Missing the wall

Two decades after they triumphantly tore down the infamous wall that divided their city, Berliners are having some regrets.

The Germans did such a thorough job of demolishing the hated barrier that visitors to Berlin have a hard time finding any trace of it. For years residents were eager to move beyond a painful chapter in Berlin’s history and focused on building a new metropolis for a new century.

But as Germany celebrates the 20th anniversary of the wall’s collapse on November 9, many Berliners wish they had left more of the structure intact as a memorial.

“In Berlin, there is history under every stone. The most deadly mistake we could make is to get rid of all of it or cover it up,” said Burkhard Kieker, director of Berlin’s tourism bureau, which has tried for many years to persuade the city to do more to commemorate the wall. “One mistake was to take away too much of the wall. We did the job in a very German way — very organised — and we finished it off, almost completely.”

After years of resistance, city officials are starting to embrace memories of the Cold War instead of repressing them. They are sprucing up two decrepit sections of the wall that escaped demolition, adding a visitors centre and other exhibits. They also plan a new Cold War Museum near Checkpoint Charlie, the border crossing where US and Soviet tanks engaged in a tense standoff in 1961, shortly after the wall was built by communist East Germany to keep its citizens from fleeing to the West.

“Memorials and memorial sites in a democracy need to grow, need to ripen and need a public understanding to evolve over time and gain acceptance,” said Rainer Klemke, the chief overseer of Berlin’s numerous historical sites. “The problem we have and what makes it very difficult in contrast to, say, the Mall in Washington, is that we are not commemorating our victories. We are commemorating our acts of shame.”

In the meantime, crowds flock to the Berlin Wall Trail, a hiking and biking path that was completed in 2006 and follows the contours of the 155-km barrier encircling West Berlin. Restoration has begun on the longest remaining section of the wall, a mural-splashed segment known as the East Side Gallery, which stretches more than a kilometre along the River Spree.

Under the surface, however, a raw civic debate continues to fester over how the Berlin Wall should be remembered.

Many former citizens of East Germany resent what they see as a cultural and political takeover of their country by West Germany. Westerners say they are fed up with the tendency of their eastern counterparts to wax nostalgic about communist times.

Despite the erasure of most of the wall, many Berliners are still affected by a malady commonly known as Mauer im Kopf, or wall in the head. According to a survey last year by the Free University of Berlin, 12 per cent of residents in the East and 11 per cent in the West said the city would be better off if the wall had never been torn down.

Leaders of the push to commemorate the wall have encountered stiff opposition. Alexandra Hildebrandt, owner of the House at Checkpoint Charlie, a private museum that drew 850,000 visitors last year, said the exhibits grate on the nerves of former East German politicians who don’t like the way the wall is portrayed as an evil force.
 

“Some people have always tried to shut down our museum, using any means possible,” she said. “I don’t know why. Actually, I do know why. We show the truth and they don’t like the truth.”
 

Hildebrandt riled many in 2004 when she installed a field of white crosses in two vacant lots on the eastern side of Checkpoint Charlie to memorialise people killed trying to cross from East to West. City officials removed the crosses eight months later, saying she had not applied for permits.
 

Easterners accused Hildebrandt of insensitivity. Other critics charged her with sloppy research, saying she exaggerated the number of dead. Hildebrandt accused the city of trying to sanitise the past.
 

In an interview, she scoffed at the city’s plan to celebrate the 20th anniversary by toppling a 3-km row of giant Styrofoam dominoes.
 

“Young people will think, ‘Okay, the wall was like dominoes,’ “ she said. “All you have to do is push, and it falls down.”
 

Another long-running dispute in Berlin centres on a memorial for the 1990 unification of East and West Germany. The federal Parliament approved the memorial two years ago and allotted $20 million for construction. But a government-selected jury has rejected more than 500 proposed designs and can’t decide where to put it.
 

Markus Meckel, a democracy activist who briefly served as East Germany’s foreign minister after the fall of communism, said many East Berliners who fought for freedom are miffed that their role has been marginalised.
 

He said public histories of the collapse of the wall have been shaped by former West German politicians, who largely give themselves credit. He said they often ignore pro-democracy movements behind the Iron Curtain.
 

“There is much misunderstanding, much misperception about that time in Germany,” said Meckel, who now serves in Parliament and is a key sponsor of the planned Cold War Museum. “In America, especially, people say, ‘We won the Cold War.’ But it was not a victory of the West against the East. It was the victory of freedom and democracy in the East.”