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The vanishing Berlin Wall

The rise and fall of Berlin’s East Side Gallery

Considering just how historical this Berlin landmark is, it’s amazing how much it has been neglected. Most efforts to preserve and renovate the East Side Gallery section of the Berlin Wall have run into a brick wall of property rights litigation, pollution clean-up, and a lack of funding.

Gallery front
This bizarre image of osculating communists at the East Side Gallery is one of the art works suffering the ill effects of neglect and the elements—not to mention less talented graffiti artists. PHOTO © Hyde Flippo
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Thanks only to an artistic accident of history, the East Side Gallery is one of the few surviving pieces of the Wall still standing and relatively intact. Located along the banks of the Spree River in Friedrichshain near the Ostbahnhof (east railway station), the best-known Wall remnant and its artwork have fallen on hard times. Despite a partial restoration in 2000, vandals, time, and the elements have combined to make the eastern Berlin landmark a somewhat depressing sight today. Created in 1990 in celebration of the Wall’s collapse, the Gallery features works by an international group of artists who expressed their reactions to the November 9, 1989 event in paintings that cover the 0.8-mile long section of the Wall that has come to be known as the East Side Gallery.

East Side Update: On Wed., October 15, 2008, over 20 of the original artists attended a kickoff ceremony for the scheduled second restoration of the East Side Gallery in Berlin. The Artists’ Association for the Gallery claimed it had already contacted 80 percent of the 118 artists who created the original Wall art in 1990. The 2.2-million-euro project is being funded by the EU, state lottery money, and German local and federal agencies. The cost will be almost evenly divided between paying for the artwork and repairs to the Wall itself. Unlike the partial 2000 restoration, this second one will try to restore all 105 artworks along the full length of the 1.3 km (0.8 mi) long section of the Berlin Wall. Organizers hope to have the project completed in 2009 for the 20th anniversary of the collapse of the Wall on November 9, 1989.

One of the most bizarre and ubiquitous images (once seeming to adorn half the souvenir T-shirts sold in Berlin) depicted fellow communists Erich Honecker and Leonid Brezhnev kissing each other on the mouth (see photo above). That original work and the many other East Side Gallery efforts are in danger of disappearing beneath far less artistic graffiti or fading from years of exposure to Berlin's weather. (See what has already happened to this classic work on our Then and Now Photos page.) The strip of land facing the other, graffiti-strewn, side of the Wall has become a home to derelicts and drug addicts. Even a murder victim was literally uncovered during a clean-up project a few years back.

The hopes that were raised back in 1996 when a heap of old cars and junk was removed from the area between the Wall and the Spree sank into a bureaucratic and legal quagmire. Although the East Side Gallery property now belongs to the German government, once it is released for development, any former land owners would then have the legal right to come forward with their claims. This is not encouraging to any prospective investor.

Gallery back
This is the other, less attractive if not less interesting, side of the East Side Gallery. The area between this section of the old Berlin Wall and the Spree River has become an eyesore and an environmental problem.
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It’s hard to believe that there were once grand plans for a park and a residential complex at this site. A 1993 architectural contest for its design was won by the German-American architect Helmut Jahn. His plan called for the East Side Gallery to be integrated into the park’s design. Now, the project seems more like some city-planning fantasy.

It would be unfortunate if the historic East Side Gallery itself becomes yet another victim of Berlin’s history.

The 2000 Restoration

A project to restore about one-third of the East Side Gallery was completed in the summer of 2000. As you can see in our Berlin Wall Photos, the remaining two-thirds of this Wall section continues to deteriorate.

The 2008 Restoration

Fortunately, a new, better-funded project to restore the entire East Side Gallery began on October 15, 2008. See the “before” pictures on our Berlin Wall Photos page.

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Original Web content ©1997-2009 Hyde Flippo | Graphic design by Erik Flippo www.erikflippo.com
Hyde Flippo is solely responsible for the content of this site and, other than permission granted to publish copyrighted material, McGraw-Hill/Contemporary Publishing has no direct involvement, financial or otherwise, with this site. When in Germany, Do As the Germans ©2002 McGraw-Hill; The German Way ©1997 McGraw-Hill/Passport Books. All rights reserved | Site Map | Advertise with us!