Make Love, Not Wall: May 19th Field Question
Friends, families, a city, a nation totally separated; that is the significance that lies with the Berlin Wall. This idea of separation and the struggle to live with it or even overcome it is a central theme of the Berlin Wall museum. The second you set foot within the museum, you're struck by several things. In the back of the room, you can see picture stands with photographs of life within the Berlin wall, accompanied by descriptions of what the pictures are depicting. But these are not the first things that catch your eye, no, your attention is immediately focused on the exhibit directly in front of the entry way; a large spike panel that East German officials placed at the bottom of the wall to maim potential escapees, Berliners dubbed it "Stalin's Lawn". An icon of separation, and the extreme measures that the Soviet's employed to ensure that separation stayed in place. After looking at the grisly trap, the museum tells the tale of a changing Berlin; one that had to experience the construction of the wall, adapt to life with it, its population's attempt to escape over the wall, and the falling of the wall and the resulting re-unification of a broken nation.
In that sense, the museum was very moving. Perhaps I'm just reminded of the Karlshorst museum, and am already operating on nostalgia. However, the museum does tell a story, it has recordings from survivors of the wall, it tells the story of people who escaped the wall or assisted in escapes. Furthermore, it tells the story of the politics leading up to the creation, existence, and destruction of the wall. It gives the museum viewer a complete picture of the Berlin Wall, showing everything from the politics to the more personal human aspect of life behind the wall.
That's the strength of this museum, I feel. It focuses on every aspect of the wall, reinforcing this over-all central theme of separation and how devastating it can be not only to the country, but to her people.
6 comments:
You are finding that the central theme is separation, I find this interesting as I thought that the theme was more the search for freedom. I guess every person interprets how they will. Maybe when they built this documentation centre they meant it to be that everyone takes away something different.
Interesting, I had almost forgotten about the spikey object at the beginning of the museum. Do you think it is significant that it is at the beginning of the exhibit? I feel like it is almost a shock technique, to set the mood for the rest of the exhibit, although I didn't find anything else quite as visually intense.
Definitely feel it was meant as a shock exhibit. I think it was significant that it sort of sets the tone of the museum. You go in there not knowing what to fully expect, you know the story of the wall from an outsider's perspective, but you don't know what to expect from a proper German museum. As such, it shows how vicious the Berlin Wall was, and the methods that were employed to enforce this notion of separation; such as barriers, guard posts, secret police, and the shooting of anybody who dared to cross the wall.
So yes, definitely a shock exhibit, but in the best possible way. It grabs the viewer's attention the second they set foot within the museum, and shows them the ugly brutal reality of the bloody Berlin Wall.
Great title haha
I think that another main part of this museum was the video section that shows the recounts of people who lived or escaped from former East Germany. This really helped me connect with the topic on a deeper level as I find that hearing and seeing people talk about their fear and torment is much more moving than reading about it in a book. "Stalin's Lawn" really shows how difficult it would have been to escape from East Germany once the Wall was fully built. It really proved to the desperate and harsh measures former East Germany went through to try to keep the citizens from escaping!
I agree with you that in a lot of ways this museum showed the story of the Wall in many different ways, and thus became more effective because of it. Do you think that the inclusion of the church rebuilt across the street and the area of the Wall that is still maintained (at least, visually) adds to this aspect as well?
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