The Different Aesthetics of the Berlin Wall

Abstract

From a global perspective, the Berlin Wall was a complete anomaly. It neither closed off a state or territory from the outside world nor protected one from invasion. What’s more, it was functionally backward: it protected the East German state from the escape of its own citizens; it was a barrier directed internally. This was, so it seems, globally unheard of. The Berlin Wall was part of the GDR’s comprehensive state border, of course, and from an international perspective, part of the Iron Curtain that sliced through Europe after World War II. Territories and borders secured by walls had always existed and continued to exist. A recent volume has thoroughly analyzed such state and territorial borders—that is to say, those borders secured by walls.¹ The Great Wall of China, the Amurrite Wall, the Median Wall, the Cappadocian Wall, the Roman limes, the West Wall, the Atlantic Wall, the border between the United States and Mexico, between Israel and the Palestinian territories, and many more: these are all state and territorial borders meant to keep others out. They are meant to repel military invasions, control shipments of goods, regulate the flow of groups of people, and (this is a modern phenomenon) prevent mass immigration or supposed infiltration. But the fundamental innovation of the Berlin Wall and the GDR’s entire state border was the fact that it was directed not toward the outside but the inside.