Artists Try to Salvage Remains of Berlin Wall

B E R L I N, July 11 -- A decade ago Berliners tore down the hated wall that had divided families and friends for decades. Now a group of artists are fighting to keep the last major stretch still standing.

While East Germans flooded west following the opening of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, artists from around the world decorated the east side of the drab concrete barrier, creating the world’s longest open-air gallery.

While the western side of the wall had long been daubed with political graffiti, armed guards, barbed wire, search lights and minefields kept Easterners from getting near their side. At least 160 people died trying to flee over the wall.

The East Side Gallery created after November 1989 featured more than 100 colorful paintings capturing the euphoria of the end of the Cold War by dozens of German and foreign artists.

One of the most striking depicted longtime East German leader Erich Honecker French-kissing former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, while another portrayed a trademark East German Trabant car bursting through the wall.

Although the gallery has been officially protected since 1992, a decade of icy Berlin winters and hot summers has taken its toll. Most of the paintings are covered in a layer of grime and graffiti, while others are literally crumbling away.

Many city officials want the wall, which stands next to a major traffic artery on a choice piece of land near the Spree river, torn down. Residents who had a view of the grim barrier for 28 years are sick of the sight of it.

Paintings Saved Wall

But a group of original East Side Gallery artists have persuaded a paint firm to fund restoration of 300 yards of the longest piece of the wall still standing.

“These colorful pictures saved this bit of wall. It is a very important piece of history,” Iranian artist Kani Alavi said as he added the finishing touches to an impressionistic picture of crowds of people streaming through the wall.

Despite Honecker’s 1989 promise that the “anti-fascist protection barrier” would stand for 100 years, many tourists are disappointed to find that nearly all of the 20 miles of inner-city wall has disappeared.