Memories of the Berlin Wall

Introduction by Heinz J. Kuzdas

At the exhibition 1989 – 20 years fall of the Berlin Wall Art – 2009

in the ICD – Institute for Cultural Diplomacy, Nov. 2009

The Berlin Wall was also a unique collective artwork, which changed daily and often overnight – paint actions disappeared the next day by somebody’s new work of art or was modified in new surprising ways. There was of course controversy – some people saw in painting the Wall only disgusting cosmetics, others similar to the historical wall-newspapers in China, a somehow index of “Zeitgeist” – mood index continuum – as one wrote on the Wall. But here we observed colorful, new irony art, misusing and transforming a depressing horrible perfected inhuman and dangerous borderline and turning it into the longest canvas of art. Something came into existence for what we owe recognition and gratefulness to the many known and unknown who participated. So far there was no such intention from the official public. There are so many who only desire to keep alive the memory of the Wall of death and barbed wire.

Berlin will be Wall free

The prophecy scrawled on the Wall in 1988 “Berlin wird mauerfrei” (Berlin will be wall free) came to pass at midnight on November 9^th, 1989. The Government of the GDR in those days, yielding to pressure from the people, announced unrestricted freedom to travel, effectively immediately. That very night, Berliners from both East and West danced on the Wall in front of the Brandenburg Gate. Politicians of all parties and countries were equally surprised by the course of history. For months there was only one word heard so often: “Wahnsinn” (insane). Souvenir hunters and other “wall peckers” made the wall practically thread bare. The Wall was soon pockmarked and perforated. Steel reinforcement plates were needed to prevent the Wall from collapsing. The Berlin Wall, for 28 years the physical proof of division and political oppositions, became a place of meeting and of the opening and unification of Germany and prepared at least the path to a really united Europe.

Heinz J. Kuzdas

B E R L I N W A L L A R T

13. August 2011 - 50 years since the

construction of the Berlin Wall -

13. August 1961 start of the wall

Heinz J. Kuzdas, Berlin

"One hardly dares to say that the Berlin wall was more than a mere symbol of the Iron Curtain and a fetish of the Cold War, but it was as well a surface on which was projected West Berlin identity.

The book BERLIN WALL ART recollects, what was back then especially for the younger West Berliner a decisive expression of life style. For West-Berlin was not just any city, but wild, crooked and younger than other German cities: West Berlin was an island for many who had been driven out of West (Rest) Germany. The fall of the wall endet this status of being an island and naturally it terminated as well the art along the wall.“

"The anarchistic structure of this repeatedly painted over, with thousand resounding voices, always colorful playground for public opinion declarations was as matter of fact specific for the atmosphere found in West Berlin. Moments of this 'wall as free legal space' have been captured by this book documentation. It shows surprisingly another perspective of the 'frontier city of Berlin', free of nostalgia, sometimes idyllic, but which was, however, not accessible from the other side and insurmountable.

BERLIN WALL ART stimulates to reflect about the myth of 'Berlin'.“

Source: Berliner LeseZeichen (Berlin Reading Signs) - Angela Fischel 10^th edition –Dtsch/Engl/Span/Franz -EspressoVerlag ISBN 3-88520-634-X

www.kuzdas.eu

Photos by Heinz J. Kuzdas of murals along the Berlin Wall till the final moments


                    Keith Hearing paints near Checkpoint Charlie 23.10.86


             "Fast form", Waldemarstrasse - Kilometerart by Thierry Noir 1987


                        "Pas Attendre" at Waldemarstrasse