Art and Graffiti on the Berlin Wall

The West side of the concrete Berlin wall, originally constructed as a barbed wire fence in 1961, is covered in beautiful, colorful, and expressive art that stands in stark contrast to the dull gray of the East side. As the barbed wire was replaced by concrete slabs 14 feet high, the citizens living on the West side of the wall began adding their thoughts and interpretations of life on the East side by painting the Western flanks of the wall. Artists from around the world added their renditions, creating a huge public art display. Much of that art remains today, however some of it is covered in graffiti, effectively obliterating some extraordinary reflections of that dark time in Germany's history.

Artists from around the world created political murals on the wall. This one, by German artist Lake Wahle, is a particularly interesting one. It is a satirical comment on the moment when Leonid Breshnev, the Soviet leader, and Erich Honecker, an East German communist who led the German Socialist Party and was in charge of building the wall, kissed in 1979. The kiss was later explained as a mistake - their aim was apparently off - when the two were greeting each other with the formal cheek kiss.

Another of the murals that has not yet been covered with the graffiti splashed over much of the wall is this painting of the Brandenburg Gate in 1980. The Gate was one of the original gates to the city and as Berlin grew it marked a passage between East and West Berlin. Until the wall went up in August, 1961, people could travel freely between the two parts of the city, but it was closed when the wall was constructed, cutting off visitation between citizens of the divided city. Today it has been restored and is considered to be one of the landmarks of Europe.

Soon after the wall went up in 1961, President J.F.Kennedy ordered US troops to establish checkpoints along the wall for diplomatic troops to pass from East to West Germany. Checkpoint Charlie was most famous of the three. It is depicted in this mural on the wall near the original location of the checkpoint. Today a booth stands at the original checkpoint site and visitors can get their passports stamped in the nearby museum showing they have been through Checkpoint Charlie.

The Trabant, often called the Trabi, was the most common car manufactured in East Germany during this time period. It was lightweight and inexpensively made, with room for four adults and some luggage. Sometimes the East Germans used it to smuggle people out of East Berlin. In this mural the Trabi is depicted as breaking through the wall. You can see the graffiti in this photo. When I visited the wall in 2008 much of the Berlin Wall was covered in graffiti, including many of the beautiful murals, some of which were almost obliterated.

This mural is perhaps one of the more emotional ones as it depicts the faces of hundreds of East Germans trapped behind the wall. As you can see here, the graffiti is just starting to cover this painting. The wall was opened in 1990, and it was just after that when artists from around the world came to Berlin to add their images to the huge concrete canvas. There was already a lot of graffiti, names, and messages on the wall, painted by West Berliners in desperation and defiance of the East German ruling to stay away from the wall.

Long stretches of the Berlin Wall are covered in graffiti.When the concrete slabs first started to appear along the border created by the barbed wire, people started to write their names, phone numbers or even leave messages on the wall. It was dangerous to do this, but the West Germans were defiant and furtively continued to create some of the graffiti we still see today. The most dangerous places to approach the wall were those areas near doorways in the wall that were heavily guarded, and this is where much of the graffiti is located. Here are some pictures of the graffiti that covers the long stretches of wall.

In 2009, several of the original murals were removed from the wall for restoration. Some of the original artists have refused to re-paint the murals, which have been damaged by vandals, tourists, the weather, and pollution, for a variety of reasons, but many of them were completely restored and now reside in what has been called "The World's Largest Open-Air Gallery."