Lost Border
November 9, 2009 2:47 AM   Subscribe

It's been posted before, but on the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the stunning photography of Brian Rose is certainly worth revisiting. It's amazing that something like this existed.

There's also a book
posted by jedro (21 comments total) 12 users marked this as a favorite
 
Some beautiful photography there. Sadly, unless the economy turns around soon, pictures "like that" are going to be increasingly common from Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh...
posted by rokusan at 3:08 AM on November 9, 2009


I was in Potsdamer Platz last week. It is unrecognisable from the way it was 20 years ago.Here are a few images comparing it then and now. It is very difficult to imagine that where there was a Death Strip, there is now an artificial snow slide, tourists and vendors selling currywurst.
posted by ClanvidHorse at 4:04 AM on November 9, 2009


sadly, jedro, something "like that" still does exist (imagine, if you will), in more than one way and in more than one place (re).

the idea that we can relegate the likes of the berlin wall to some kind of "dustbin of history" (as the Soviets, or rather Trotsky once stubbornly thought) that is the Cold War fails to see the continuities in similar forms of domination today. in language, deed, and consequence, there are disturbing parallels between the wall erected between east & west germany in 1961 and the current separation walls between the us & mexico (partially overseen by the same company that helped implement the apartheid wall in palestine), western sahara & morocco, india & pakistan, iran & pakistan, saudi arabia & yemen (esp. relevant to the recent uprising via zaydi rebels), even within baghdad itself...

i take it as philosophically and spiritually significant--in a decidedly arbitrary but necessary gesture, i think--that my birth year is the same as that of the fall of the berlin wall. it is a constant reminder to me of the ever-presence of domination and the concomitant possibility of fighting it.

that is to say, every split-second leaves open the chance to reject those distinctions that dominate us, the chance to choose another way.

come then: let's jump.
posted by parkbench at 4:26 AM on November 9, 2009 [8 favorites]


A simple, but beautiful way of comparing then and now pictures in Berlin: NYT's interactive feature A Division Through Time
posted by Henrik at 5:43 AM on November 9, 2009 [4 favorites]


Henrik, thanks for that link. I missed it.
posted by jefficator at 7:04 AM on November 9, 2009


Mefi's own pjern has a fantastic set of Berlin photos from the thick of the cold war, when he lived there for a couple of years. 1979ish.
posted by Stewriffic at 7:19 AM on November 9, 2009


I can think of at least a couple of songs that these links will help explain. Thanks.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:26 AM on November 9, 2009


Christoph Niemann has a lovely blog post/art piece on the NY Times today about the wall coming down
posted by piratebowling at 7:46 AM on November 9, 2009


Thanks for the link, Stewie.

Halloween Jack: When I was living in Berlin, part of the charm of the city was that it was not unusual to run into famous and/or cutting edge people: I used to see David Bowie in Kreuzberg all the time.
posted by pjern at 7:46 AM on November 9, 2009


thanks parkbench - was coming in to make almost the exact same comment. The apartheid wall absolutely dwarfs the Berlin wall - both in height and length. It's a marvel of modern architecture. Very frustrating to see the celebrations this week over "how far we've come" and especially Clinton's impassioned speeches... The Israeli wall is a scar on the face of the planet.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 7:52 AM on November 9, 2009


The Globe and Mail has an entire section about the Berlin Wall.

Includes a Then and Now pictorial that is a look at the German city the way it is now and the way it looked in 1989 before the Wall came down, and a closer look at the sights of Berlin, and a reminder of what it was like on that day twenty years ago.
posted by netbros at 8:47 AM on November 9, 2009


rokusan, have you been to Detroit in the last 40 years? East Berlin never looked anywhere as bad as much of Detroit does now. Or in 1989.
posted by ethnomethodologist at 9:55 AM on November 9, 2009


the idea that we can relegate the likes of the berlin wall to some kind of "dustbin of history" ... that is the Cold War fails to see the continuities in similar forms of domination today.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall, indeed.

I do hear what you're saying, but there is a qualitative difference between the Berlin Wall (intended to imprison a population) and a border fence (intended to keep outsiders outside). Perhaps there is some sort of Georgism of international relations such that national territory, like property, is theft. But for now the legal entity of the nation-state has sway and countries are entitled to lock the door.

There are deeper questions of territorial rights at sway in the Israeli fence, and even its existence and its route may be separately debated to exhaustion, but it's still a different sort of fence from the Berlin Wall.

There is a certain commonality, but I don't think they are universally immoral, and in fact I believe confusing or conflating the different walls and their different purposes takes the debate to areas that are not really useful.
posted by dhartung at 9:58 AM on November 9, 2009


There are deeper questions of territorial rights at sway in the Israeli fence, and even its existence and its route may be separately debated to exhaustion, but it's still a different sort of fence from the Berlin Wall.

There is a certain commonality, but I don't think they are universally immoral, and in fact I believe confusing or conflating the different walls and their different purposes takes the debate to areas that are not really useful.


Perhaps you'd rather compare the Israeli wall to the Inner German Border, then. Or the US's own rather silly project, the Mexico - United States barrier.

I certainly am not trying to conflate any of the problems the US may see with people coming across from Mexico with the problems Israel is having with their Palestinian population. But the concept of building a Huge Fucking Wall in order for one state to separate their citizens from those of neighboring regions has been around for millennia, and there is nothing wrong with finding links between, say, Hadrian's Wall or the Great Wall Of China and modern day echoes such as what was built in Germany for most of the last half of the last century, or what we see happening in Israel or the US today.
posted by hippybear at 10:51 AM on November 9, 2009


I fail to see how the Gaza wall, for example, is not a wall intended to imprison a specific population, especially when prisoners routinely placed inside it. Thus all the "open-air prison" talk surrounding modern Gaza.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 12:14 PM on November 9, 2009


Halloween Jack: When I was living in Berlin, part of the charm of the city was that it was not unusual to run into famous and/or cutting edge people: I used to see David Bowie in Kreuzberg all the time.

Some things never change; last winter in Kreuzberg it was common to run into Quentin Tarantino grabbing coffee on his way to the Inglorious Bastards set.
posted by mannequito at 12:16 PM on November 9, 2009


Philly anarcho punk original turned ecoactivist Elizabeth Fiend did a great photo essay about being on tour in Europe when the wall fell.
posted by The Straightener at 1:20 PM on November 9, 2009


I remember it like it happened yesterday. brokaw's newscast was quite good and so is this german doc (subtitled).

but everyone already knew this was going to happen in one way or another. we knew the GDR was done since (then west german foreign secretary) genscher had stood on the balcony of the german embassy in prague on sept 30 1989 (video here) to tell the east germans, who had climbed the walls and camped out in the thousands on embassy grounds, they were being allowed to depart for then west germany. he didn't even get through his first sentence. all he got out was "we have come to you today to let you know that your departure..." and they all erupted in cheers. if you're only gonna watch one video today, make it that one. at least I can't watch it without getting choked up.

11/9/1989 wasn't the day we realized the wall would come down. it was the day we knew it would come down without people getting shot.
posted by krautland at 1:29 PM on November 9, 2009


Sadly, unless the economy turns around soon, pictures "like that" are going to be increasingly common from Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh...
posted by rokusan at 6:08 AM


Walls like that will never be common in the Rust Belt. I'm not saying that people wouldn't want them for whatever reason, but that the densities of cities like the ones you mentioned are so low that it makes the need for walls unnecessary. Besides, this is America and when the poor people get too close, the traditional remedy is to move to the suburban sprawl, or just as often the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina. It's rare to find people that move into the Rust Belt, year after year the immigration rate does not come close to even matching the death rate, nevermind the emigration rates. To see something like the gated suburbs in California it would require an influx of cash and people that these cities may never see again.

Unless you mean that the walls would be used to keep the poor people in, like the Manhattan prison of 'Escape from New York'. That would rprobably require such a nasty political change that it would make this bad economy look like a warm summer day.
posted by kuujjuarapik at 1:53 PM on November 9, 2009


Yeah, I have to laugh a little at the idea that "it's amazing that something like this [these pictures] existed." There were - and remain - desolate, ugly and forbidding landscapes which speak of the horrors of Communist times, all across the former Communist bloc. But to be honest, one would be hard-pressed to come up with any places that don't have even more grotesque counterparts in the Western world. And I say that as someone who grew up under Communism, detested it and is happy now in America.

Mark E Smith of the Fall once said - long before Communism ended:

"Nuking Russia might not be a bad idea as far as the bleedin' world is concerned. They’ve plunged a lot of people into miserable lives. You've only got to be in East Germany to see it. It’s a horrible way to live. It’s like Middlesborough."

Right as usual!
posted by Dee Xtrovert at 2:11 PM on November 9, 2009


I do hear what you're saying, but there is a qualitative difference between the Berlin Wall (intended to imprison a population) and a border fence (intended to keep outsiders outside). Perhaps there is some sort of Georgism of international relations such that national territory, like property, is theft. But for now the legal entity of the nation-state has sway and countries are entitled to lock the door.

what i'm trying to point out, dhartung, is that this perception that there is a difference between "kinds" of walls is the same type of argument used to make distinctions between "just" and "unjust" wars. it's a rationalisation. in both cases, there is a common point of origin, and this is the exclusionary practices of the state, which only very recently have begun to cleverly disguise themselves in terms of common morality--years ago we would probably be having a different debate, in which it would be absolutely clear why such walls were being built and we would not need to convince ourselves we had a more palatable reason to do it (re: all of American history).

this is besides the fact that i'm not even bringing the question of nation-states to the fore at all, really (besides a casual link to 'deletetheborder'). almost all of my examples are absolutely clear-cut cases of occupation and deliberately thought-out policies to redefine citizenship along racist/nationalist/etc. lines. what's the point of being squeamish about something so brazenly abominable? your argument is essentially a technicality and comes from a place of apathy, ultimately, because either way it doesn't sound like you'd be that thrilled or concerned with the idea of trying to help or alleviate the situation even if you did think they were unjust.

and:

the armenian genocide, rhodesia, the destruction of the indigenous americans & australians as a people, the current decimation of the peoples of the amazon, the 18,000+ "erased" of slovenia & other former yugoslavian regions...these are the legacies of the so-called "right" to "lock the door" that you defend so glibly. in every case this has been the justification proffered. should this not make anyone think twice about the argument itself and its legitimacy? isn't it tragically comic in its obvious shallowness and transparency as an argument, fabricated entirely to justify what is at its base the cruellest and most abominable of behavior? that it is at all acceptable to tout in the general population is surely the most saddening sign of the success of grandstanding over sensible politics. and so we are reminded of orwell's maxim:

"Political language...is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."
posted by parkbench at 6:02 PM on November 9, 2009


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