The East Side Gallery is the largest open-air gallery in the world. Spanning about 1.3 kilometers along Berlin’s Mühlenstraße, the gallery adds much-needed splashes of color for the passengers driving by in their various transit modes – passing swatches of bright and dark colors, abstract and impressionist. The former border between East and West Berlin reflects the cornucopia of emotions felt by people worldwide when it fell on November 9, 1989. The remaining pieces of the wall speak to the division of the time, between east and west, betwixt the people and their government, and the battle of art versus graffiti.
The Berlin Wall was erected in 1961 to stop the flood of refugees attempting to escape Soviet-occupied East Berlin. The beginnings of the Cold War caused many to flee the communist East, embarrassing Premier Khrushchev, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, to the point that he approved the rapid construction of the wall. In under two weeks, the wall, made of concrete and barbed wire, cut the city in half. The people of East Berlin could no longer access the west of the city, potentially separated from family and friends.
171 people died attempting to escape over, under, and around the heavily guarded barricade. The east-facing side of the wall was originally painted white so that snipers in watch towers could easily spot shadows of potential dissidents. Very often, no warning would be given before firing their weapons.
The absurdity of the mere twelve-foot wall was emphasized by the Stasi, short for Staatsicherheit, or “state security,” and their anti-west propaganda campaigns against capitalism. Not only did these secret police forces driven by the Ministry for State Security relentlessly spy on East Germans, but they instilled a deep distrust of the West. In the 28 years that the wall separated Berlin, the great fracture of Wessi (West Berliner) vs. Ossi (East Berliner) was emphasized by the administration of the former GDR. This divide would remain even after the borders were reopened. However, this would not deter people from touching, painting, tagging, and destroying pieces of the wall that had kept them apart for almost 30 years.
In 1990, a little south of the city’s center, running along the Spree River, a segment of wall that would become the East Side Gallery was officially chosen for the project. The original idea for the longest open-air gallery came from founders Heike Stephan, an Ossi, and David Monty, a Wessi, and was carried out by his assistant at the time Christine McLean. McLean proceeded to reach out to artists around the world to see which of them might be interested in painting on the infamous piece of history. Eventually, she gathered 118 artists from 21 countries to participate. As they sent her their sketches for the project, McLean would curate sections of the wall and assign them to each piece.
As artists began trickling into Berlin and setting up along the busy street, onlookers and tourists wanting to experience the newly unified city gathered around them. Artists enlisted the help of passers-by to either help them paint larger sections of a piece or contribute to the moment’s symbolism by adding their handprints to another. As they knew, touching the wall had once meant death. The artists, whose styles and experiences varied, were given no guidelines or restrictions; they were told to paint what they felt.
“My idea came from my time walking around Berlin talking to both East and West Berliners. I could feel the distrust from both sides. My piece tries to convey tolerance between people. Men, women, brown or black or white, tolerance means things to different people.”
“Tolerance,” a piece by Marz Mackey, is an example of a piece whose inspiration was drawn from the palpable energy of the city and its people. Mackey explains her observations in the documentary “East Side Gallery Film” by Karin Kaper and Dirk Szuszies.
“My idea came from my time walking around Berlin talking to both East and West Berliners. I could feel the distrust from both sides. My piece tries to convey tolerance between people. Men, women, brown or black or white, tolerance means things to different people.”
Margaret Hunter, a painter from Scotland, similarly explores the separation of cultures and distrust between Berliners. Her painting depicts two large, stylized heads with crisscrossing lines from one to the other, suggesting communication and partnership. The piece’s title, “Joint Venture,” is a nod to the buzzwords of the late ’80s, suggesting the two sides would collaborate as partners.
“I laid the drawing on its side, and the two large heads now lay together side-by-side like strange bedfellows. This seemed an appropriate image and expression for the two Germanies, depicted like masks because at that time neither side really knew what lay behind the other.”
“I laid the drawing on its side, and the two large heads now lay together side-by-side like strange bedfellows. This seemed an appropriate image and expression for the two Germanies, depicted like masks because at that time neither side really knew what lay behind the other,” comments Hunter in the “East Side Gallery Film.”
While some artists fed off the terror of the collective question, “What now?” others highlighted the beauty of the reunited city. Gabriel Heimler is a French artist responsible for the large multi-section painting “The Walljumper.”
“I wanted to paint this moment of dream,” he tells filmmaker Karin Kaper, “the moment where everybody in Berlin, in the world, have the dream that we can unify…we don’t have any more enemies, we don’t hate one another, we can live together.”
Heimler was flying high on the euphoria bubbling in the streets post-reunification, “I wanted to paint this moment of dream,” he tells filmmaker Karin Kaper, “the moment where everybody in Berlin, in the world, have the dream that we can unify…we don’t have any more enemies, we don’t hate one another, we can live together.”
Many artists used the opportunity to make vehement political and human rights-related statements, harkening back to the horror of World War II and the genocide enacted by the Nazis. Günther Schaefer’s piece “The Homeland” is a unique rendering of a combination of the German and Israeli flags. While the piece initially seems to speak to similarities and humanity between countries, it was painted to honor the 50th anniversary of the November 9, 1938 atrocity known as Kristallnacht, where Nazi forces destroyed Jewish stores, buildings, and synagogues.
A transgressive painting by the prolific Berlin street artist Kiddy Citney is called “Who’s fucking who?” and almost amateurishly depicts capitalism throwing people overboard. Citney had been painting on the Berlin Wall since 1984 and, at one point, envisioned encircling East Berlin with his personal art museum.
“Art should have something political today, especially when it is in public. The artist then has the task of speaking for the social collective.” Citney remarks during an interview for the podcast “Zukunftgefühl 1990.”
One of the most infamous pieces of the East Side Gallery is Dimitri Vurbel’s “The Kiss,” which is a recreation of a 1979 photo of the socialist fraternal kiss shared between Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and East German leader Erich Honecker. This act was supposed to demonstrate the closeness and connection between socialist leaders and countries. Vurbel wrote in Russian and German: “My Lord, give me the strength to survive this deadly love.” The piece is the most photographed in the entire gallery and became emblematic of the dissolute ways of the dying system of communism.
“Art should have something political today, especially when it is in public. The artist then has the task of speaking for the social collective.”
Ever since 1990, the East Side Gallery has stood as a reminder of the renaissance period of Berlin after the wall was torn down, of its newfound life and vivaciousness. Over the years, people began tagging on the wall, writing their own statements, and adding lewd images, typical behavior when a large amount of space is seemingly up for grabs. However, in 2009 on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall, the art in the East Side Gallery was so weather-worn, and Sharpie tarnished that a complete renovation took place.
Over those 20 years, there had been multiple attempts at commercial building projects, some rejected by the people, others that went through including the massive O2, now Mercedes Benz, arena whose docking area resulted in the loss of 40 meters of the wall.
The 2009 renovation of the East Side Gallery included the request that all the artists return to the wall to redo their pieces precisely as they were 20 years prior. This sparked a debate within the community of artists about whether or not they should copy their art. Many artists felt that painting the same piece 20 years later would no longer resonate with the people, that the mood of Berlin in the early ’90s was specific and had since changed. The question of “to copy or not to copy?” plagued the artists, some of whom would choose not to return and flat-out refused the recreation of their art. In their stead, the wall was repainted in its original white and gray splendor. However, 87 artists returned and repainted their pictures after the gallery was wiped clean and restored 100 images, costing around $2M.
A few of those returning artists defied the request to do the same painting as before. Christine Kuehn’s piece called “Touching the Wall” is an excellent example of this question of whether the copied art resonated the same way as it had in 1990. During the original application of the painting, Kuehn asked people passing by to press their paint-coated hands against the wall. The piece spoke to the excitement of the time; you could now touch the wall without consequence, move freely around it, and even break a chunk off. During the restoration, Kuehn was obviously unable to track down the original owners of each handprint and therefore had to use her hand to replace them. Does the second piece carry the same weight as the first? I would argue not.
Another artist who rejected copying his piece, Jim Avignon, staged a public performance of art students tasked to reimagine the image to reflect the current century. “Doing it for the East Side” was transformed by these students and replaced Avignon’s original vision, perhaps for the better. Whether or not a copy of your art reflects the societal subconscious in the same way 20 years later is a debate that, in this context, could go both ways. Does preserving the original emblematic images of the reunification mean more than expressing points more representative of the 2000s? I think so.
With the reconstruction of the East Side Gallery, 20 years of tags and drawings, initials, and claims of “Sally was here!” were washed away in the name of art. The images in the gallery were coated with lacquer to protect the original paint, but not much else was done to maintain the wall, so the scribbles and tags returned. The west-facing side of the wall, which looked out onto verdant patches of grass leading to the Spree riverbank, was supposed to be kept with its original whitewash but eventually was given over to the graffiti writers.
However, the concern wasn’t for the west side of the wall but for the recently reconstructed images of the East Side Gallery. Frequently over the years, artists local to Berlin or the surrounding area would come to the wall to scrub off the markings that had accumulated on their pieces. With only dish soap and sponges, the artists, their friends, and volunteers would gather to scratch and scour for hours. The confusing segregation of the west-facing wall and the east lingers still today, one side for graffiti and one side for “art.” Their hard work in maintaining their sections of the wall would be elevated by the protests soon to follow.
In combination with the “defacing” of the gallery was the increased threat of capitalism, and no, the Soviets weren’t totally right about it. The stretch along the Spree River is a coveted space and was constantly besieged by building requests for commercial real estate and ad space. The people of Berlin fought against these ventures and insisted that the gallery be treated like the national monument it is.
On March 1, 2013, peaceful protestors completely covered the East Side Gallery with white paper to show how desolate and boring the area would be without it. The gallery was dubbed ‘the inconvenient monument’, which the city would rather ignore than maintain. It was so inconvenient, in fact, that Berlin stopped listing it as one of the must-see sights of the city.
Hundreds of people took to Mühlenstraße to protest the building of high-rises and hotels, joined by political actors such as Germany’s Green Party, the press, and Roger Waters from Pink Floyd. Roger Waters, known for his contributions to the rock opera “The Wall,” spoke about Pink Floyd’s 1990 show in Berlin, where they opened with a massive Styrofoam wall being slowly toppled over brick-by-brick, and how he became infected by the exuberance of the city. With the press saying that the East Side Gallery had been reduced to nothing more than a garden fence, Waters, among the others, felt that the deterioration of the wall and the city’s greed needed to be known and stopped. The protests were successful, construction, for the most part, was halted, and in 2018 the gallery was eventually transferred to the Berlin Wall Foundation for protection and upkeep. This change effectively saved the gallery from property investors.
Since then, Berlin has approved a budget of $285,000 annually for the preservation of the monument and the maintenance of the area. There have been various events and exhibitions held along the remaining stretch. One exhibition, “WallonWall,” was a reminder that there are still walls worldwide separating us from one another, preventing democracy and reconciliation.
The profoundness of the East Side Gallery is multifaceted, and its historical significance cannot be denied. It forces us to question the status quo, depicts true love and utter suffering, and highlights some of the most prominent debates of street art culture today. Is it art? Must art be timely? Should public art always carry a political message? These are all questions I won’t purport to be able to answer, but I believe they are worth considering.
