On November 9th 1989 a 28 year-old, 46.6 km long, 3.6 meter tall concrete wall which witnessed 5000 escape attempts and 239 deaths -the Berlin wall- finally fell. Now it’s 2009, and the city is celebrating the 20th anniversary of that day when a slight bureaucratic misunderstanding suddenly led to unexpected, long-awaited freedom.

A little boost of encouragement: the peaceful revolution

Of course Gorbachev’s rise to power in 1987 in the Soviet Union set forth a chain of events inevitably leading to fall of the German Democratic Republic, whose legitimacy was at the same time jeopardised by the escape of thousands of East Germans through Hungary and by huge mass demonstrations held in several East Germans city every week. However, not everybody knows that the last day of the wall came naturally but unexpectedly, almost by mistake. It is important to recall it, to fully understand the touching importance of this day in history.

On November 9th, 1989 the East German leaders decided to introduce new travel regulations allowing East Berliners to take private trips to the West, thus reducing the pressure on Hungary – while desperately attempting to preserve the existence of the GDR.

The original document declared that East Germans would be allowed to travel West only after being granted official permission by the GDR offices. However, East Germany leader Egon Krenz and fellow bureau member Schabowski, who was chosen to be in charge of the press release, decided at the very last minute to take away the word “permission” from the announcement to avoid public outrage, as the population knew very well how easily the GDR permission could be denied.

At the same time, the document did not include any detail about the day when the new regulations were meant to become effective, so when asked about this by a journalist during the press release, Schabowski mistakenly declared those measures to be effective immediately.

This led tens of thousands of excited, incredulous Berliners to gather at the main checkpoints in the city, requesting to immediately exert their right of access to West Berlin. The guards, still unaware of the new regulations, could have had opened fire against the crowd, as they were instructed to do if anybody attempted to illegally cross the border, but nobody wanted to take responsibility for a bloodbath. The border patrol tried for hours to resist the demands of the crowd and to discourage them from gathering along the crossing points. Finally overwhelmed by the immense number of Berliners that continued growing in number throughout the night, the guards opened the checkpoints and allowed people to cross them with little or no identity check.

With a little boost of encouragement ( see: Schabowski’s unintentionally revolutionary press release ) Berliners were able to bring down the wall and therefore put the Cold War to a definitive end with their simple presence, without a single shot being fired.

After the fall: the East Side Gallery

Thierry Noir in front of one of his artworks

By November 1991 the wall was completely dismantled, except for some segments of it scattered around the city – as well as the East Side Gallery of course, a 1.3 km section (the longest) in Friedrichshain by the Spree River, on which 106 artists from 21 countries were invited to paint in honour of freedom back in 1990. Declared a historic monument in 1992, the East Side Gallery is now being completely renowated. All the original paintings are being deleted in order to restore the damaged wall, and all the artists who originally took part in the project have been invited to repaint their works in time for the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Mauerfall.

One of the founders of the organization managing the East Side Gallery is painter Thierry Noir, who moved from Lyon to Berlin in 1982 and soon after became very popular for his extensive graffiti work on the Wall – to the point where he was featured in the 1987 Wim Wenders movie Wings of Desire. I went to meet him in his studio in Schöneberg, to have him explain the East Side Gallery project more in detail, since many seem to have mixed feelings about its renovation, and cannot understand why the paintings needed to be made on that wall in first place, and why they now need to be deleted. “The area where this section of the wall is located, along the river Spree, is very trendy and popular. Businessmen wanted to tear down the wall and build offices there. So we thought the only way to protect the wall was to paint on it. The paintings are an alibi to protect the wall: we had to preserve it for its strong symbolic meaning. Here nine people died because of the wall, among which four children. Because of the river it was not possible to build the no man’s land back when the wall was made, so there was only one wall on the East Berlin side of the Spree; the river was itself East Berlin and was patrolled day and night by the guards on boat. More or less once a year, a kid from West Berlin playing near the river would fall into the water, and it would not be possible to save him without getting shot. West Berlin firemen were not allowed to jump in the water, and the East Berlin guards would let the kids die. The last child died in may 1975 on Mother’s Day, and the East German guards said they wanted 2000 German marks -which was a lot of money at that time- to give the body back to the family. There was such a riot after the death of this child that eventually the GDR allowed West Berlin firemen to jump into the water from then on. This is a special section of the wall. We want to preserve it for future generations, so they can remember not to make the same mistake again.”

The East Side Gallery today

Mr Noir had never painted before painting the Berlin wall, but claims that doing it came very naturally to him, as he was living close to the wall and he felt he had to do something against this “boring wall”. “I had never painted before painting the wall. As soon as I moved to Berlin, everybody I met was an artist. I never met any artists in twenty years in Lyon. So when they asked me if I was an artist, I said I was, I didn’t want to be the village idiot! So after saying I was an artist I had to prove myself, and I started painting on the Wall, and people thought my paintings were great, thus I continued.” When he and his friends started painting the wall in 1984, it was something new and people didn’t know what to think of it. “People were really aggressive. Passers-by and neighbours thought I was a spy. Now it sounds funny but at that time it was really another planet, everybody was scared. I always had to explain that I was not paid by the CIA or anybody. After a while they started to understand this. I also had to watch the guards because American soldiers with really big jeeps were driving like crazy along the walls, and all this was very complicated because the wall itself was not the the border, the official line was five meters before the wall, exactly at the panels ‘you are leaving the American or French or British sector’, where all the white lines where. Those 5 meters where officially East Berlin, so by painting the wall I was already in East Berlin, and that was the danger”.

Noir painted 120 sections of the wall, and most of them are now exhibited throughout the world. If you happen to be in Berlin next August, you might spot him along the East Side Gallery, working on renovating his paintings on the East Side Gallery, painting on top of a ladder just like in Wings of Desire.

The celebrations

Besides the renovation of East Side Gallery, the city of Berlin is organizing an incredible amount of exhibitions to celebrate the 20 years since the wall, most of which are starting this month.

The open-air free exhibition Friedliche Revolution, a collection of photographs documenting the mass demonstrations held throughout Germany which led to the fall of the wall through a peaceful revolution, was inaugurated Thursday, May 6 in Alexanderplatz. Schabowski himself held a speech at the inauguration, explaining how “The GDR was a fundamentally flawed society” and how “It was the GDR citizens who caused the peaceful revolution in November 1989 with their pressure from the ranks. They demolished the Wall and the border between East and West Germany. I was nothing more than an instrument in that process.” (source: nrc.nl)

The 20 Years of a Changing Berlin exhibition instead features a red info box in the shape of a red ladder on top of which is an audio guide, located in different spots of the city which have undergone remarkable changes since the fall of the wall.

The exhibition STASI presents the methods used by the East Germany secret police, from physical torture to psychological repression, based on real life cases. It is held at BSTU Dokumentationszentrum in Mauerstr. 38.

On this topic, also guided tours to the Hohenschonhausen memorial, the former GDR prison, are held by former political prisoners every week.

On the actual day of the 20th anniversary, November 9, the big party will be at the Brandenburg Gate with the Festival of Freedom, where the fall of the wall will be re-enacted with the domino effect of hundreds of huge painted oversized stones which will be tumbling down one after another.

Besides the events in Berlin, an exhibition regarding the Berlin Wall is traveling throughout the world now, featuring portions of of the no man’s land section of the wall which have been painted by major international artists back in 1990. Now held at the Jardins Du Palais Royal in Paris until June 1st, the exhibition will then move to Berlin in July and Moscow in November.

For more information:

www.mauerfall09.de

www.eastsidegallery.com

www.galerie-noir.de