wing to wing and oar to oar

A wise friend of mine told me that the best way to see the so-called "Berlin Wall Memorial" - aka Gedenkstaette Berliner Mauer - was to walk into the cemetery (Friedhof Sophienkirchgemeinde) from Ackerstrasse and see the wall as an East German would have seen it.  I did it recently, and I completely agree.  The tower at the Wall Documentation Center on Bernauerstrasse gives you the nice eagle-eye, but not the as-it-was feel.  If you do this, though, and stray from the course a bit, you might come upon the pile of gravestones documented in these photos.  For a good, refocusing "mortal moment" of the memento mori type, I highly recommend doing so.  These dust-to-dust moments can be very powerful, especially when you're about to bring the next link in the chain into the public viewing area we call life.  Bring a flower.

Comments

[Ed Ward]

Not *quite* accurate, that that's the way an East German would have seen it. For one thing, the guard-tower nearby, plus the one over by the old post office, is missing. For another, that was maybe the most heavily-patrolled sector of the Wall, thanks to the many, many escapes (part of the reason that the city bought that stretch of it for the Memorial). So you're not seeing the guys with guns. And I'm not at all certain that access to the cemetery was as easy as it is today; there were numerous escape attempts that started there, including one that ended in the escapee being shot in the back.

[lou]

I bow down in agreement to Ed's knowledge (and better imagination). Thanks for adding to the image. What are your thoughts, Ed, about the best place to take people to give them a "feel" - however approximate? And doesn't this pile of grave stones give you the heebeejeebees?

[Ed Ward]

Well, the Memorial itself is completely sanitized to make its ideological point, which is inscribed at the entrance, an inscription which pissed off enough people in the immediate vicinity to warrant a 24/7 police presence when the thing opened. The fact is, Berlin is so extremely competent at erasing its history, or managing it so that it only emphasizes certain elements, that I don't think there actually is anyplace where people can get the "old days" feeling about the Wall.