The history and meaning of the Berlin Wall remain controversial, even three decades after its fall. Drawing on an extensive range of archival sources and interviews, this book profiles key memory activists who have fought to commemorate the history of the Berlin Wall and examines their role in the creation of a new German national narrative. With victims, perpetrators and heroes, the Berlin Wall has joined the Holocaust as an essential part of German collective memory. Key Wall anniversaries have become signposts marking German views of the past, its relevance to the present, and the complicated project of defining German national identity. Considering multiple German approaches to remembering the Wall via memorials, trials, public ceremonies, films, and music, this revelatory work also traces how global memory of the Wall has impacted German memory policy. It depicts the power and fragility of state-backed memory projects, and the potential of such projects to reconcile or divide.
List of figures; Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations and German terms; Introduction: the Berlin Wall and German historical memory; 1. Divergent approaches to the fall of the Wall; 2. The fight over memory at Bernauer Strasse; 3. Creating a Berlin Wall Memorial ensemble at Bernauer Strasse; 4. Remembering the Wall at Checkpoint Charlie; 5. The Berlin Senate's master plan for remembering the Wall; 6. The Federal Government and the Berlin Wall; 7. Victims and perpetrators; 8. Conflicting narratives about the Wall; 9. Heroes to celebrate and a new founding myth; Conclusion: memory as warning; Bibliography; Index.
