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AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE IRON CURTAIN
The image of the Berlin Wall today
In an article about the Berlin Wall and the traces that remain in the
landscape today, conservation architect Leo Schmidt explains how the
remains of the Berlin Wall today often do not meet the tourists’
expectations, “There are no situations left in Berlin today that resemble the
old press photographs of the Wall and watchtower type, therefore the
authentic remnants present a challenge to the tourists’ ability to review their
memory and the perception and to modify them by new insights” (Schmidt
2005:16). This demonstrates how the prevailing idea of what the Berlin Wall
was and what it looked like is still heavily dependent on those pictures
broadcasted during its existence. Schmidt is particularly critical to how the
area around the former Friedrichstraße crossing, also known as Checkpoint
Charlie, has been recreated after the fall of the wall and lost its authenticity.
It is true that the area here looks completely different now to what it did
when the wall first came down. Instead of the 1980s control hut a replica of
the 1960s hut has been erected where students often take turn to ‘stand
guard’ in American uniforms and pose together with tourists in their
holiday snaps. A line of recreated wall was also introduced here, although
now in a slightly different position a few metres away from its original
position which led to a lot of discussions and arguments. Next to the former
crossing area the museum ‘Haus am Checkpoint Charlie’ presents a history
that also very much corresponds to this image or idea that many people in
the West have about the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall. This is also
highly successful and maybe the reason is, as Schmidt criticises, that it does
not require people to modify their image of the Berlin Wall as it represents
it in a way close to idea of the Iron Curtain which has been produced and
reproduced in the West since World War II, a process that is still going on.
It shows that some people come to Berlin to experience not just the Berlin
Wall but an already existing idea of what this wall should look like. Schmidt
is right in that a different history about the Berlin Wall can be found but for
many people the idea they have is sufficient and getting this image reaffirmed
through the material, albeit a reconstructed image built on nonauthentic
materiality is considered enough.
The image of the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall has changed throughout
the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In particular the idea of the
Iron Curtain has become increasingly linked with that of the Berlin Wall. In
some ways it corresponds with the physical borders that existed but it has
also taken on a different life from its physical origin. This is the more
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