Artists Try to Salvage Remains of Berlin Wall
B E R L I N, July 11, 2000 -- 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.
Some 45,000 slabs of concrete were chipped away by souvenir hunters, ground up to fill in roads or sent abroad as gifts.
Alavi believes the East Side Gallery must be saved to remind the world of the dangers of totalitarianism. “Coming from Iran, I knew all about the walls in people’s minds, but when I came to Berlin I saw the real wall,” he said.
Most tourists agree that part of the wall should remain. “It is symbolic that when the wall fell the artists could paint in the east. It is necessary for a new generation to see this history of the division of the city,” said French tourist Yann Ulliac as he snapped pictures of the gallery.
In order to save the wall, the original paintings have been destroyed. Workers dressed in protective clothing first sand blasted the surface and then treated it with chemicals to try to stop the internal metal structure rusting from within.
It was returned to its original gray, recalling the days when only the most trusted Communist party members were allowed to live near the wall, before the artists recreated their work.
Guards Patrol Wall Again
Now guards are patrolling the wall again, but this time to protect the freshly painted artwork from vandals until it can be covered with graffiti-proof varnish. There are plans to install closed-circuit cameras to monitor the renovated stretch.
Artists sign off with e-mail addresses of their galleries and are under strict instructions to replicate their old work.
German artist Birgit Kinder reproduced her powder-blue Trabbi smashing through the wall, complete with a NOV 9—89 number plate, while a takeoff of Picasso’s Guernica masterpiece has been restored to its original bright red, yellow and black.
“The idea is good but it would have been better if we could have done something different,” said Hungarian artist Attila Danka as he tried to copy a photograph of a painting made up of spontaneous splashes of red, black and white.
The restoration project, which can be viewed at http://eastsidegallery.com, has been unable to track down some of the original artists and their work is being reproduced by other East Side gallery painters.
Others have declined to take part and at least one artist has written a formal letter of complaint, saying his work has been destroyed against his will.
Alavi, who has fought for years to raise money to protect the wall and develop a tourist center at the site, said he was left with no choice. “We want to retain the authenticity. We don’t want to make it like Disneyland,” he said.
“But if we don’t renovate it they would have torn it down as scrap. The politicians haven’t done anything. This is a very desirable area and they wanted to make money from development. We say they could make money from tourists.”
Some tourists believe the wall’s anarchic character has been lost in the process of restoration.
“It’s part of history. They should leave it the way it is and let it deteriorate with time,” said Sami Kaipa, a 21-year-old student visiting from California. “I wouldn’t want the Egyptian pyramids to be renovated.”