the enormous impact of the Fall all over the world (see Symbolic Toppling 2009 as well as
20 Jahre 2009 for more details about the project). Owing to live media broadcasts, the image
of the falling dominoes reached extremely wide audiences and turned into a central media
event. The segments in particular brought to new life the memory of the Berlin Wall covered
with graffiti, as they were deliberately accomplished in styles resembling graffiti writing.
Besides, on 9 November 2009, graffiti styles were for the first time incorporated as a key element of official celebrations of the highest rank.
Artistic “Berlin walls” were also erected in different, far-flung places of the world. Such
an artistic wall was, for example, erected in Los Angeles for the twentieth anniversary (Wagley 2009). Also very popular was the Berlin Wall on the social network Twitter. Another
unquestionably unique Wall, built in France on the occasion of the anniversary, was made
from black chocolate and covered with bright colorful chocolate graffiti (Berlinska stena
2009). Two different symbolic Berlin Walls were erected in Bulgaria as well. The first one
was built in August 2009 on the island of St Anastasia (former Bolshevik) – a notorious
prison place for political prisoners. The installation was made of big concrete blocks and
covered with symbolic paintings done directly on the concrete by prominent Bulgarian artists. The images depicted the cruelty of the communist regimes as well as the Berlin wall
(Kehayova 2009; Melnishka 2009). Another Berlin Wall installation was mounted on one of
the central squares of Sofia during the anniversary celebrations. Well-known Bulgarian graffiti writers, former dissidents and some young people were invited to paint it together (Stroyat berlinska stena 2009). Thus, the country which in 1989 was still remaining in the Eastern
Block and, at least for a short period of time, was separated from everything connected to
the Fall, also joined its efforts in the dismantling of the Berlin Wall on the occasion of its
twentieth anniversary.
To sum up, when remnants of the Wall entered museums, galleries and other representative exhibition places, they were carefully guarded and valued in a completely different way. At the same time, the desire to experience again and again the Fall of the Wall
has often found expression in a number of symbolic activities evoking the dismantling act.
Writing Wall graffiti has unquestionably been one of them and the reason for the continuing creation of Wall graffiti or Wall art – both in Berlin and across the world – despite the
physical absence of border fortifications. This has been possible because of the specific
way of thinking about the sight of the falling Wall. Such thinking admits forgetting or
skipping certain details, as well as constructing erroneous but nevertheless useful mental
models, and even cherishing small deceptions. Due to such “adjustments”, one is able to
perceive the graffiti on the inner wall and on other replicas as genuine Wall graffiti. Sometimes, these late graffiti enjoy greater popularity than the earlier originals of the western
side.
Graffiti and the Symbolic Dismantling of the Berlin Wall
157
Conclusion
Berlin is a city where the influence of the unceasing global flow of humanity can
be felt easily, and this is clearly illustrated by the variety of languages used in the graffiti
writing. Thus, German was not the language of the Reichstag graffiti, and also was not the
predominant language of the graffiti on the Berlin wall.10 Interestingly, while the graffiti of
the Red Army soldiers were declared unwanted, somebody else’s inscriptions, the complicated linguistic and stylistic mixture of the graffiti connected to the Berlin Wall have not been
alien to the citizens of Berlin, or to the wide circles all over the world.
Unquestionably, the reason behind these disparate attitudes lies in the fact that Wall
graffiti were powerful transgressive symbols done with the aim to change the meaning of
the Wall, endowing its presence with messages radically different from the ones which
were intended by those who ordered to erect it. Thus, while the GDR authorities saw in the
last modification of the Berlin Wall a perfect barrier against negative western influence, the
numerous Wall art and graffiti pieces on it turned one of its sides into a kind of a screen,
projecting western values, images and ideas. Secondly, it is also important to mention that
the Soviet graffiti on the Reichstag also possess strong transgressive power. And this is the
very reason for them being hotly debated: their appearance or restoration on the building
symbolizing German statehood lies at the very core of the problem. For the Soviet veterans
the inscriptions might be signs of the triumphant march of the Red Army to Berlin, but for
German citizens they are scribbles re-opening the painful memories of their defeat (Baker
2002: 22-23). Thus, it becomes clear that evaluation of transgressive symbols is not simply
connected to irrational love or contempt. Rather, it strongly depends on the point of view
and more often than not generates approval or rejection in respect to the particular positions
of those who are involved in the debate. At the same time, Wall art and graffiti more or less
constitute an exception to this rule. Today, when the GDR regime, which created the Wall,
belongs to the history, all the social and political ideals and values which contributed to the
dismantling of the Wall enjoy popular support. Thus one of the opinion poles is actually
missing.
Last but not least, because of their connections to the popular images of the crumbling
Wall, the art pieces and graffiti continue to be re-used in a number of exemplary cases, in
which they are called forth to symbolize the dismantling of the Wall itself, the changes
made possible after the Fall or the new political aims such as the building of Europe without
walls, etc. As a result, the Wall graffiti have gradually become part of prestigious albums
and ceremonies taking place in re-united Germany and Berlin. Thus they have become
an extremely important precedent, enhancing various types of artistic decisions such as
restorations and monumentalizations, as well as in performances, multimedia products or
other creative initiatives.
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Biographical note: Dr Miglena Ivanova is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
E-mail: [email protected].
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