Breaking Down the Walls of Heartache: Reflections on the Ordinary Spaces of Division and Unification in Berlin

Abstract

Berlin was a divided city for more than 40 years after 1945, and has, if anything, become overfamiliar as an iconic representation of division — the paradigmatic divided city. The Wall constructed in 1961 (and finally demolished nearly 30 years later) seemed to define it (as Figure 12.1 illustrates). West Berlin was a capitalist island surrounded by the sea of East German communism. In that sense, of course, the local was always much more than simply local; the material expressions of everyday life in the city only made sense as part of the wider set of social and political relations that framed them. In many respects the supposedly ‘local’ was also always at the same time an expression of contemporary geopolitics. Berlin was a divided city, within a divided Germany and a divided Europe.