The last avenue of the ‘Other’ Europe. The Stalinist universe of the Karl-Marx-Allee in Berlin

Abstract

There are cities that lie on a border, and others that accommodate borders and are formed by these. Political events have robbed these cities of a part of their reality, such as their hinterland, their tight bond with the rest of the national territory. History has torn deep gashes in their fabric and made a world stage of their everyday life, turning them into a theatre of the absurd. In these cities, one experiences, in an extraordinary manner, the duality of the border and its positive and negative effects in accordance with whether the borders are open or closed, rigid or flexible, anachronistic, protective or destructive.