Walking. Gossip. Travel.

Tag: Berlin Wall Fragment

  • London – Lewisham (Borough of) – Berlin Wall in Shopping Centre

    London – Lewisham (Borough of) – Berlin Wall in Shopping Centre

    I’ve written before on this blog about when I’ve encountered sections of the Berlin Wall around the world, and I’ve sometimes gone out of my way to go and see parts of this historic structure. It’s fair to say though that I didn’t expect when walking through a shopping centre in Lewisham to see two sections there, it’s not a location that I’d have associated with the Berlin Wall.

    They’re actually here because of the Migration Museum, which is also slightly oddly located in Lewisham Shopping Centre, although I understand that this is a temporary location. The museum notes:

    “Between 1984 and 1989 Thierry Noir illegally painted over five kilometres of the Berlin Wall. Noir’s aim was to perpetrate an act of artistic resistance with the intent of changing the perception of the Berlin Wall, to demystify it and remove its threat by making it colourful and ridiculous. STIK continues this tradition of unofficial public art as a tool for radical social change by creating public commissions aimed at unifying and consolidating a deep sense of community. In WALL, STIK and Thierry Noir directly reconnect with the historical movement of Berlin Wall art. The act of creating a new work on surviving sections further removes the intrinsic historical connotation of the Berlin Wall as a physical and mental barrier.”

    I wasn’t much interested in the recently painted section, I personally think it takes away from the brutal nature of the concrete and what it represented in the past. The austere side tells a much stronger story to me, each of these pieces of stone weighs two tonnes and was a barrier to limit hope an opportunity. It’s positive though that they’re trying to explain the wall and bring it to the attention of a new generation. And it’s probably a good idea to have bits of the Berlin Wall where people don’t expect them to be.

  • London – Lambeth – Imperial War Museum (Fragment of Berlin Wall – Inside)

    London – Lambeth – Imperial War Museum (Fragment of Berlin Wall – Inside)

    The Imperial War Museum has two sections of the Berlin Wall, this one is located within the galleries and the other is outside the entrance to the museum. There’s not much information given about this section, simply that it’s from the late 1970s and it’s made of reinforced concrete. It weighs over two and a half tons and stands just over two metres high, although it’s not as painted on as their other section. The Imperial War Museum also has a small fragment of the wall collected by the British Military Forces in Berlin and this is on display at the museum’s outpost in Manchester.

  • Montreal – Berlin Wall Fragment

    Montreal – Berlin Wall Fragment

    This piece of Berlin Wall is located in the World Trade Centre in Montreal.

    The section of the wall was given to the city of Montreal in 1992 from the city of Berlin, as part of the Canadian city’s 350th birthday.

    The section was brought from a location near to the Brandenburg Gate. It’s from the fourth stage of the wall’s construction, known as Grenzmauer 75, which was built between 1975 and 1980. There were 45,000 pieces of concrete involved in that rebuilding effort, which lasted until the war fell in 1989.

  • Boston – John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum (Berlin Wall Fragment)

    Boston – John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum (Berlin Wall Fragment)

    I’ve seen sections of the Berlin Wall in numerous different cities around the world, not least in the male toilets of a hotel in Las Vegas. This section was a gift from the German Government and it was brought to the museum in 1989 by Jean Kennedy Smith, the sister of John F. Kennedy (she’s the only one of the nine Kennedy children still alive). It’s quite a bright piece of wall and it stands twelve feet in height and four feet in width.

  • Schengen – Berlin Wall Fragment

    This is, to my knowledge, the only piece of the Berlin Wall which is displayed to the public in the country of Luxembourg. It was placed here because it’s near to where the Schengen Agreement was signed  in June 1985 which did away with border controls between many EU nations.

    The segments of wall were placed here in 2010 and they marked the 25th anniversary of the signing of the agreement. The segments overlook the banks of the River Moselle and they were donated by the Sony Centre and the City of Berlin. Before being moved here, the pieces of wall had been located at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin.

    For some reason the base of the plaque which gives information about the wall notes that the segments aren’t for sale. I’m not quite sure what prompted that useful information to be added, perhaps tourists from certain nations tried to put an offer in…..