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2: A PHYSICAL METAPHOR
the events took place. Manghani refers to images as a sort of shorthand by
media professionals (Manghani 2008:59). In the same way there are some
images that have been particularly prevailing in the history of the Iron
Curtain, of which most of them are connected to the Berlin Wall, such as the
image of an East German soldier, Conrad Schumann, jumping over the
barbed wire throwing his gun as he leaps over to freedom in the west. These
images may have just presented a particular angle of the division of Cold War
but to the Western world these images became the Berlin Wall, and the Iron
Curtain. They were an important part of history writing, an act which is
always flawed by subjectivity, and in this case, camera angles. Whenever
media reports in papers or on television required an image to quickly remind
people of the Cold, the Berlin Wall and images of its dramatic erection or, as
the wall had become more established images of watch towers and patrolling
border guards taken from West Berlin, became a frequently used tool. What
other images could one use to demonstrate the complexity of a war with no
clear visible battle fields
Drechsel likens the Berlin Wall to a political media icon, and argues that
from its construction to its fall it became a major media focus and a political
instrument on both sides of the Cold War divide. Whilst portrayed in the
Western media as a ‘concentration camp wall’ or a ‘Wall of Shame’, it was
presented in the East German media as a protection towards the threat of its
fascist neighbours (Drechsel 2010:17). By the use of what Drechsel calls
transmedial images the Berlin Wall was made into a political icon, either
bad or good depending from what side it was viewed from, given powerful
symbolic significance (Drechsel 2010:17). He means that different types of
media such as photography and film but also other types such as fragments
of the border, exhibitions, leaflets and memorials has become part of this
iconisation of the Berlin Wall and that this process still continues today.
The morning paper is staring back at me from the kitchen table. It is
July 2012 and a new spy story from the former DDR has hit the media in
Sweden. New information from the Stasi archives is still front page news,
and so is the Berlin Wall. One of the pictures on the front page shows two
East German soldiers behind a curtain of barbed wire (Breitner and
Lagerwall 2012:1, 8–9). Through binoculars they stare back at me as I sip
my morning coffee nearly 23 years after the wall disappeared. The image
of the wall still speaks and provides an instant understanding for those
who look at it. An image of the wall immediately makes people think of
East Germany, communism and the Cold War and is therefore a useful
and very powerful image.
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