Introduction: After the Berlin Wall: Realigned Worlds, Invisible Lines, and Incalculable Remnants

Abstract

Most of us will readily agree that the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, resulted in dramatic changes in the international scene, yet we are only just beginning to inquire about the long-term consequences of the event that occurred more than 20 years ago. How has it changed German culture and how do Germans respond to it today? How has it been received in other parts of the world? What are some of the comparisons we might draw? What can we see now that was not visible 20 years ago? After the Berlin Wall: Germany and Beyond attempts to delineate the realigned worlds, invisible lines, and incalculable remnants that have come to define the post-Wall world in which we have dwelled since that historical event, or perhaps “non-event,” as contributor Benjamin Robinson provocatively suggests. Since no one field of academic inquiry can assess adequately these developments, the chapters assembled in this volume—deploying interdisciplinary methods and engaging a spectrum of intellectual debates—explore multiple dimensions and a variety of historical, political, sociological, literary, artistic, architectural, and popular cultural aspects of the Berlin Wall’s afterlife in Germany and in the international arena.