Urban Identity Policies in Berlin

8/16/2019 Urban Identity Policies in Berlin

1/10

Urban identity policies in Berlin: From critical reconstruction to reconstructing

the Wall

Alexander Tölle *

Institute of Socio-Economic Geography and Spatial Management, Adam Mickiewicz University Poznań , ul. Dzięgielowa 27, 61-680 Poznań, Poland

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 15 July 2009

Received in revised form 8 March 2010

Accepted 25 April 2010

Available online 31 May 2010

Keywords:

East-Central European cities

Berlin Wall

Critical reconstruction

Urban identity

Marketing story

a b s t r a c t

After the fall of the Iron Curtain, the East-Central European cities had to re-invent themselves to quicklyadapt to a globalising world. Urban identity production policies were usually geared to connect to a cho-

sen pre-socialist ‘‘Golden Age”, ignoring the socialist past as a simple disturbance of a ‘‘normal” develop-

ment path. This story the cities were to tell, however, frequently conflicted with the socio-economic

realities of a rather unsmooth transformation process, making the socialist past part of the urban identity.

In the case of Berlin, a post-socialist and at the same time a post-western-stronghold city, urban identity

production is bound to be more complicated than anywhere else. After the failure of the policy to ‘‘crit-

ically reconstruct” the cosmopolitan metropolis of the 1920s and thus erasing the past of the divided city,

policies developed in the run-up to the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall aim at turning the Cold

War past into a central element of the story that is to support its urban identity, notably leading to

the comprehensive re-emergence of the Berlin Wall in the cityscape. This policy – unmatched in other

East-Central European cities – has its origins in a historic struggle for identity, leading to the questionable

attempt to make ‘‘change” the main story Berlin is to tell. This theme however – in conjunction with the

reconstructed Wall as image brand – may fall short of creating an urban identity accepted by large pop-

ulation parts.

2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction

In 2009, Europe has been celebrating the 20th anniversary of

the end of its division into two worlds. With the Soviet Union gone

and most of its former satrap states having become independent

nations, integrated into European and NATO structures, the socia-

list legacy has to a significant degree vanished from the face of

the East-Central European cities. In the first place, this is to be seen

as the result of a deliberate process to reshape urban space and

identity. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, cities became for the first

time, after decades, independent self-ruling entities, and had to

adapt quickly to the new democratic and market economy struc-

tures. However, the de-industrialisation process that followed the

collapse of the communist command economy and the entering

of those cities into the system of a globalising economy led in most

cases to a severe crisis going far beyond economic questions (To-

sics, 2005; Parysek, 2006; Stanilov, 2007). In a time lapse – when

compared to the similar but decade-long processes in Western cit-

ies – traditional urban structures and milieus lost their meaning

and their means of existence, putting for some the promised

prosperity and thus legitimacy of the new political and economic

system into question. While the phenomenon of increasing dispar-

ities between ‘‘winners” and ‘‘losers” may be seen as one of the

most characteristic features of globalisation of spaces in general

(Hall and Pfeiffer, 2000; Marcuse, 2004), it led to even deeper

repercussions in East-Central European urban societies in which

former social values and authorities had to a great extent become

meaningless.

The production of ‘‘new” urban identities in East-Central Euro-

pean cities is to be analysed in this context. Urban identity – mean-

ing the place identity of a city as a whole – matters in city

development policies because it is ‘‘identity” that turns an urban

space into a distinguishable place. Urban identity is the result of

a collective process based on interpretation and narrative rather

than on purely design features (Hague, 2005; Weichhart et al.,

2006), and this process is subject to manipulation by political deci-

sion makers (Smith, 2005). So place identity may to a significant

degree become an outcome of urban development strategies; as

Hague (2005, p. 8) puts it, ‘‘a key purpose of planning is to create,

reproduce or mould the identities of places through manipulation

of the activities, feelings, meanings and fabric that combine into

place identity”. Of special importance here are city marketing pol-

icies as they are aiming at the creation of an urban identity in

accordance to its two relevant forms (Ebert, 2004; Weichhart

et al., 2006): They intend to foster the identification of a city (as

a cognitive perception) in the context of attracting e.g. investors

0264-2751/$ - see front matter 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.doi:10.1016/j.cities.2010.04.005

* Tel.: +48 61 829 6152; fax: +48 61 829 6127.

E-mail address: [email protected]

Cities 27 (2010) 348–357

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Cities

j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w . e l s e v i e r . c o m / l o c a t e / c i t i e s

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2010.04.005mailto:[email protected]://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/02642751http://www.elsevier.com/locate/citieshttp://www.elsevier.com/locate/citieshttp://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/02642751mailto:[email protected]://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2010.04.005


2/10

and tourists, as well as the identification with a city (as an expres-

sion of emotional connectivity) in the context of contributing to

the creation of a coherent city population. In the sense of urban

policies, it is the identification of a city that may be influenced

through active measures to change its cognitive perception. This

in turn is the prerequisite for a change of the identification with

a city.

So from this perspective urban identity becomes a product of deliberate selection processes by urban elites and governments

in order to create the intended narrative or story, and that means

above all a selection of anything that happened in the past. In

her cultural historical studies on ‘‘spaces of memory”, which have

become widely observed in other disciplines including spatial and

geographical sciences, Assmann (2008) has made the distinction

between two complementary modes of the cultural memory, i.e.

the ‘‘active memory”, which takes in what is regarded as important

for group belonging, value attachment and future, and the ‘‘archi-

val memory”, which is holding everything that has lost its connec-

tion to the present. In that, she is drawing a parallel to the

psychotherapeutic concept of ‘‘story”. This concept denotes that

it is only a ‘‘small part of our memory that is consciously processed

and emplotted in a ‘story’ that we construct as a backbone to our

identity” (Assmann, 2008, p. 212). Elements deemed not suitable

to this story are simply not incorporated into the ‘‘active memory”,

yet are forming its background as the ‘‘archival memory”. This

three-dimensional model helps to explain the convertibility of a

conscious memory and thus of a created self-image in accordance

to elements picked from the ‘‘archival memory”. The notion of

‘‘story” draws a direct link to strategic marketing aiming at produc-

ing an urban identity, because the designing of communication

strategies as well as of urban fabrics is following an elaborated

‘‘script” or ‘‘story” (Mikunda, 2002; Peca, 2009). It has been stated

in numerous studies on Western cities that these ‘‘pick and choose”

processes concerning the past and its built remnants – due to their

intertwined and subjective character – have been frequently

resulting in conflicts about the urban identity as interpreted by

political decision makers, local elites, and different parts of the lo-cal community (see e.g. Holt, 2000; van der Horst, 2003).

In the case of East-Central European cities, the main strategy to

be observed since the 1990s was undoubtedly the creation of a

‘‘European” identity, aiming at shaping modern, international and

capitalist place identities, which meant in consequence the com-

plete rejection of the socialist past (Young and Kaczmarek, 2008).

This may be seen in line with the general transformation process

of the post-socialist economies and societies in the 1990s. The then

dominant neoliberal shock therapy approach praised the destruc-

tion of anything from the ‘‘bad” socialist area as the quickest and

most effective ‘‘vehicle for genesis” (Buravoy and Verdery, 1999,

p. 5). In the urban context, this included policies of ‘‘de-Commun-

isation” of the cityscape by changing street names and toppling

statues (see e.g. James, 1999 on Budapest, Light, 2004 on Bucha-rest) in order to make the urban space represent and legitimate

the new political and economic situation by ostentatiously reject-

ing the old one, or policies of explicit restyling of city spaces in

some ‘‘westernising” or internationalising way, e.g. by integrating

modern places of capital and consumption (Andrusz, 2008, see also

e.g. Temelová and Hrychová, 2004 on Prague, Staddon and Mollov,

2000 on Sofia). This transformation approach meant in conse-

quence also ‘‘a kind of reversal of history, or going back to the

future” (Buchowski, 2001, p. 14), as the socialist period was only

interpreted as a ‘‘disturbance” of a supposedly ‘‘normal” track of

development, on which the East-Central European societies have

been finally put back. In terms of urban identity, this going back

meant the re-discovering and displaying of some glorious pre-so-

cialist ‘‘Golden Age” of the city (see e.g. Nyka, 2003 on Gdansk;Murzyn, 2006 on Cracow, Petro, 2009 on Novgorod). This ‘‘Golden

Age” stands for a prosperous time of the city’s history, to which it is

to return, and is to deliver the necessary story ingredients to create

the contemporary urban identity (Young and Light, 2006). How-

ever, this identity may become contested by the re-emergence of

the socialist past, with parts of the urban society – mostly but

not exclusively those that are rather unhappy with the new reali-

ties – claiming it as part of their identity, which they want to see

being represented. Another contester is the growing sector of ‘‘Communist heritage tourism”, i.e. the attractiveness of places

connected to the socialist past to – mostly Western – tourists.

The exploitation of this economic potential requires the visible

presence of the socialist past, which poses a considerable challenge

to any urban identity construction denying this element (Young

and Light, 2006).

The German capital city of Berlin had never vanished behind the

Iron Curtain but was exposed right on the front-line of the Cold

War and may therefore be seen as a post-socialist and at the same

time something like a post-western-stronghold city. Hence, it is a

special case of an East-Central European city were the process of

identity production is bound to be more complicated than any-

where else. The different layers of history present in its cityscape

and their integration into modern Berlin have been the issue of

numerous studies (Ladd, 1997; Till, 2005; Roost, 2008; Schalen-

berg, 2009), as have the complicated processes to define a ‘‘mis-

sion” or an urban identity for this city in an increasingly difficult

socioeconomic situation (Cochrane and Jonas, 1999; Krätke,

2004; Häußermann and Kapphan, 2005). There are also numerous

studies on how, in central places, the past of the Cold War period

was meant to give way to a reinvented cosmopolitan Berlin, and

how this urban identity production failed as the remnants of socia-

list and Wall times remained for multiple reasons – economical,

political, social – visible (Luescher, 2002; Girot, 2004; Liebhart,

2007; Wilhelm, 2008; Sigel, 2009).

This article, however, will discuss a recent turn – developed in

the run-up to the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall – of deal-

ing with the past from this historical period by making it a central

element of the story that is to contribute to the creation of an ur-ban identity. This policy is notably to lead to the comprehensive re-

emergence of the Berlin Wall in the urban space. In this, the past of

the Cold War times is dealt with in a way unprecedented in other

East-Central European cities. As will be shown, this policy has its

origins in a historic struggle for identity during the whole of the

last century, as well as in the 1990s, in a completely unexpected

difficult economic situation, leading to the questionable attempt

to make ‘‘change” the main story Berlin is to tell. It will, however,

be argued that this story theme – in conjunction with the recon-

structed Wall as image brand – may fall short of creating an urban

identity accepted by large parts of the population.

The split identity of a divided city

One may argue that the quest for an urban identity was an open

issue in Berlin long before the Cold War, i.e. after Prussia had been

absorbed by the newly-founded German Empire in 1871. Berlin

may have risen to be the capital of Germany and a metropolis of

world standing, yet it never became a source of identity for the

German people, and thus somehow remained ‘‘without a firm

shape or definition – an unfinished capital in the middle of an

unfinished nation” (Engert, 1985, p. 150). In addition, with the shift

of the border between Poland and Germany in 1945, as a result of

the Second World War, this until then East- rather than West-look-

ing city lost its ancestral hinterland (East Prussia, Silesia, Pomera-

nia), which was once the predominant source of its population and

vitality. The capital itself, surrounded by the Soviet occupationzone, became divided into four occupation sectors (a US, UK,

A. Tölle / Cities 27 (2010) 348–357 349


3/10

French, and Soviet sector). This was followed by a quick sequence

of dramatic events: the establishment of an ill-fated four-power

control structure, the blockade of West Berlin by the Soviet Union

and the Airbridge by the Western forces, and the following years

with West Berlin being a front post of Western democracy in the

Cold War as well as an open door in the Iron Curtain. So it was

not until after the closing of this door – the construction of the

Wall on 13th of August 1961 – that something like normalcy setin. Yet, as Merritt (1985) rightly points out, this was no returning

to a former state, but a new state being created after years of hy-

per-excitement. It meant that in divided Berlin, through a process

of ‘‘adaptation and repression” (Flemming and Koch, 2001), people

in East and West had no option but to accept the realities and to

organise their personal life in their respective halves of the city

by turning their backs to the Wall and anything behind it. Still,

there can be no doubt that it always dominated people’s minds –

it simply was not possible to think ‘‘Berlin” without thinking

‘‘the Wall” at the same time, and so ‘‘the Wall became inseparable

from the city’s identity” (Ladd, 1997, p. 20).

With the construction of the Wall, the identity search for Berlin

turned into a permanent cause. As Engert (1985, p. 153) described

it back in the 1980s: ‘‘Today the city is looking for a function. It

knows what it was, but it still does not know what it is, let alone

what it will be.” This split identity is perhaps best reflected in

the contemporary ironic notion of ‘‘Halbweltstadt Berlin”, which

may be read in German as ‘‘half a cosmopolitan city”, as ‘‘city of

the demimonde”, or as ‘‘semi-cosmopolitan city”. This was also a

consequence of the utterly different and in addition over time

changing stories the Wall was telling to different groups. In the

perception of a ‘‘front city” of Western democracy, the Wall was

originally interpreted as a defeat: Western powers had not raised

a finger to stop this violation of human rights. Yet over time, Berlin

and the Wall developed into a symbol of justice for the cause of

German unity. The interpretation was that it was only by force,

i.e. by a cruel and absurd structure, that the ‘‘unnatural” division

of Germany could be upheld, and thus the ‘‘natural” state of Ger-many was that of a single nation (Ladd, 1997). Berlin and the Wall

signified both division and unity, of Germany as well as of Europe.

At the same time, however, it was also a symbol of shame, and not

only from the Western perspective for the East German regime that

had to wall in its citizens. The city’s division was a result of the Sec-

ond World War, which was a result of Nazi Germany’s aggression.

From this perspective, the Wall told the story of German megalo-

mania. In addition, the Wall was guarded not by Red Army soldiers,

but by obliging Germans. And there was a significant East–West

ambiguity of perception of the dividing line. Westerners could

physically interact with the Wall, e.g. by touching it, painting on

it, walking along it, looking over it, or travelling through it. The lat-

ter was even a familiar part of life to every West Berliner when

using the transit routes to West Germany. By contrast, for Eastern-

ers even the territory adjacent to the border was a no-go area. To

them, the very existence of the Wall seemed unreal, just as the

existence of a land beyond it. And on both sides there was what

Feversham and Schmidt (1999, p. 124) describe as ‘‘emotional

comfort in relation to the Wall”: The Wall did not only define the

margins of one’s space in a physical way, but in a psychological

Illustration 1. Brandenburg Gate on the ‘‘critically reconstructed” Pariser Platz.

350 A. Tölle/ Cities 27 (2010) 348–357


4/10

sense it stood for clear parameters and gave orientation in space as

well as in life.

‘‘Critical reconstruction of a golden age

With the decision of the East German government to open its

checkpoints on that evening of 9th November 1989, the Berlin Wall

lost its brutal function. In the euphoria that followed, the city’sreunification accompanied a strong belief that Berlin was now back

on its ‘‘natural” way to become again a major metropolis, the cap-

ital city of the biggest European national economy and possibly the

third European Global City after London and Paris. This conviction

was broadly based on the role Berlin played in the 1920s, before

the ‘‘natural” development path had been interrupted by the Nazi

regime, the Second World War, and the division. So as in other

East-Central European cities, a ‘‘Golden Age” was defined, and

the ‘‘re-creation of hip, cosmopolitan Weimar Berlin” (Till, 2005,

p. 194) was the target. This was put into an urban development

policy under the catchphrase of ‘‘Critical Reconstruction”. ‘‘Critical

Reconstruction” – aiming for the creation of an urban diversity by a

mixture of functions and of new urban structures oriented along

traditional settlement forms – selected in effect the remains of pre-war and pre-Nazi legacy to become elements of the ‘‘story”

of new, 21st-century Berlin. This policy determined the planning

strategy for the inner city of Berlin in the boom years of the early

1990s, when Berlin was the arguably busiest real estate investment

theatre in Europe. It is rewarding to briefly look at the thinking of

one of the main protagonists of ‘‘Critical Reconstruction” here, the

city’s then Director of Urban Development Hans Stimmann. To

him, the memory of the city was contained in its urban structure

determining its physiognomy, and post-war Berlin had lost ‘‘a large

proportion of its memory” by the time of reunification, as urban

development had been a ‘‘systematically carried out dissolution

of vast parts of the Berlin inner city” ( Stimmann, 2001, p. 24). So

he saw his task in detecting historical traces from pre-war and

pre-Nazi times and to re-interpret them. In consequence, the resto-ration of old street and square outlines and the adaptation of new

buildings to the existing ones, in form and architecture, dominated

the guidelines for the numerous urban competitions and work-

shops concerning key city areas, and eventually also the ‘‘Inner City

Planning Framework”, the overall strategic planning document for

downtown Berlin adopted in 1999.

‘‘Critical Reconstruction” – which has often been criticised as an

unreasonable attempt to turn back the clock (Ladd, 1997) – inevi-

tably aimed at excluding the legacy of socialist East Berlin and

notably of divided Berlin from the new urban identity. In conse-

quence, the draconic fortification edifices of the Berlin Wall were

step by step removed. This was seemingly based on a general con-

sent: most people just wanted to get rid of the hated Wall as

quickly as possible, and that was what happened. Any proposals

to preserve parts of it for future generations or to mark its former

course in the city received little support. It appears that again, the

physical disappearance of the border strip was seen as just a ‘‘nat-

ural” process leading to normalcy. It is noteworthy in that context

that the Berlin Senate decided in 1992 explicitly against the elab-

oration of any strategic planning document for the former border

Illustration 2. The ‘‘House at Checkpoint Charlie” on Friedrichstraße. Reinstalled replicas of the former Allied Checkpoint, no remains of the East German checkpoint.

A. Tölle / Cities 27 (2010) 348–357 351


5/10

strip as a whole, even though by that time numerous renowned

architects and urban planners – notably in the course of an exhibi-

tion organised in 1991 by the Museum of Architecture in Frank-

furt-upon-Main – had already developed alternative design

visions such as turning the whole strip into a public precinct (Lam-

pugnani and Mönninger, 1991).

The arguably best-known symbol of divided Berlin (if not Eur-

ope) – the Brandenburg Gate in the middle of annihilated PariserPlatz – is a splendid example for this ‘‘return to the future” policy.

The design guidelines defined a historic restoration of the square

space itself and a height limitation deriving from the pre-war con-

ditions for the adjacent buildings to be constructed. Hence, no one

visiting this vibrant place today is likely to experience much of its

dramatic history as a border space Illustration 1. The same may be

said about the most prominent urban project in reunified Berlin:

the twin squares of Potsdamer Platz and Leipziger Platz. However,

here the political guidelines to design these places in accordance

with their pre-war function and character were significantly

weakened by the economic boom processes of the early 1990s.

The urban layout – apart from the octagonal form of Leipziger

Platz – and functions are different from those of the pre-war

times, and public life has largely shifted from public places to

malls and plazas (Wilhelm, 2008, p. 287). The urban design,

however, again reveals nothing of the history of an annihilated

and divided city space; e.g. the once famous ‘‘Last House on Potsd-

amer Platz” has become integrated in such a way that it is hardly

perceptible at all.

Towards a post-socialist and post-division urban identity

The wished-for new urban identity of a metropolis of European

standing, however, started increasingly to clash with reality. At the

latest, at the end of the 1990s, it became clear that Berlin was a

world apart from ‘‘retaking” its seat between the European Global

Cities of London and Paris. It rather struggled hard to compete in

economic terms even with West German regional centres likeStuttgart or Düsseldorf. Berlin became characterised by a massive

de-industrialisation, increasing urban poorness, a still existing

mental and socioeconomic East–West divide, a dramatic situation

of the city’s budget, and the absence of any decisive economic ef-

fects deriving from the return of the German government (Krätke,

2004; Häußermann and Kapphan, 2005). This lead to a growing

dissatisfaction by large parts of the population that could not iden-

tify with the existing realities, and the initial euphoria about hav-

ing become one unified people again was increasingly replaced by

a growing sense of difference between Easterners (‘‘Ossis”) and

Westerners (‘‘Wessis”).

Looking at the policy of ‘‘Critical Reconstruction” from this per-

spective, it is no wonder that the devaluation of post-war urban

structures – even though it was in essence a swan song to modern-

ist urbanism and applied to both parts of the city – became a strong

conflict point in former East Berlin as it was seen by many as yet

another attempt to eradicate East Germans’ past and identity.

Yet also, the legacy of the divided city that had been extinguished

from the city’s new identity re-emerged. In urban development

Illustration 3. The official Wall Memorial on Bernauer Straße as seen from the terrace of the Documentation Centre. Reconstructed border fortifications in-between an ‘‘IronCurtain”.

352 A. Tölle/ Cities 27 (2010) 348–357


6/10

terms, there is one prominent place in which the ‘‘Critical Recon-

struction” concept clashed sharply with the legacy of the Wall:

the former Checkpoint Charlie on Friedrichstraße, the often cited

‘‘focal point of the Cold War” where American and Soviet tanks

confronted each other at gunpoint in October 1961. This is also

the location of the private museum ‘‘House at Checkpoint Charlie,”

whose exhibition displays since 1962 the brutal history of the con-

struction of the Wall as well as of imaginative escapes. The mu-seum continues to attract large crowds, while any remains of the

East German checkpoint have vanished Illustration 2. The ground

had been sold to an investor who wanted to use the well-known

location to create an ‘‘American Business Center” there, yet be-

cause of financial difficulties some lots of this ‘‘critically recon-

structed” area remain undeveloped (Luescher, 2002). References

to the border situation have been reduced to a double line of cob-

blestones that mark the Wall’s course and a replica of the former

U.S. army checkpoint, as well as some information boards. In

2004, the ‘‘House at Checkpoint Charlie” stirred public upheaval

by implementing an art project next to its premises consisting of

the erection of a Wall replica – yet on an empty lot were the Wall

never stood – and of 1065 black crosses – one for each recorded

victim of the German-German border. While most passers-by

and notably tourists liked this form of making history felt in the ur-

ban space, the not coincidental allusion of this Wall memorial to

the Holocaust memorial made it unacceptable for the official Berlin

as well as most media commentators as any equation of East Ger-

man crimes against humanity with Nazi atrocities was regarded as

intolerable (Liebhart, 2007). In 2005, the memorial was finally

abolished by the Berlin municipality – against loud protests of for-

mer East German political prisoners.

This erasure of a private object evidently disturbing the ‘‘criti-

cally reconstructed” new identity has also been justified by the

argument that by that time Berlin already had an official Wall

Memorial. Its history started back in 1990 when the German His-torical Museum fenced off a 200-m-long section of the border for-

tifications at Bernauer Straße. Once an ordinary street with typical

five-storey tenement houses on both sides, it became world fa-

mous because of pictures taken there on 13th August 1961, show-

ing people jumping out of upper windows of East Berlin houses

situated right at the demarcation line into rescue nets of West Ber-

lin fire brigades while lower windows were hastily being bricked

by East German border units. During the 1960s, all houses were

torn down, leaving only the bricked ground-floor front facades that

served as the Wall, as well as the inaccessibly situated Church of

Reconciliation. Bernauer Straße was visually the most brutal exam-

ple of the Wall, until in the 1980s the facades were replaced by the

standard concrete Wall construction – and the neo-Gothic church

was blown up.

During the 1990s, with the Wall progressively more disappear-

ing from the cityscape, increasingly heated debates on how to

remember the years of division focused on this street and on the

plan to keep parts of the former fortifications there. Some were still

Illustration 4. The concept for the enlarged Wall Memorial complex on Bernauer Straße. Securing of open space along the former Wall strip in the central area

(‘‘Kernbereich”), where Wall remains, information trails and information centres will be placed. In the adjacent area (‘‘Erweiterter Bereich”) building will be possible but theformer patrol path (dark line) needs to be minded.

A. Tölle / Cities 27 (2010) 348–357 353


7/10

against preserving anything of the former Wall at all; others

wanted to solemnly commemorate the Wall’s victims or all of

the victims of East German human rights violations. Finally, a 60-

m-long death strip with all fortification items was reconstructed

between two gigantic steel oblongs (inevitably reminiscent of the

Iron Curtain from the outside). Intentionally, this memorial consti-

tutes ‘‘an emotional rather than antiquarian object” (Feversham

and Schmidt, 1999). Opened in 1998, the Wall Memorial is partof an ensemble including the tiny clay structure of the Chapel of

Reconciliation built on the site of the former Church of Reconcilia-

tion, as well as a Documentation Centre for the History of the Wall

in the former congregation house built in 1965 for the Western

parishioners of the divided congregation. The Wall Memorial was

meant to become the official place for commemorating the Wall

in a cosmopolitan city in which no further traces of the times of

division would exist Illustration 3.

Reconstructing the Wall

Public discussions about the Wall Memorial, which then some-

what escalated in the context of the Checkpoint Charlie debate,

were a clear indicator that the Wall was an issue that needed tobe addressed rather than ignored in the context of urban develop-

ment and identity production policies. In 2001, the Berlin Senate

had decided to protect any still existing remnants from the border

defence system and had a group of experts elaborate an extended

documentation on what physically still remained of the Wall. This

led in 2004 to the creation of a working group by the Berlin Senate

with the task to elaborate what was finally called an ‘‘Overall Con-

cept of Memorial Plans for the Berlin Wall: Documentation, Infor-

mation, and Remembrance” (Gesamtkonzept, 2006). This

document aspires to set the ground for connecting the existing re-

mains and places associated with the Wall in substantive terms by

allocating to each of these places specific meanings complement-

ing one another. The working group defined its mission in the con-

text of the general issue of reflecting the legacy and remains of theEast German regime, and of a growing awareness that the youngest

generation had an appalling low knowledge about the times of

German and European division (Schmidt, 2009). Yet there was an-

other aspect openly addressed in the ‘‘Overall Concept”: Constant

complains of tourist organisations that next to nothing had been

left of the Berlin Wall (Gesamtkonzept, 2006). Undoubtedly, the

demolishment of the Wall meant the destruction of Berlin’s most

famous structure (Ladd, 1997). With tourism being one of the

few economic growth sectors in Berlin, these aspects had to be ta-

ken seriously when producing a new urban identity. The story to

be told to tourists is not Berlin as a historic capital – as this is clo-

sely connected with both Nazi and Communist dictatorship – but

rather Berlin as a city making history, which is more connected

with the constant changes in time and with the visibility of those

changes in the cityscape (Hurtado, 2005). So, not coincidentally,

the start of the new image campaign of Berlin (under the slogan

‘‘Be Berlin”) in 2008 had been directly linked to the 20th anniver-

sary of the fall of the Wall which was to make Berlin ‘‘a symbol of

change” (Lisiak, 2009). It is, by the way, quite telling for the iden-

tity problems of Berlin that it had taken the city nearly two dec-

Illustration 5. Rebuilt Potsdamer Platz. The place’s history told on reinstalled Wall fragments. ‘‘East Berlin visa” being sold to tourists.

354 A. Tölle/ Cities 27 (2010) 348–357


8/10

ades to replace the little inspiring ‘‘Berlin makes you feel good” slo-

gan created back in the 1980s for West Berlin.

The mission of the ‘‘Overall Concept” may figuratively be inter-

preted as searching the Berlin Wall out of the ‘‘archival memory”

and turning it into a vital part of the identity-forming life story

of the city. It is in essence a strategy to reconstruct the Wall as a

visual perceptible element giving meaning to central urban spaces,

and in that it may be read as the script to the story these spaceshave to tell, thus forming the narrative for the new post-Wall ur-

ban identity of Berlin. The mission of Bernauer Straße is to be

the central place – by far, however, not the only one any more –

of commemorating the Wall and its victims. The Wall Memorial

ensemble is to be significantly enlarged by pavilions as entrance

portals, the integration of further former borderland, and two trails

telling the history of the place. Here, as in other places, the empha-

sis is to lie on ‘‘giving remembrance names”, that is to reconstruct

personal biographies of people who lost their lives at the Wall and

to tell their stories in the public space Illustration 4. By contrast,

Checkpoint Charlie is seen as the place to document the Berlin Wall

in terms of world politics and notably the Cold War between two

superpowers, possibly in the form of a new museum. The Potsd-

amer Platz in turn is to stand for ‘‘regained urban density”. By

expelling and reinstalling the few modest remaining items of the

border control system, the place is to expel the transformation

from pre-war to cold-war to post-Wall Berlin.

Another famous tourist spot – a section of the original Wall

fenced off at Niederkirchnerstraße – is to represent ‘‘historical lay-

ers”: The Wall remains owe their protection to their location next

to the ruins of the former Gestapo headquarters (former Prinz Albr-

echt Palais) and to the continuous public discussions about the fu-

ture shape of this site, currently used by a temporary exhibition

under the title of ‘‘Topography of Terror”. In turn, ‘‘East Side Gal-

lery”, a 1.6-km-long piece of a higher-than-usual hinterland wall

along a busy six-lane street in the district of Friedrichshain (paral-

lel to the Spree river constituting the actual border line) that was

turned into a gallery of over 100 murals by international artists

in spring 1990, is to represent ‘‘Wall Art”, while the so-called ‘‘Pal-ace of Tears”, the former control hall of the border checkpoint at

Friedrichstraße Station – situated in former East Berlin but offering

train and underground connections to West Berlin – will stand for

the absurdity of having two worlds within one city. Those different

places and their stories are to be linked by a Berlin Wall Trail with

quadrilingual (not coincidentally German, English, French, and

Russian) information, and the double line of cobblestones that

started since the middle of the 1990s to mark the Wall’s course

in the inner city is to be extended. While the example of ‘‘Critical

Reconstruction” has in principal not been abandoned, the ‘‘Overall

Concept” proposes in same places also the up-keeping of the for-

mer border patrol path as a public trail, allowing for new buildings

to be erected along it only in a way displaying this special history.

Another proposal is a permanent open air exposition of different

border types – evolving over time and in dependence of the topo-

graphical situation – on 14 spots along the former Wall strip. The

acknowledged challenge of this didactical motivated proposal will

be to avoid the impression of a ‘‘Wall Folk Park” as well as of false

authenticity. Moreover, the Wall legacy is to be told in urban

places apart from the former death strip, such as the former ‘‘ghost

stations” (East Berlin underground stations that were passed with-

Illustration 6. The former Wall line marked by cobblestones in Zimmerstraße in downtown Berlin.

A. Tölle / Cities 27 (2010) 348–357 355


9/10

out calling by West Berlin trains), the main motorway checkpoint

on the former transit routes to West Germany, or the central sanc-

tuary for East German refugees in West Berlin.

Hence two decades after the Wall came down, the past as a di-

vided city has not only become integrated in the urban identity

production process, but has even taken centre stage. In effect, the

Wall is to re-emerge even in such prominent places as the Bran-

denburg Gate or Potsdamer Platz, from where the original edificehad been deliberately removed traceless. The sublime intention

to streamline information, documentation, and remembrance is

clearly intertwined with the economic target of catering to tourists,

for whom the identity of Berlin is above all that of the Wall city. In

that, the Wall – by simply reducing its meaning to the process of

overcoming the division, in other words by focusing its story on

the ‘‘happy ending” – has even converted into a positive theme.

This spin has allowed for using the 20th anniversary of the fall of

the Wall to stage a city festival under the title of ‘‘20 Years of

Changing Berlin”. Its agenda proposed different cultural events in

places all over Berlin combining significant places of the Wall his-

tory with completely unrelated urban development projects rang-

ing from the new International Airport to the renovation of

tenement areas and pre-fabricated housing estates. The positive

connotation also morally allows tourists to take their happy snap-

shots with the Wall’s installed remains in the background – possi-

bly in the arm of an actor dressed in the uniform of one of the West

Allied forces, of the Red Army, or of the East German border troops.

Trips along the Wall are offered on rented bikes as well as in East

German Trabant cars. While the ‘‘Overall Strategy” seeks to explic-

itly avoid any form of – in its own wording – ‘‘hollywoodisation” of

the Wall heritage, there can be no question that exactly something

like this is – literally – taking place. Due to its significant economic

potential, the growing use of the socialist past in the form of ‘‘Com-

munist heritage tourism” has interfered in many East-Central

European cities with created modern and very past-excluding ur-

ban identities (Young and Light, 2006). However, it is fair to say

that Berlin is an example of how the socialist past has become a

central part of the story the city is to tell, an effect so far not obser-vable to such an extent even in cities that have played a major role

in the resistance fight against communist rule and have decided to

make this legacy an important part of their city’s narrative (see e.g.

Coles, 2003 on Leipzig, Tölle, 2008 on Gdansk) Illustrations 5 and 6.

Conclusions

Similar to the development policies in other East-Central Euro-

pean cities, Berlin intended in the 1990s to re-invent itself as a

‘‘Western” metropolis that had its urban identity based on some

‘‘Golden Age” of the city, i.e. the cosmopolitan metropolis of pre-

Nazi and pre-war times. And again, similar to other East-Central

European cities, the anticipated return to the ‘‘normalcy” thathad been disrupted by the Second World War and communist rule

did not materialise. With the failure of the German capital to re-

emerge as a European world metropolis – or at least as the domi-

nant city of Germany – the policy of reviving the Berlin of the

1920s in a ‘‘critically reconstructed form” and thus erasing from

its story the past of division has been proven not viable. However,

unprecedented is the radical u-turn in the urban identity produc-

tion policy, making the period of the Cold War an integral part of

the story to be told. While of course the everyday life of millions

of people in Berlin will not interact with the reconstructed Wall,

and while there are also other themes and tourist trails presenting

different aspects of the history of Berlin, there can be no doubt that

the story of the Wall is to dominate the urban identity of the city.

It appears that the city has – once more in its vicissitudinoushistory – no clear idea of its current identity and its future, and

therefore it returns to what it is most famous for: change. The city-

scape is to tell this constant story of transition, which requires the

display of former situations of different places. In that, it is the

Wall that is offering the most impressive images, and moreover

is the best-known object connected to the identification of Berlin

outside the city. One may, however, strongly question whether it

will also be a product fostering identification with the city by its

inhabitants. The Berlin Wall is certainly a prime example for a pastdifferently interpreted by different groups, as the perception of the

Wall differed utterly not only between East and West, but also be-

tween people loyal to the East German regime and those oppressed

by it, people with contacts to the other side and those without,

people suffering under the border regime and those becoming

indifferent. Even though, after more than two decades, emotions

are not going high anymore and the approval of the ‘‘Overall Con-

cept” went rather smoothly, the clashes have all but disappeared.

So the idea to create an urban identity for Berlin based only on

the ‘‘happy ending” of the bitter decades of division is bound to fail,

and it remains to be seen whether this will again – as in the case of

the prior complete denial of this past – lead to conflicts in the ur-

ban space and society.

Berlin may be seen, to a certain degree, as a typical example of

an East-Central European city basing its urban identity policy on a

chosen ‘‘Golden Age.” The ‘‘Westernised” identity, however, is in

this special case also based on the history of West Berlin as a front

post of the Western world whose identity – blurred as it might

have been – was certainly based on dismissing anything ‘‘Eastern”.

This westward-oriented perspective prevailed in the concept of

‘‘critical reconstruction” of the third (Western) European cosmo-

politan metropolis. Its failure and the production of an urban iden-

tity based also on the legacy of the Cold War helped redirect this

perspective towards the Eastern ‘‘fellow” post-socialist cities and

– acknowledging finally the physical closeness of the city to the

German-Polish border – led amongst other ventures to the initia-

tion of what is now the ‘‘Oder Partnership”, a German-Polish macro

cooperation area including the metropolitan areas of Berlin, Dres-

den, Szczecin, Poznan, and Wroclaw. In this respect, an integrationof a post-Cold War Central European identity may after all contrib-

ute to innovative urban development and cooperation policies,

while an urban identity based on ‘‘change” appears to be rather

meaningless.

References

Andrusz, G (2008) From socialist to post-socialist city: a journey from wall to malland from security to risk. In Kultur– Erbe – Stadt. Stadtentwicklung und UNESCO-Mandat in post- und spätsozialistischen Städten , A Pichler and G Marinelli-König(eds.), pp. 11–31. StudienVerlag, Innsbruck, Wien, Bozen.

Assmann, A (2008) Memory, individual and collective. In The Oxford Handbook of

Contextual Political Analysis, R Goodin and C Tilly (eds.), pp. 210–224. OxfordUniversity Press, Oxford.Buchowski, M (2001) Rethinking Transformation. An Anthropological Perspective on

Post-Socialism. Humaniora, Poznań.Buravoy, M and Verdery, K (1999) Introduction. In Uncertain Transition.

Ethnographies of Change in the Postsocialist World, M Buravoy and K Verdery(eds.), pp. 1–17. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham and Oxford.

Cochrane, A and Jonas, A (1999) Re-imagining Berlin: world city, national capital orordinary place? European Urban and Regional Studies 6(2), 145–164.

Coles, T (2003) Urban tourism, place promotion and economic restructuring: thecase of post-socialist Leipzig. Tourism Geographies 5(2), 190–219.

Ebert, C (2004) Identitätsorientiertes Stadtmarketing. Ein Beitrag zur Koordination undSteuerung des Stadtmarketings [Identity-Oriented City Marketing. A Contribution toCoordination and Steering of City Marketing] . Peter Lang, Frankfurt (Main).

Engert, J (1985) Berlin between East and West: lessons for a confused world. InLiving with the Wall. West Berlin, 1961–1985 , RL Merritt and AJ Merrit (eds.), pp.149–165. Duke University Press, Durham.

Feversham, P and Schmidt, L (1999) The Berlin Wall Today. Cultural Significance andConservation Issues. Verlag für Bauwesen, Berlin.

Flemming, T and Koch, H (2001) Die Berliner Mauer. Geschichte eines politischenBauwerks [The Berlin Wall. History of a political edifice] . Bebra, Berlin.

356 A. Tölle/ Cities 27 (2010) 348–357


10/10

Gesamtkonzept zur Erinnerung an die Berliner Mauer: Dokumentation, Information undGedenken [Overall Concept of Memorial Plans for the Berlin Wall: Documentation,Information, and Remembrance], 2006, Berlin.

Girot, C (2004) Eulogy of the void. The lost power of Berlin landscapes after the wall.DISP 156, 35–38.

Hague, C (2005) Planning and place identity. In Place Identity, Participation andPlanning , C Hague and P Jenkins (eds.), pp. 3–17. Routledge, London and NewYork.

Hall, P and Pfeiffer, U (2000) Urban Future 21. A Global Agenda for Twenty-First Century Cities. E & FN Spon, London and New York.

Häußermann, H and Kapphan, A (2005) Berlin: from divided to fragmented city. InTransformation of Cities in Central and Eastern Europe. Towards Globalization , FEIHamilton, KD Andrews and N Pichler-Milanovic (eds.), pp. 189–222. UnitedNations University Press, Tokyo.

Holt, WG (2000) Distinguishing metropolises: the production of urban imagery. InConstructions of Urban Space, R Hutchison (ed.), pp. 225–252. JAI Press, Stamford(Connecticut).

van der Horst, H (2003) Multicultural theming: pacifying, essentializing andrevanchist effects. In Placing History. Themed Environments, Urban Consumptionand the Public Entertainment Sphere, S Ingram and M Reisenleitner (eds.), pp.175–200. Turia + Kant, Wien.

Hurtado, IF (2005) Zukunft zum Greifen nah. Bedingungen, Semantik und Verortungdes Berliner Stadtmarketing [Future so close. Conditions, semantic andpositioning of Berlin city marketing]. Berliner Blätter 37, 22–31.

James, B (1999) Fencing in the past: Budapest’s Statue Park museum. Media, Cultureand Society 21, 291–311.

Krätke, S (2004) City of talents? Berlin’s regional economy, socio-spatial fabric and‘worst practice’ urban governance. International Journal of Urban and RegionalResearch 28(3), 511–529.

Ladd, B (1997) The Ghosts of Berlin. Confronting German History in the UrbanLandscape. University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London.

Lampugnani, VM, Mönninger, M, (1991) Berlin morgen. Ideen für das Herz einer Groszstadt [Berlin Tomorrow. Ideas for the Heart of a Metropolis] , Hatje, Stuttgart.

Liebhart, L (2007) Authentischer Ort, ‘‘DDR-Disneyland” oder ‘‘Pendant zumHolocaustdenkmal”? Checkpoint Charlie und das Berliner Mauermuseum[Authentic place, ‘‘GDR Disneyland” or ‘‘counterpart to the HolocaustMemorial? Checkpoint Charlie and the Berlin Wall Museum]. In Die Besetzung des öffentlichen Raumes. Politische Plätze, Denkmäler und Straßennamen imeuropäischen Vergleich, R Jaworski and P Stachel (eds.), pp. 259–275. Frank &Timme, Berlin.

Light, D (2004) Street names in Bucharest 1990–1997: exploring the modernhistorical geographies of post-socialist change. Journal of Historical Geography30, 154–172.

Lisiak, A (2009) Berlin and warsaw as brands. Weimarpolis 1(1), 15–26.Luescher, A (2002) Refashioning no-man’s-land. Urban image politics and the visual

dimension of democracy. Cities 19(3), 155–160.Marcuse, P (2004) The dark side of really existing globalization. In Urbanism and

Globalization, F Eckardt and D Hassenpflug (eds.), pp. 87–105. Lang, Frankfurt(Main).

Merritt, RL (1985) Living with the wall. In Living with the Wall. West Berlin, 1961–1985, RL Merritt and AJ Merrit (eds.), pp. 191–218. Duke University Press,Durham.

Mikunda, C (2002) Der verbotene Ort oder Die inszenierte Verführung.Unwiderstehliches Marketing durch strategische Dramaturgie [The ForbiddenPlace or The Staged Seduction. Inresistable Marketing Through Strategic Dramaturgy]. Redline, Frankfurt (Main) and Wien.

Murzyn, M (2006) New interpretations and commercialisation of heritage inKrakow after 1989. In Practical Aspects of Cultural Heritage – Presentation,Revaluation Development , S Schröder-Esch (ed.), pp. 167–188. Bauhaus-Universität, Weimar.

Nyka, L (2003) Recycling Gdansk’s urban spaces: the processes supporting theidentity of the city. In Consumption and the Post-Industrial City, F Eckardt and DHassenpflug (eds.), pp. 261–271. Lang, Frankfurt (Main).

Parysek,JJ (2006) Processesaffectingthe developmentand transformationof townsinCentral European states: the case of Poland. Quaestiones Geographicae 25, 29–36.

Peca, S (2009) Real Estate Development and Investment. A Comprehensive Approach. John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken.

Petro, N (2009) The Novgorod model: creating a European past in Russia. In Citiesafter the Fall of Communism. Reshaping Cultural Landscapes and European Identity,

JJ Czaplicka, N Gelazis and B Ruble (eds.), pp. 53–74. Johns Hopkins UniversityPress, Baltimore.

Roost, F (2008) Instrumentalisierung historischer Stadtlandschaften imPlanungsprozess. Die Beispiele New York und Berlin [Instrumental use of historic cityscapes in the planning process. The cases of New York and Berlin].In Kultur – Erbe – Stadt. Stadtentwicklung und UNESCO-Mandat in post- und

spätsozialistischen Städten, A Pichler and G Marinelli-König (eds.), pp. 237–248.StudienVerlag, Innsbruck, Wien, Bozen.

Schalenberg, M (2009) City of displacement: on the unsteadiness of Berlin sites andsights. Weimarpolis 1(2), 53–64.

Schmidt, L (2009) Vom Symbol der Unterdrückung zur Ikone der Befreiung –Auseinandersetzung, Verdrängung, Memorialisierung [From symbol of suppression to icon of liberation – dispute, suppression, memorialisation]. InDie Berliner Mauer. Vom Sperrwall zum Denkmal, Deutsches Nationalkomitee fürDenkmalschutz (ed.), pp. 169–186. Schriftenreihe des DeutschenNationalkomitees für Denkmalschutz, Bonn.

Sigel, P (2009) Ein Platz. Viele Plätze. Projektionen und Spurensuche am BerlinerAlexanderplatz [One place. Many places. Projections and search for traces at theBerlin Alexanderplatz]. In Imaginationen des Urbanen. Konzeption, Reflexion undFiktion von Stadt in Mittel- und Osteuropa, A Bartetzky, M Dmitrieva and AKliems (eds.), pp. 81–118. Lukas, Berlin.

Smith, H (2005) Place identity and participation. In Place Identity. Participation andPlanning , C Hague and P Jenkins (eds.), pp. 39–54. Routledge, London and NewYork.

Staddon, C and Mollov, B (2000) City profile Sofia, Bulgaria. Cities 17(5), 379–387.Stanilov, K (2007) Taking stock of post-socialist urban development: a

recapitulation. In The Post-Socialist City. Urban Form and Space Transformationin Central and Eastern Europe after Socialism , K Stanilov (ed.), pp. 3–17. Springer,Dordrecht.

Stimmann, S (2001) Das Gedächtnis der europäischen Stadt [The memory of theEuropean city]. In Von der Architektur- zur Stadtdebatte. Die Diskussion um dasPlanwerk Innenstadt , S Stimmann (ed.), pp. 11–27. Braun, Berlin.

Temelová, J and Hrychová, H (2004) Globalisation, eyes and urban space: visualperception of globalising Prague. In Urbanism and Globalization, F Eckardt and DHassenpflug (eds.), pp. 203–221. Lang, Frankfurt (Main).

Till, KE (2005) The New Berlin. Memory, Politics, Place. University of Minnesota Press,Minnesota.

Tölle, A (2008) City profile Gdansk. Cities 25, 107–119.Tosics, I (2005) City development in Central and Eastern Europe since 1990: the

impact of internal forces. In Transformation of Cities in Central and EasternEurope. Towards Globalization, FEI Hamilton, KD Andrews and N Pichler-Milanovic (eds.), pp. 44–78. United Nations University Press, Tokyo.

Weichhart, P, Weiske, C and Werlen, B (2006) Place Identity und Images: Das Beispiel

Eisenhüttenstadt [Place Identity and Images: The Case of Eisenhüttenstadt]. Institutfür Geographie und Regionalforschung der Universität Wien.

Wilhelm, K (2008) Geteilte (T)räume–zur Kartographie der Erinnerung in Berlin undanderswo [Divided (dreams) spaces – a cartography of remembrance in Berlinand elsewhere]. In Kultur – Erbe – Stadt. Stadtentwicklung und UNESCO-Mandat in post- und spätsozialistischen Städten, A Pichler and G Marinelli-König (eds.),pp. 279–296. StudienVerlag, Innsbruck, Wien, Bozen.

Young, C and Light, D (2006) ‘‘Communist heritage tourism”: between economicdevelopment and European integration. In Heritage and Media in Europe –Contributing towards Integration and Regional Development , D Hassenpflug, BKolbmüller and S Schröder-Esch (eds.), pp. 249–263. Bauhaus-University,Weimar.

Young, C and Kaczmarek, S (2008) The socialist past and postsocialist urban identityin Central and Eastern Europe. The Case of Łódź , Poland. European Urban andRegional Studies 15(1), 53–70.

A. Tölle / Cities 27 (2010) 348–357 357

Documents

Urban Identity Policies in Berlin