Читать книгу Where in the World is the Berlin Wall?. 170 Sites around the World онлайн

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Anyone who had hoped that the Berlin Senate would work on making a memorial in the city (more) visible after the 40^th anniversary of the building of the Wall was to be disappointed. The memorial centre on Bernauer Straße continued to be run on a voluntary basis and only received limited project financing. This did not diminish the great commitment of the association members but could not replace long-term work in a secure institution. Any change in the poor treatment of the official memorial site to the Berlin Wall and division was not on the horizon.

On the 15^th anniversary of the fall of the Wall in 2004 an initiative by Alexandra Hildebrand, head of the Mauer Museum – Museum “Haus am Checkpoint Charlie” – burst into this void. Her temporary memorial to be put up on a abandoned area at Checkpoint Charlie did not only cause a stir on the Berlin politics scene. The memorial was made up of a replica of the Wall and over 1,000 wooden crosses – most of which were given a name. For many victims and their families, as well as for many visitors to Berlin, the memorial satisfied a need for an authentic place of memorial for the Wall (ill.2). The memorial and the public response to it made it unmistakably clear how great the unmet public need was, both for the city’s residents and for tourists, for a vivid place where the Wall and the division of the city could be conveyed in a meaningful way. References to the memorial on Bernauer Straße came to nothing – it was considered too objective and its location outside the centre of the city made it remote. For the first time, may victims felt they had been taken seriously by Alexandra Hildebrandt’s emotional memorial and its use of forms (ill.3).