5 - Interrupting Unity: The Berlin Wall’s Second Life on Screen — a Transnational Perspective

Summary

On The Evening Of 9 November 1989 I had dinner at a friend’s home in my former neighborhood of Schöneberg in Berlin. At some point the phone rang, and another friend informed us that the border had been opened. In disbelief, we both assumed that this was a joke. My host did not have a television set, so I cycled home, switched on my little black-and-white TV, and there it was: pictures of people climbing over the Wall and driving through checkpoints. Not until the next day did I venture out to see real border crossers at Bornholmer Strasse. Despite my status as a resident of the city, my first exposure to this historical event was, as for most spectators around the world, via media — a telephone conversation and televised images.

The final scene in Leander Hausmann’s film Herr Lehmann (2003) sums up this mediated experience with pointed irony. In a Kreuzberg bar, where a group of young artists and dropouts is hanging out, a portable black-and-white television is transmitting images of East German Trabis being welcomed by the crowds. Among the television viewers, one woman asks: “Habt ihr schon gehört? Die Mauer is offen. Die kommen jetzt alle rüber.” (Have you heard? The Wall is open. They are all coming over now.) At that moment, the film cuts to a counter shot of the unimpressed Kreuzbergers, who continue to sip their beer. The camera angle, slightly from above, suggests that the television is looking back at these mavericks who have themselves turned into a spectacle in their enclosed little space in Kreuzberg. This state of “distant viewing” and disbelief continued for quite some time. As we look back and remember, it becomes apparent that the mediated “production of locality” occurs in a global horizon and that historic moments are produced as events through their recurring presence in circulating images. More importantly, the bar scene demonstrates that spectators show different levels of engagement and participation in mediated events depending on their social location and affiliation. The variety of their responses challenges any unifying account of history.

“Come together and learn to live as friends” was the motto for an advertising campaign launched in 1989 by the cigarette company Peter Stuyvesant in sync with other multiculturalist sales strategies (for example United Colors of Benetton).