The Berlin Wall after the Berlin Wall: Site into sight

Abstract

How did the Berlin Wall disappear as a border and re-appear as a site of memory? This article examines how the material space of the Wall was erased and reintroduced as worthy of commemoration. It shows how the Wall was first taken “out of time” (de-temporalized) and then re-temporalized within narratives of trauma, consumption, and the political through three key sites of commemoration—the Berlin Wall Memorial at Bernauer Strasse, Checkpoint Charlie, and the East Side Gallery. Independently and as part of the city’s official “concept” for memorializing the Wall, these sites connect the city as much to its search for new frontiers of possible futures as they do to its past. Examining them allows us to explore the role of temporality and materiality in the construction of collective memory.