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"Remembering the Fall of the Berlin Wall" 

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"Remembering the Fall of the Berlin Wall" 

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Segment from NPR Here & Now (WBUR), reported by Curt Nickish in 2018, embedded on NHPR website (includes transcript)

The wall that still exists does not do so without remembering its multi-faceted history. The Wall is not just an object that represents freedom, overcoming, and unity, but also division, repression, and restriction. There will always be many different experiences, understandings, and associations with the Wall, as outlined in this segment. ... [read more]

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Remembering The Fall Of The Berlin Wall | WBUR

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An opinion piece that appeared in The New York Times on December 2, 1990

This piece highlights the importance of remembering the legacy of the wall from the perspective of an individual only one month after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Even right after experiencing the event, individuals recognized the importance of keeping the wall, not as an instrument of division but an instrument of reminder and strength.

"When it stood, the winding wall measured 103 miles, or roughly the distance between New York and Philadelphia, and it was guarded by 285 elevated watchtowers. That Berliners would wish to see the whole monstrous structure vanish, and quickly, is wholly understandable. But that would detract from the tragic eloquence conveyed by scores of East Germans who died trying to climb over and dig under the wall during its 28 years as a glacial symbol."

... [read more]

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Credit... The New York Times Archives

This is a digitized version of an article from The Times's print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.

Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions.

The wall, the tangible expression of the Iron Curtain, was erected to keep East Germans from fleeing westward. It was opened, paradoxically, for the same reason: to slow a desperate rush to West Germany as escape became possible for them, through Hungary and then Czechoslovakia. A year after its opening, the wall has mostly vanished, leaving scars mostly in memories.

Those who knew it can never forget the Berlin wall. And those who now look for its traces can scarcely imagine what it was like. It would surely instruct and chasten posterity if the city preserved at least a portion of the wall.

By happenstance, a long section next to an expressway has already been transformed into a canvas of sorts by a hundred artists. The segment's fate is still undecided; why not turn it into the permanent memorial posterity so urgently needs?

In a lampoon of Socialist Realism, a Soviet artist, Dmitri Vrubel, depicts the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev kissing East Germany's former party boss, Erich Honecker. A caption says "God help me to survive this deadly love affair." Other paintings recall brave wall jumpers, acclaim dissenters like Andrei Sakharov and convey the yearning for peace and freedom that inspired a nonviolent uprising against the wall's builders.

When it stood, the winding wall measured 103 miles, or roughly the distance between New York and Philadelphia, and it was guarded by 285 elevated watchtowers. That Berliners would wish to see the whole monstrous structure vanish, and quickly, is wholly understandable.

But that would detract from the tragic eloquence conveyed by scores of East Germans who died trying to climb over and dig under the wall during its 28 years as a glacial symbol.

Americans quickly recognized the power of the symbol. In a 1962 film clip shown on H.B.O. recently, Robert Kennedy told students in Germany that "I found really that the greatest weapon that we had is the Berlin wall . . . Because this is the first time in the history of mankind that a wall has been erected not to keep people out -- bandits or marauders or whatever it might be -- but to keep people in."

Even as Berlin rushes to efface the wound, the shadow of the wall still lies across history. To preserve at least a piece of the wall before it is entirely bulldozed, hacked into souvenirs and turned into a historical ghost would honor its martyrs, and freedom.

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Opinion | Keep a Shadow of the Wall (Published 1990)

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This is a digitized version of an article from The Times's print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions.

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Photograph taken by Maya Hitij of the Associated Press, a photograph embedded in Mashable article

By August of 1961, 2,000 East Germans were attempting to escape to West Berlin every single day. Schumann was just one of those individuals. At the time, he was an 18-year-old East German police officer. One day, while on the job, he started running and leaped over the barrier, which, at the time was barbed wire, into West Germany.

"My nerves were at a breaking point. I was very afraid. I took off, jumped, and into the car… in three, four seconds, it was all over."

... [read more]

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Photograph of Eastern German guards carrying away a refugee they shot who was attempting to escape East Germany in 1971

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Photograph of Eastern German guards carrying away a refugee they shot who was attempting to escape East Germany in 1971

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Photograph taken by the Associated Press, embedded in The Atlantic article from November 9, 2019
In 1971, with the support of Soviet leader Brezhnev, Honecker became the new head of state and reversed the liberal reforms that Walter Ulbricht, the former Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party, had tried out. This  government introduced a new East German Constitution which established the German Democratic Republic as a “republic of workers and peasants."  ... [read more]

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“Street Mural of Donald Trump Kissing Vladimir Putin" 

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“Street Mural of Donald Trump Kissing Vladimir Putin" 

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Photograph by Mindaugas Kulbis of the Associated Press, embedded in TIME article from May 14, 2016

There have been numerous parodies of Vrubel's mural, one of the most famous portraying a kiss between American President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin during the 2016 American Presidential election. Why is this image dangerous?  ... [read more]

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Street Mural of Donald Trump Kissing Vladimir Putin Goes Viral

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A mural in Lithuania has gone viral for depicting Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump kissing Russian President Vladimir Putin

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“Brezhnev Arrives in East Germany for 30th Anniversary Celebration” 

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“Brezhnev Arrives in East Germany for 30th Anniversary Celebration” 

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by John Vinocur, appeared in The New York Times on October 5, 1979: Brezhnev arrived for celebrations marking the 30-year anniversary of East Germany’s communist republic

With Brezhnev's arrival in the German Democratic Republic (Eastern Germany), the two leaders were set to sign “long‐term economic cooperation agreements...that are described as providing for an increase in trade between the two countries. ... [read more]

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Credit... The New York Times Archives

This is a digitized version of an article from The Times's print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.

Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions.

EAST BERLIN, Oct. 4 - Leonid I. Brezhnev, the Soviet leader, arrived here today for celebrations marking East Germany's 30th anniversary as a Communist republic, meetings with East‐bloc lead. ers and a foreign policy speech in which he is expected to discuss strains in Soviet. American relations over Cuba.

Orderly crowds of tens of thousands greeted the 72‐year‐old leader as he rode through the city from Schonefeld Airport to the Niederschonhausen Palace, the Government guest residence.

Although the temperature was 59 degrees, Mr. Brezhnev wore an overcoat and scarf and required assistance as he went down the steps of his airliner to embrace Erich Honecker, the East German leader.

Mr. Brezhnev's schedule during the four days of celebrations, including military parade Sunday, is light, giving him time for rest periods and talks with the East European leaders who will be arriving tomorrow and Saturday.

Ceausescu Is Not Expected

All of them will be on hand, with the exception of Nicolae Ceausescu of Rumania, and they are to be joined by Asian and African representatives, including Joshua Nkomo, the Rhodesian guerrilla leader, and Yasir Arafat, the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Mr. Brezhnev's speech in the Parliament Saturday will be broadcast throughout the Soviet bloc's television network. Western diplomats in Bonn said the speech was expected to range over the spectrum of international politics with emphasis on troop reduction talks concerning Central Europe. They said the Soviet leader was likely to refer to the strategic arms limitation treaty, now pending in the United States Senate, and to the issue of Soviet troops in Cuba.

New Trade Pact to Be Signed

The military parade, for which preparations have been going on for more than a week, is expected to be an unusually large one, including T‐72 battle tanks that the East German Army recently received from the Soviet Union.

In addition to the speeches and ceremonies, Mr. Brezhnev will sign long‐term economic cooperation agreements with East Germany that are described as providing for an increase in trade between the two countries, already each other's largest trade partners, and confirming a continuing supply of Soviet fuel and raw materials for the East Germans.

The welcome given to Mr. Brezhnev appeared cheerful, if not wildly enthusiastic. School and factory groups were taken to prearranged points along the motorcade route and were handed Soviet and East German flags and pictures of the leaders once they had taken their places on the sidewalks.

East Berlin, usually draped with banners calling for higher production and political solidarity, had more flags and bunting than usual, but went about its business without traffic jams or unusual activity.

Storefronts were covered with posters hailing the anniversary of the founding of the German Democratic Republic and with photos of workers posed near steel furnaces and at building sites saying things like "The German Democratic Republic, my country" and "30 years, proud record for us all."

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Brezhnev Arrives in East Germany For 30th Anniversary Celebration (Published 1979)

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This is a digitized version of an article from The Times's print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions.

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“Brotherly Love: 25 Years on, the artist behind the iconic Berlin Wall mural tells his story"

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“Brotherly Love: 25 Years on, the artist behind the iconic Berlin Wall mural tells his story"

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Interview with Dmitri Vrubel by Andrey Borzenko, published in The Calvert Journal 11/11/14

In this interview, Vrubel outlines some really interesting and important points about his creation, "My God, Help us to Survive this Deadly Love." He noted he had "lived in the Soviet Union for 29 years and was a kind of cultured “Homo Sovieticus.”  Yet, the fall of the wall was incredibly important to him, whether he knew it at the moment or not. ... [read more]

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This interview first appeared in Russian in Kommersant Weekend
AB: Do you remember 9 November 1989?
DV: Yes, and I could have easily ended up in Berlin then, by chance. A friend and I were driving a Volga sedan from Paris to Moscow. And since my friend had bought a computer in Hanover, and it was illegal to bring computers into the Soviet Union, he said firmly that he didn't want to take any chances and cross the border in Berlin. Besides, in Paris we saw on TV that there were demonstrations there, and unrest, so there was a chance that we'd not only get the computer confiscated, but beat up as well. So we took a detour around Berlin. Nothing told me that my future life would be in any way connected with the Berlin Wall.
AB: But its fall was an important event for you?
DV: At that point, I didn't even know, really, that it was actually a wall. I'd lived in the Soviet Union for 29 years and was a kind of cultured "Homo Sovieticus". And yet it so happened that all the important moments in my artistic and personal life accidentally coincided with various historical events. For example, in 1989 I went abroad for the first time. So my personal Berlin Wall fell at about the same time as the real one. I lived in Paris for two months and, frankly, what was happening in the world interested me less than my own experiences.

My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love in 1991
AB: How did you get the idea of putting up graffiti on the Berlin Wall?
DV: A girl I met in Paris came to Moscow and gave me a photograph of Brezhnev and Honecker kissing. She said, "Look at this cool picture. You have to paint it." It was a repulsive, revolting thing that almost made me throw up. But still, as usual, I wanted to preserve in art that which can't be preserved in it, and this painting somehow began to live in my mind by itself. I started making sketches on paper, and at one point [poet and artist Dmitri] Prigov saw them and said, "Dmitri Vladimirovich, this would be good to paint on the Berlin Wall." We laughed and forgot about it, of course. But then a man named Alexander Brodovsky visited my apartment gallery. He'd come from Berlin to find artists for the first exhibit in East Germany of the contemporary Soviet avant-garde. We discussed everything, he officially invited me, and in April 1990, I went to Berlin to see him. The first thing out of his mouth was, "Dima, we have the Wall!"
AB: What was your first impression of the wall and of the city itself?
DV: When I saw the wall for the first time - not far from Warschauer Straße - I was amazed by how low it was. For me, the wall was "The Wall", a fortification too big to see beyond. This was a huge mistake on the part of the East Germans, by the way - they should have made it about 50 metres high, so that West Berlin couldn't be seen from the East at all. There was some kind of van with paints there, and a few paintings already up; someone had already called it the East Side Gallery. This was a time when things were a total mess. There were border guards on the wall. They wouldn't let me into West Berlin, but they gave me water for painting. No one wanted to claim the wall at the time - no one knew who owned it. Naturally, West Berlin and West Germany said they had nothing to do with it. East Germany's defence ministry said they hadn't built it. There was no more Stasi. And the Soviet Union was far, far away. But there was some Scottish girl there, handing out permits for painting - a total racket. But I saw a sign that said "Gallery", and a gallery was exactly what we'd been dreaming of! I knew that an artist must get into a gallery. And on top of everything else the girl had a contract! What else does an artist need? To sign a contract with a gallery. I signed it, and didn't read it till about five years later, when everything had already been annulled, and I saw it said that artists gave up all rights to their paintings.

The mural in 2013
AB: And you just set about working?
DV: The Scottish girl said that Brezhnev and Honecker was politics, and that she had to talk it over with someone. I was told that the senate of West Berlin and the government of West Germany are afraid that if Gorbachev sees this painting on the wall, he'll refuse to let East Germany unite with West Germany. I even believed this. But then they gave the permission. I came back to Moscow briefly and started telling people I knew that you could paint on the Berlin Wall, and all my fellow artists said, "You're an idiot. That fence will get knocked down in a month. If you want to paint on fences, do it in Moscow." But I wanted to paint specifically on the Berlin Wall and specifically Brezhnev and Honecker's kiss. In this painting, there's one German and one Russian, and the Berlin Wall is about the same thing but in reverse: here [in the painting], there's total love, while the Berlin Wall separates two worlds - it was a perfect fit. When you paint something large in the open air, you're thinking not only about people's perception but also about their gut reaction. You're expecting everyone to say, "Wow!" I was waiting for this, too. But of course I didn't think that 25 years later my painting would be seen as a symbol of the Berlin Wall.
AB: When did you realize that you would be recognised primarily as the creator of this work, and that the work itself would become iconic?
DV: First I saw the early publications in West German magazines. Being a Homo Sovieticus, I thought that nothing could be cooler. Likewise, as a Homo Sovieticus, I didn't make any use of my popularity at the time and didn't capitalise on it in any way. I simply didn't know what to do with it. For many years, I lived my private life, while the painting lived its own life. In the early 2000s, people started bringing back souvenirs from Berlin - magnets, mugs, and the like - with the "Kiss" on them, which were now being sold not just at the East Side Gallery, but all over the city. That's how it became clear that it was now a symbol, an iconic work. And when in 2009, before the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall, I heard on TV that the paintings on the wall were going to be restored, I understood that now was the time to take control of things. In 1990, when I painted the "Kiss", it hit the bull's eye totally by accident. But the restoration and the current fate of the painting - this was something I did. At first, I fought for a long time for the preservation of the original layer [of paint] - in order not to do it Moscow-style: tear it down, rebuild it, and then call it the original. But either there wasn't money for a decent restoration, or the wall really was in truly bad shape - whatever the case, they didn't listen to me. I clearly remember how in March 2009 I was walking by the wall and saw that the "Kiss" was gone. I fell into an absolutely terrible state and then I said: hold on, this isn't right. I took pictures of it and through the newspapers drew the Germans' attention to the fact that the "Fraternal Kiss" was gone. And the Germans said, "Hey, guys, hold on there. Has someone just gone and taken our history away from us?" That's when it became clear that it had become a part of history, a part of Berlin. For three days in a row, there were articles, interviews with me, interviews with the man who had erased the painting. I started painting anew, and called a press conference on the day when the restoration began, because it was important to leave a record of all this - not only for myself, but for Berlin, too.

Dmitri Vrubel
AB: For you, how is the second "Kiss" different from the first one?
DV: In 1990, I painted something outside for the first time in my life, and for the first time in my life I used acrylic paints - before then, for 15 years I had painted only in apartments and only in oil. For this reason, that painting was sincere, maybe a little childish, and it was full of mistakes, which in 2009 I fixed. But the most important thing wasn't to fix the technical mistakes: it was not to make the painting worse. I began making sketches, and suddenly realised that in the collective memory my painting had been preserved in its original state, but I myself didn't remember how I had painted it. These were some of the most nightmarish days in my life. I was afraid that I would paint it over, and that someone would come up and say, "Well, of course, the other one was cooler, we all understand, it's hard to repeat something, and you're not so young." I washed off everything and somehow forced myself to turn away from these thoughts. And in a couple of days, when the faces were already finished, five German newspapers simultaneously came out with a photograph of this work and headlines like: "We have the Bruderkuss back". That's when I relaxed - it was a hit.

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Brotherly love: 25 years on, the artist behind the iconic Berlin Wall mural tells his story

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This interview first appeared in Russian in Kommersant Weekend AB: Do you remember 9 November 1989? DV: Yes, and I could have easily ended up in Berlin then, by chance. A friend and I were driving a Volga sedan from Paris to Moscow.

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“My God, Help me to Survive This Deadly Love” 

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“My God, Help me to Survive This Deadly Love” 

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Mural painted by Dmitri Vrubel in 1990 (restored in 2009) on the Eastern side of the Berlin Wall, photography by Joachim F. Thurn, provided to Wikipedia from the German Federal Archive

This mural is based on the photograph of Honecker and Brezhnev from 1979. For more in-depth political and historical background, see "Brezhnev Arrives in East Germany for 30th Anniversary Celebration." At the time Vrubel painted the mural, 1990, Brezhnev had died and Honecker was in exile. Because of this, when the mural was revealed, Berliners were instantly taken back to the height of their leadership, their actions, and the division of the Berlin Wall. ... [read more]

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In 1961, The Berlin Wall began its ascension into the skies. Noted as one of the most famous physical divisions in the world, it is easy to characterize the Wall through the events of November 9, 1989: its demise. Although, there were 28 years in between this time. 28 years of attempted escapes. 28 years of restriction. 28 years of death. Through the eyes of one of the most famous murals still lasting on the East side of the Berlin Wall (now a part of the East Side Gallery), we strive to remember how the "deadly love" between the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic hurt and killed so many individuals.

The mural in question, "My God, Help me to Survive This Deadly Love," showcases a fraternal socialist kiss between Leonid Brezhnev (leader of Soviet Union) and Erich Honecker (leader of GDR). It was painted by Dmitri Vrubel and depicts an almost exact replica of the original photograph taken in 1979.

Throughout the exhibition, you will receive important historical context through primary and secondary sources, engage deeper with the mural and physical representations of human suffering, and hear from the artist himself. With this basis of knowledge, you will be able to connect the political ideas with human faces and the numerous attempts at escape from East Berlin. The image is now internationally famous and a hot tourist spot, but it was painted within the context of the East Side Gallery, and that context is important. I have also brought in a contemporary interpretation and parody of the mural to compare the new intentions and interpretations to the original. Does it do the original mural in Berlin an injustice? While the artistic representations of Eastern Germany are exactly that, representational, there are real stories of real individuals throughout the exhibition. I hope this can help bring to life the economic and political facts that are outlined in the primary documents. Importantly, for the few personal stories you do hear, remember there are thousands that are not in this exhibition. Place them at the forefront. Think of what this mural means to those who lost family members, friends, or their own freedom.

The Berlin Wall was not the last wall of its kind, and the global conversation certainly did not stop on November 9, 1989. The fall of the Wall was not necessarily inevitable. It is of great importance to continually engage with and understand the different human representations of pain, death, and suffering. These physical representations of pain, and how they still exist and function in our collective memory of history, is vital to stop history from repeating itself. Because a physical border has been eliminated, does that mean the mental border or lack of freedom disappears with it? Does our memory of the Wall trivialize what actually occurred at its foundation? Can physical objects do justice to those who were killed? How have we, as a world, become divorced from tragedy at this border? How can we celebrate the breaking of division, the fall of the Wall, while simultaneously honoring those who did not live to see its fruition?

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“Berlin Street Art History: Where Graffiti Found its Home"

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“Berlin Street Art History: Where Graffiti Found its Home"

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History of graffiti on the Berlin Wall from Berlin Street Art, posted on 02/24/16

This article explains the importance and function of street art in general, as well as on the Berlin Wall. The Berlin Wall acted as a “blank canvas” for artists to publicly express their discontent with the wall, politics, figures, and groups, especially after its fall. It was also a meeting point for generations of activists and artists to come together, despite the literal and metaphorical divisive nature of the wall, to tell stories and express themselves. ... [read more]

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It is often said that the history of graffiti is as old as the history of humanity itself. Scribbles on the walls were the first form of artistic expression, the first evidence of human creativity, which survived in its various forms until the present day. Nonetheless, it wasn't until the 20th century that wall inscriptions became a cultural phenomenon in their own right. The beginnings of modern day graffiti are often traced back to late 1970s New York, a city that gave birth to a lively new movement originating from various subcultural backgrounds. However, it is important to note the difference between contemporary street art and graffiti at the very beginning. They can be both described as nontraditional forms of artistic and cultural expression that share territorial affiliation, using public spaces as their media of choice. Street art and graffiti originated as a way of expressing discontents and creating awareness of socio-political issues on a local, communal level, ultimately becoming an essential part of the global visual culture. Even though these two disciplines are inextricably linked, the history of street art is a story that goes beyond aerosol graffiti and can't be explored without a wider local context in mind.

Evolution of Street Art - Local Histories

The term street art gained popularity during the graffiti boom in the late 1970s and 1980s, which is one of the main reasons why many experts connect the beginnings of the movement to the United States. Although, graffiti had an essential role in making of the modern street art history the evolution of street art is more complex than it seems. Street art, as the most versatile global art movement of today, owes its glory to the intersection of numerous local forms of public expressions, born in different parts of the world.

The art of stenciling, poster art, and wheat pasting, now some of the most common and popular street art techniques, developed from European revolutionary politics and were used by those in power to communicate political propaganda, as well as those who resisted, spreading the opposite ideas. In Mexico, South America, and Latino neighborhoods in the US, sociopolitical messaging gained shape of the large-scale public murals, drawing from the rich artistic heritage and centuries-long tradition of mural painting. All those techniques and styles that gave birth to global street art culture were born in relation to local socio-political contexts, exploring the complex ides of identity in relation to public spaces. The socio-political setting is an inevitable reference when it comes to understanding street art in its local context, and it is the idea that had to be introduced before we move to our story - the evolution of street art scene in Berlin.

The Berlin Wall - Birthplace of Local Graffiti Culture

One of the common places in many texts that deal with the evolution of Berlin street art scene is that it began on the west side of the Berlin Wall. The initial barbed wire fence introduced in the 1960s grew into a sophisticated security system of concrete walls, electric fences and guard towers, separating the East side from the West, embodying all the anxieties of the Cold War in the most concrete of senses. During the eighties, the wall was reconstructed and raised 14 feet tall, which made it a perfect message board, a blank canvas for artists and dissatisfied individuals of West Berlin to express their opinions and affiliations. As many commentators note, the initial impulse to paint on the Wall came not from the Berliners, but early settlers in American-occupied sector consisting of draft resisters, anarchist punks, and Turkish migrants, who used the wall to express their thoughts and beliefs. French artist Thierry Noir who was at the time living in one of the squats near the Berlin Wall, is claimed to be one of the first artists to paint on the Wall and his initiative was followed by many acclaimed and unknown art practitioners, as well as multitude of visitors.

The Berlin Wall also became the meeting point for the first generation of graffiti writers, some of them being the children of US servicemen, who brought the booming spirit of their local graffiti culture to West Berlin. It is one of the main reasons why initial graffiti writings were heavily influenced by the New York graffiti scene. As the paintings on the west side of the Wall flourished, the east side was left with the blank, sterile wall surface, where free artistic expression on the one side became a marker of social and cultural differences of separate societies. All this changed after the fall of Berlin Wall in 1989, when the city as a whole became playground for artists of both sides and street art scene thrived in the atmosphere of newly found freedom.

East Side Gallery - A Freedom Memorial

The street art movement continued to develop after the Wall collapsed, with artists marching into Eastern neighborhoods like Mitte, Friedrichshain, Prenzlauer Berg and turning the gray areas of the city into vibrant art districts. Parallel to the spontaneous forms of artistic expression, which started developing in the city, one of the most significant mural projects was initiated on the remains of the Wall construction. In 1990, artists from all over the world were invited to paint on the Wall's empty east side, celebrating reunification and expressing hopes for brighter future. The remains of the Wall, with over one hundred murals became known as the East Side Gallery, one of the largest open-air galleries in the world and the biggest memorial to the world piece. Not to mention one of the most important tourist attractions in Berlin. The preservation and restoration of East Side murals defaced by illicit artworks and graffiti tags also raised some important questions about the nature of street art, its legality and cultural significance, questions that came to define Berlin's street art scene in the years to come.

From Spontaneous Developments to Tourist Attraction - Berlin as Street Art Capital

In street art community, Berlin is often referred to as "the graffiti Mecca", "street art capital" and "most bombed city in Europe." Considering that graffiti are illegal in Berlin, one has to ask how did the city earn its title, which again takes us back to the social and cultural contextualization. The rich and versatile street art scene in Berlin is a result of various paradoxes that followed the evolution of the movement. Graffiti and street art had an essential role in shaping the identity of the city and when UNESCO proclaimed Berlin the City of Design in 2006, there were no doubts that vibrant street art scene partially influenced the decision. On the one hand, illicit street art is seen as vandalism by the authorities, on the other the perception of Berlin as "the graffiti Mecca" attracts millions of tourists a year, contributing to the city's debt-riddled economy. Illegal street art is punishable by law, yet the city officials weren't particularly eager in their efforts to address the issue or initiate graffiti removal projects. This all lead to the paradoxical situation in which street art and graffiti thrived, using the gray legal area as their foundation. In addition, in the time of globally shared enthusiasm regarding street and urban art, as byproduct came the effort to turn the city's street art scene into the industry and institutionalize what was once known as a free-spirited movement.

Berlin's Versatile Street Art Scene

While in the eighties graffiti and wall painting developed in reaction to the sociopolitical atmosphere of the divided city, the years after the fall of the Wall were followed by the new direction. For street artists and graffiti writers, new mission was to reclaim the public spaces and the result was a plethora of versatile street art expressions. From numerous graffiti crews to prolific local artists working in various techniques from stencils to paste-ups, protagonists of street art scene in Berlin participated in the making of a truly diversified and exciting movement. The dynamic local scene and perception of Berlin as a city that embraces street art also attracted a number of international artists who were looking for that sense of freedom of working in the streets that wasn't found elsewhere.

Until the 2000s, which triggered a street art craze on a global level, much of the work on Berlin streets was developing on a small-scale through spontaneous interventions. Besides proliferation of graffiti tagging, street art evolved through its own dynamics giving birth to a generation of prolific artists like , , Mein Lieber Prost and , who developed a unique set of recognizable characters, communicating with local audiences by remaining constantly in the public eye. After the 2000s, the city saw an increasing number of large-scale mural projects, embracing what became the most sought after trend in street and urban art. Although it could be argued that commissioned mural works don't fall into the category of traditional street art tendencies, these large-scale projects added a new layer to what already was a prosperous street art scene.

With the abundance of graffiti writings, versatile street art expressions and monumental mural works made by many celebrated local and international artists, Berlin truly is a unique city that leaves no street art enthusiast indifferent. The city walls tell the story of Berlin's rich cultural heritage of public art while also displaying new and innovative advancements. In the end, whether we decide to accept the title of the "street art capital" of not, the fact remains that Berlin is still one of the essential references when it comes to graffiti and street art in Europe and on a worldwide scale. If you're interested in experiencing the city's rich street art scene and gaining comprehensive insight into its evolution and stories behind the works, you should definitely consider taking a street art tour with Berlin Street Art.

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Berlin Street Art History - Where Graffiti Found Home

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It is often said that the history of graffiti is as old as the history of humanity itself. Scribbles on the walls were the first form of artistic expression, the first evidence of human creativity, which survived in its various forms until the present day.

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Educational video by Konrad H. Jarausch (TEDEd). Posted to YouTube on 08/16/17

This video provides a comprehensive overview of the history behind the Berlin Wall, how it was built, and what the wall meant symbolically and literally in history and contemporary times. Very aptly, throughout the political history, there is great emphasis placed on those who attempted to escape or died while trying. ... [read more]

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The rise and fall of the Berlin Wall - Konrad H. Jarausch