: Anna Kaminsky
: Where in the World is the Berlin Wall? 170 Sites around the World
: Berlin Story Verlag
: 9783957231864
: 1
: CHF 11.70
:
: Zeitgeschichte (1945 bis 1989)
: English
: 352
: Wasserzeichen
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
A symbol of freedom, of the human strength of will and a relic of the Cold War. Countless pieces of the Berlin Wall were scattered around the globe after the Wall fell in 1989. These pieces of Wall embody the Berliners fight for freedom. More than 240 of these sections - each weighing tonnes - can be found in over 140 countries and on every continent. They have been located for this book. Amongst those who now own sections of the Wall are Japanese businessmen, famous art collectors and all US Presidents from the last century. There are some exciting and strange, but also tragic stories behind the pieces of the Wall. The stories in this book highlight the many ways in which the Wall has been used to commemorate the Berlin Wall and the Cold War.

Herausgeberin Dr. Anna Kaminsky - Studium an der Sektion Theoretische und angewandte Sprachwissenschaft (Schwerpunkt romanische Sprachen) an der Karl-Marx-Universität in Leipzig, 1992 Promotion Dr. phil. 1993 bis 1998 Mitarbeit in verschiedenen Forschungs- und Ausstellungsprojekten u.a. am Berliner Institut für vergleichende Sozialforschung, an der Universität Münster, der Gedenkstätte Sachsenhausen und am Deutschen Historischen Museum, seit 1998 wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin, seit 2001 Geschäftsführerin der Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur.

“THERE ARE PLENTY OF GOOD REASONS NOT TO LOSE SIGHT OF THE 13TH AUGUST”1


REMEMBERING THE WALL SINCE 1990


Anna Kaminsky

“Some of you will have asked yourselves: Why has the Enquête Commission of the German Bundestag been campaigning so hard to remember the building of the Berlin Wall 35 years ago today? Is it not enough that the first Enquête Commission tried to analyse the event in several expert groups and hearings? Is the 17th June not an appropriate day to remember everything carried out by the SED dictatorship until its downfall in autumn 1989? I think there are plenty of good reasons not to lose sight of the 13th August.”2

FROM 9TH-13TH AUGUST


During his welcome speech at a commemoration service in the Bundestag in 1996, Rainer Eppelmann used these words to justify the committee’s decision to use the 35th anniversary of the building of the Wall as an opportunity to both remember and to dedicate a number of events to it. Now another 25 years later, the memory of the building of the Wall and life in the divided city and a divided world has reclaimed its place not just in the city’s memory. Moreover, in the 50th year after the Wall was built, remembering the period around its construction received greater attention in research and from the media than the uprisings of 17th June 1953.

The actual division of the city had been relegated to second place on the city’s self-image agenda years before, but the situation seemed to have changed by the 50th anniversary of the building of the Wall. One sign was that the lead-up to the anniversary had pushed other events into the background of public discourse. It was also now apparent that the “demolition of the Wall”, particularly in the first years after the fall of the Wall, led to new demands for its reconstruction of the Wall in order to make it possible to “experience history”, as called for by the former governing mayor of Berlin, Eberhard Diepgen.3

Despite various ideas of how to keep the memory of the Wall and the division alive, it seems as though the city has found its way back to its traumatic history after 20 years. Forgotten are the first 15 years after the Fall of the Wall which were characterised by the attempts to completely eradicate all traces of the construction and the division of the city which lasted 28 years. Before this, commemorating the Wall had only been a topic for victim’s associations, private societies and a few concerned citizens. Whilst public events mainly celebrated the Fall of the Wall, public attention only turned to the 13th of August by way of detour on the 9th of November. The joy and euphoria over the fall of the Wall, coupled with the nostalgia that emerged in the 1990s, seemed to obscure the fact that what was brought down in November 1989 was a dictatorship that denied its citizens basic human rights and had those who tried to flee the sealed-off country shot or given long prison sentences.