The familiar images of the Berlin Wall – once among the most-photographed structures in the world – were taken from the west. On the 50th anniversary of its construction, an exhibition reveals another, unsettling view – from the east
BERLINERS have always had a curious relationship with the structure that, half a century ago, sealed their city’s notoriety.
During the Berlin Wall’s 28-year existence, it was a matter of honour on both sides to studiously ignore the artificial artery that drained life from the city’s heart. That understandable, very human survival strategy has, in the post-wall years, morphed into a worrying air of exaggerated apathy. Today, new Berliners learn soon after arrival that, like a disgraced relative, the vanished wall is to be acknowledged only after it is explicitly mentioned by visitors.
Remembering the Berlin Wall in Berlin – as next weekend’s 50th anniversary ceremony will prove once again – is a stilted, contradictory and uncomfortable business. First ignored, then removed almost without trace, the wall now enjoys a profitable afterlife as a product of Berlin’s thriving tourist industry. This apathy-avarice complex has grave consequences for the future, rapidly dulling memories to the sheer inhumanity of the wall.
Erected overnight on August 13th 1961 to halt the flow of East Germans to the west, its rise and fall claimed over 200 lives, destroyed countless others and changed the course of world history.Amid an avalanche of 50th-anniversary merchandise and memorials, of mostly reheated and rehashed material, the exhibition Aus anderer Sicht(The Other View) holds an unsettling mirror up to our lopsided memories of the vanished Berlin Wall.
Few remember that, while the wall’s western side was among the most- photographed concrete structures in the world, photographing from east to west was strictly forbidden. This exhibition presents, for the first time, over 1,000 images taken by East German border guards, looking west. These grey, workmanlike images have been stitched into hundreds of panoramas that transcend their original, documentary purpose to explode many Berlin Wall myths and propaganda that are no longer questioned. Anyone gazing at the shattered, abandoned cityscape seen behind the wall, for instance, would be forgiven for thinking they are looking at dreary East Berlin. But the bedraggled city on display is 1960s West Berlin, far from the glamorous capitalist ideal.
The exhibition belatedly robs the late Erich Honecker of his final propaganda victory. In the world’s collective memory the wall the East German leader planned and built was a fearsome, 3.6m-high concrete panel structure with a rounded top. But that was the fourth and final iteration, constructed in 1975. These photographs show the first wall which, due to a shortage of building materials, was a rudimentary, makeshift affair.
So many Germans died trying to scale this early wall precisely because it looked so easy to do – an oft-forgotten yet vital piece of wall history. Those deaths, and the disastrous headlines that followed, prompted the Politburo to order this photographic inventory to prepare for wall “improvements”.
The “other view”, from east-to-west, brings back to life the hot phase of the Cold War, showing long-forgotten western propaganda signs at the border: “56 Wall Deaths” or “Even those who murder under orders are culpable.”
“These photos for internal use say more about the Berlin Wall than the [known] propaganda images from both sides,” says the exhibition’s co-curator Annett Gröschner. To accompany the images, she filleted border log books, appending remarks from West Berliners that highlight the comedy, tragedy and absurdity of the structure.
“Come over, we’ll have a smoke together, get drunk, and we’ve got plenty of women too,” shouted two West Berliners to border guards. Another passerby shouted: “You damn concentration camp guards!”
As well as images of grubby watchtowers and portraits of border guards, visitors are presented with a set of uncommented “crime scene” shots: photographs of escape-attempt detritus, from ladders to underwear.
The most remarkable – and worrying – aspect of the exhibition is how it almost never came to pass. For nearly two decades the images lay untouched in various government archives until they were discovered by chance by Gröschner and the Berlin photographer Arwed Messmer. This exhibition is a three-year labour of love by the pair, with only belated official backing.
Completing the compelling exhibition experience is the space: the shabby former Italian Embassy to East Germany on Unter den Linden. From the marble foyer to the untouched, wood-panelled embassy suite, a visit is a trip back in time, right down to the Aeroflot sign across the street. Images are mounted on special concrete panels in narrow corridors. Together with the harsh neon strip lighting, visitors leave with a chilling, overdue and necessary reminder of the Berlin Wall’s malevolent purpose.
“Whoever makes the effort to look at all 324 panorama views of the wall has a physical experience similar to what this wall meant to the people of Berlin,” says Messmer “You do not need any great expressions of indignation – the material just explains itself.”
Aus Anderer Sicht(The Other View) runs until October 3 at Unter den Linden 40, Berlin. aus-anderer-sicht.de
