A Quest for Identity in Berlin
“Ich bin ein Berliner,” “I am a Berliner” declared President John. F. Kennedy on June 26, 1963, a time when Berlin citizens themselves had trouble defining what it meant to be a “Berliner.” The question of identity has been at the core of Berlin’s history and is still of utmost relevance today, 30 years after the fall of the Wall. Indeed, it allows to explain why people who seemed so close, were yet so far. Despite being from the same country, the same city, the divide imposed radically different lifestyles to people and the influence of Regime’s ideologies on urban planning, architecture and culture indirectly shaped identities, family stories, and heritages in different ways.
The fall of the Berlin Wall, in November 1989, allowed the obliteration of the most obvious traces of separation between the Western and the Eastern parts of the city. Roads were reconnected, public transports linking the two halves of Berlin were brought back into operation, and abandoned places such as the Potsdamer Platz, which became a no-man’s land after World War II, were retrofitted and rehabilitated . However, despite such undeniable material reunification, in the years following 1990 (date on which the reunification of East and West Germany was made official), a virtual wall remained. It is only starting to dissipate today, with the arrival of new generations who did not witnessed life in a divided city and whose references are based on parent’s and grandparent’s stories as well as harmonized history courses.
In order to understand those less evident but yet significant disparities, one must look at the scale of the adaptations that were made because of the wall construction in terms of urban planning. In 1961, the wall was still only a succession of barriers, guards, houses, and coils of barbed wire, but public transportation between the East and the West was already turned away if not severed. Migrations from one side to the other gradually became impossible. West Berliners who already experienced a blockade in June 1948, were left surrounded by a red sea of communism and developed a quasi “island mentality” within their capitalist bubble. Berlin became the ideological battlefield of the Cold War and among the most powerful and efficient arms used were architectural and structural choices. Indeed, the conflict is well-known for its space-race, or its nuclear arm-race, but the case of the Berlin Wall also shows that an “architecture race” was also in order. From 1961 to 1989, both the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) undertook massive construction plans:
On the West side, US-Marshall Plan aids sustained projects such as the creation of shopping centers, the reconstruction of entire districts (Hansa) and of buildings such as the Congress Hall and the American Memorial Library. Capitalist values of cosmopolitanism, openness and abundance were promoted with the help of renowned architects like Peter Eisenman or Rem Koolhaas, through the use of materials like steel and glass, and more generally through the incorporation of a very modernist style in the city’s busy areas. Streets were also named after key figures of the Allies forces (Avenue Charles de Gaulle).
Such physical transformations also aimed at entrenching Western culture in Berlin. Policies allowing to lift the curfew in bars and clubs were for instance sat up, and the Berlin Opera was rebuilt in order to give an image of a “never-sleeping,” young, West Berlin.
On the East side things were quite different. As the given prime purpose of the wall was to keep western “fascists” away, ideologically-motivated architecture also arose. Following socialist policies, social housing complex were built and homes were standardized. A plan to turn East Berlin into an impressive capital city was adopted thus triggering the construction of imposing buildings like the TV tower, the Kino International or the Hotel Berolina all in “socialist realism” styles. The Soviets also organized a tram network which purpose was to advocate shared transportation. It was conceived to counter the massive investment into cars that West-Berlin encouraged as cars were a symbol of freedom.
All those examples of physical developments of each side constitute a perfect example of Foucauldian patterns of power construction as they were in both cases utilized to assert political thoughts and, to a certain extent, shape population’s identities. It therefore becomes clear why the fall of the wall as such was not enough for Berliners to easily unify and find a sense of common identity.
The notion of wall transcends the simple definition of “border made out of bricks or concrete to prevent movement of people,” as it conveys deeper ideological, political and even philosophical meanings. Life in what used to be East and West Berlin was besides still experienced differently even after the wall’s demolition. The question of abortion for instance is an interesting one: Abortion was legal in the GDR and illegal in the FRG. As the two Germanies unified, an agreement was signed stating that the situation was to remain unchanged temporarily despite the quasi-disappearance of physical borders.
A nation’s common identity is often constructed from collective memories or shared history. Some generations of Berliners did experience both the construction and the fall of the Wall however, this does not necessarily mean that their Cold War memories are collective ones. In fact, one can even go as far as to argue that old assumptions over each side of the city, that were successfully transmitted to citizens through means of soft power, still endure.
Berlin has gone through a lot of changes since the fall of the Wall: the night-life scene shifted to the East following the rise of new music styles, streets were renamed, houses were renovated, the arrival of the Euro currency harmonized Berlin’s economic system, and abandoned spaces left room for innovation. Despite it all, attempts to build a “New Berlin” will not erase the past. The Wall’s impacts go far beyond practical ones and even affected citizens psychologically. The importance of remembering its history only arose recently as many people still considered it to be a symbol of soviet repression. It is also curious to note that there are more pieces of the Wall currently on display in the United States then there are in Berlin.
There are different dimensions to the construction and fall of the Wall. From geographical, to political, or cultural, such dimensions all allow to better understand Berlin’s history and the reasons why the city holds today, such exclusive strategical position in terms of European and International affairs. Berlin is a polycentric city which gradually manages to successfully combine diverging memories and to unify into one “New” city. It could therefore constitute a legitimate small-scale model for an arguably fragmented Europe in which inequalities between East and West remain.