Satire, Erasure and Deadly Love: The story behind the Berlin Wall’s Fraternal Kiss

Even if a certain cliché would have us believing otherwise, nothing ever vanishes without a trace. One brilliantly cornucopious affirmation of this is the Berlin Wall: although dismantled during the Wende, enabling Germany to officially reunify on 3rd October 1990, fragments of the once-impenetrable Cold War border evidently remain extant. For Janet Ward, this complicated persistence equates to ‘spectral longevity’, with the Wall’s remnants and consequences, lines and projections, traces and staging all engendering an ‘inverse, imaginary status’ similar to that of a ‘photographic negative’ (2011:59). Equally, Sunil Manghani has foregrounded the particular visuality of the Wall’s absence, since those visiting Berlin today paradoxically witness its disappearance, situated in a ‘curious hinterland between memory and actuality’ (2008:36). For fear that the Wall’s physical demise would prompt the erasure of such a vital part of Berlin’s history, the <a href="https://www.visitberlin.de/en/east-side-gallery" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">East Side Gallery</a> was established in 1990. Comprising over 100 murals painted on a 1.3km long remnant of the Wall, this open-air exhibition features works created by artists from all over the world. <a href="https://emilygracewalters.medium.com/satire-erasure-and-deadly-love-the-story-behind-the-berlin-walls-fraternal-kiss-6b832f949ac4">Learn More</a>