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CHAPTER 3 The materiality of the Berlin Wall Methods and aims As we have seen in Chapter 2, the Berlin Wall was very important to the way we view the Iron Curtain. In many ways the two became synonymous in people’s minds and this has affected how people think of the Iron Curtain and the Cold War. I did not start my research here just for this reason, because I wanted to get away from my own preconceived ideas of what the Iron Curtain was, or still is. But the Berlin Wall was still present even when I visited other places. People that I interviewed in my study areas, particularly in Italy/Slovenia, would refer back to the Berlin Wall as a sort of case of reference of what the Iron Curtain ‘should’ look like. The reason this study is located ahead of my other studies within the thesis is to help the reader get a clear background before embarking on my other two case studies. The aim of this study was to get a better understanding of the material side of the Berlin Wall as Chapter 2 mainly focussed on the idea of the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall and to get an understanding of what it used to look like as well as what it looks like today. This was not a case study as such and the fieldwork for this study was therefore not as detailed as for my two other case studies but here I was able to use the report of an archaeological study carried out by the Department of Architectural Conservation at the Brandenburgh University of Technology, Cottbus, Germany. In combination with this study I made observations of my own during two visits to Berlin in 2009 and 2010 during which the section of the former wall from Friedrichstrasse train station to Kreuzberg was covered. This was not a complete recording of all remains that endure from the former wall but rather a way of getting an understanding of what the wall looks like today and to help me understand what it may have looked like in the past. I also 45
AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE IRON CURTAIN visited other sites along the route such as the Documentation Centre and the ‘reinstated’ wall at Bernauerstrasse, Haus am Checkpoint Charlie and other sections of the former wall such as by Kieler Eck, where a former command post is still located. As the Inner German Border and in particular the Berlin Wall has been written about extensively I was able to draw on a large amount of literature in building the background information. My main means of recording was through photography and notes on which this chapter is based. Background On the edge of the western world The fabric of the wall may have mostly gone but its ghost still haunts the Berlin townscape. The areas of nothingness where the wall once stood echo a past that many are trying to forget. Development projects are slowly erasing the traces, filling the voids and gradually eating away, piece by piece, the empty spaces. In other areas the memory of the wall is actively remembered: the tacky souvenir shops; the preserved wall sections and guard towers or as black and white photos in the small corner restaurant where I eat my lunch, previously located right on the edge of the Western world at Axel-Springer Straße. On the morning of 13 of August 1961 Berliners woke up to a new landscape, a speedily assembled wall brutally cutting off the city’s western section from its surrounding areas, making it a stranded island within communist German Democratic Republic (GDR). The border between East and West Germany had already been closed since 1952 but the GDR leaders saw the still open borders between East and West Berlin as a bleeding wound making this a too obvious escape route through to the West. Tension between the Western and Eastern blocs had been building for some time and failed attempts to solve the ‘Berlin Issue’ between US president Kennedy and Soviet leader Krushchev in June 1961 are likely to have affected the decision to erect the Berlin Wall (Rottman 2008). Studies of previously secret documents have demonstrated that between 1953–1961 the Soviets resisted repeated requests from East German leader Walter Ulbricht to close the Berlin border claiming that it would be too disruptive to Berliners as well as the peace keepers in the city (USA, England, France and the Soviet Union) and would “place in doubt the sincerity of the policy 46
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AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE IRON CURTAIN<br />
visited other sites along the route such as the Documentation Centre and<br />
the ‘reinstated’ wall at Bernauerstrasse, Haus am Checkpoint Charlie and<br />
other sections of the former wall such as by Kieler Eck, where a former<br />
command post is still located.<br />
As the Inner German Border and in particular the Berlin Wall has been<br />
written about extensively I was able to draw on a large amount of literature<br />
in building the background information. My main means of recording was<br />
through photography and notes on which this chapter is based.<br />
Background<br />
On the edge of the western world<br />
The fabric of the wall may have mostly gone but its ghost still haunts the<br />
Berlin townscape. The areas of nothingness where the wall once stood echo<br />
a past that many are trying to forget. Development projects are slowly<br />
erasing the traces, filling the voids and gradually eating away, piece by piece,<br />
the empty spaces. In other areas the memory of the wall is actively remembered:<br />
the tacky souvenir shops; the preserved wall sections and guard<br />
towers or as black and white photos in the small corner restaurant where I<br />
eat my lunch, previously located right on the edge of the Western world at<br />
Axel-Springer Straße.<br />
On the morning of 13 of August 1961 Berliners woke up to a new landscape,<br />
a speedily assembled wall brutally cutting off the city’s western<br />
section from its surrounding areas, making it a stranded island within<br />
communist German Democratic Republic (GDR). The border between East<br />
and West Germany had already been closed since 1952 but the GDR leaders<br />
saw the still open borders between East and West Berlin as a bleeding<br />
wound making this a too obvious escape route through to the West.<br />
Tension between the Western and Eastern blocs had been building for some<br />
time and failed attempts to solve the ‘Berlin Issue’ between US president<br />
Kennedy and Soviet leader Krushchev in June 1961 are likely to have<br />
affected the decision to erect the Berlin Wall (Rottman 2008). Studies of<br />
previously secret documents have demonstrated that between 1953–1961<br />
the Soviets resisted repeated requests from East German leader Walter<br />
Ulbricht to close the Berlin border claiming that it would be too disruptive<br />
to Berliners as well as the peace keepers in the city (USA, England, France<br />
and the Soviet Union) and would “place in doubt the sincerity of the policy<br />
46
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