20th Anniversary of Berlin Wall Installation: Speech

This speech was presented at the opening of the Berlin Wall exhibit, currently housed at Chicago's DANK-Haus German Cultural Center.

The installation is titled Die, Mauer. Directly translated from German this means The Wall, the colloquial name of the Berlin Wall among Berliners. Die, Mauer also reads Die, Wall if you will allow a multilingual translation. This refers to the November 9, 1989 destruction of the barrier as well as the overall disdain for the Wall among Berlin citizens.  

The Wall put citizens on both sides of Berlin in direct contact with international politics. West Berliners were free to express their political outrage on it. East Berliners were caged by all that it represented. Ironically, West Berlin was the freer walled in island in a sea of totalitarian Germany. I hope that this installation will inspire a profound kinship for you with the citizens of both cities. The leaders of their republics chose paths that most Berliners would not have chosen for themselves. 

The manifestations on the West Berlin side are proof that human creativity blossoms in times of extreme need. The installation pays homage to the graffiti painted on the Wall through its 28 year lifespan. Images of the Trabi car propelling through the concrete barrier and of Honecker—leader of the German Democratic Republic—passionately kissing Brezhnev—political leader of the Soviet Union (with the translated subtitle, God help me survive this fatal attraction), were painted many times over by West Berliners around the wall. Themes ranged from individual expression of freedom to strongly political criticism.  

Meanwhile, East German life starkly contrasts with that of its western brother. Fierce censorship and overbearing totalitarian propaganda encroach on the landscape. The imminently setting sun of communism creates a backdrop to uniform architecture in which the private lives of citizens quietly endure, while their public personas must communicate the ideals of the Soviet state. It is in the shattered windows of these buildings that viewers can see themselves reflected—an attempt to sew kinship between citizens of democracy and those trapped in a totalitarian system. Above, a continuous stream of barbed wire recalls the Death Strip (a No Man’s Land on the East Berlin side equipped with snipers preventing citizens from escaping).  

If you feel outrage, fear and confusion over the Wall’s existence in modern times, J.D. Salinger offers important insight on the matter in The Catcher in the Rye:  

Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them - if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry.

Films like Wings of Desire and Goodbye Lenin, books like Wall Jumper and Stasiland did such a thing, and I aim to as well.

Thus, let’s take the present in our hands and invest in creative solutions to societal conflict. To declare war is to admit to defeated creativity. To build a wall between two cultures is to stunt the growth of humanity. To disengage from a dialogue with leaders of a totalitarian system that imposes its ideology on a population with no way out is to give up on our brothers’ and sisters’ human pursuit of happiness.   

In taking in the exhibit, I want it to be apparent to you that, on either side of the wall was this common pursuit of happiness. I also want for you to acknowledge that drive in yourselves: to exist in a world in which the maximum number of people can attain that happiness with minimal harm.  

I look forward to receiving your comments and questions and exploring the artwork with you today. Thank you for supporting the arts and international peace efforts.