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‘It has to go away, but at the same time it has to be kept’: the Berlin Wall and the making of an urban icon

‘It has to go away, but at the same time it has to be kept’: the Berlin Wall and the making of an urban icon
‘It has to go away, but at the same time it has to be kept’: the Berlin Wall and the making of an urban icon
For 28 years, from 13 August 1961 through 9 November 1989, the city of Berlin was divided by a wall. The borderline was the symbol for the Cold War and the political partition between East and West – but it was also an element of the urban structure: Berliners in the two parts of the city had to live with it and to define themselves in relation to it. After the fall of the wall and its destruction in the euphoric mood of re-unification, a huge inner-urban wasteland became the symbol for the need of a new politics of memory: the missing Berlin Wall became an urban icon.
What business do we have in Berlin? Memories.
Uwe Johnson
0963-9268
85-105
Schlör, Joachim
bb73c4ae-2ef4-44ba-b889-b319afb40b03
Schlör, Joachim
bb73c4ae-2ef4-44ba-b889-b319afb40b03

Schlör, Joachim (2006) ‘It has to go away, but at the same time it has to be kept’: the Berlin Wall and the making of an urban icon. Urban History, 33 (1), 85-105. (doi:10.1017/S0963926806003531).

Record type: Article

Abstract

For 28 years, from 13 August 1961 through 9 November 1989, the city of Berlin was divided by a wall. The borderline was the symbol for the Cold War and the political partition between East and West – but it was also an element of the urban structure: Berliners in the two parts of the city had to live with it and to define themselves in relation to it. After the fall of the wall and its destruction in the euphoric mood of re-unification, a huge inner-urban wasteland became the symbol for the need of a new politics of memory: the missing Berlin Wall became an urban icon.
What business do we have in Berlin? Memories.
Uwe Johnson

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Published date: 9 August 2006

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 47573
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/47573
ISSN: 0963-9268
PURE UUID: b3388ea3-f51a-4c1c-b4ce-ccc82e9b1ef5

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Date deposited: 02 Aug 2007
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 09:33

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