Amid the destruction and division of the postwar decades, graffiti gave Berliners a
creative, defiant voice — celebrated today in the city’s galleries and memorials
The irst graiti I ever saw was German. I was
six years old and it was on a wall that was
being destroyed live on television. I had little
understanding of its signiicance, but my
mother has German friends and so somehow
none of it felt so very far from home. As
diggers clawed at this dreadful barrier,
I remember, amid the wild celebrations,
noticing that one side was heavily tattooed.
Thirty years since it fell, the Berlin Wall
is an enduring psychic scar on the city. At
the Berlin Wall Memorial, its last graitied
remnants have been let for all to see.
On boards in the accompanying gardens,
details of the Wall’s construction, raison
d’être and those who died because of it are
laid bare. The detail is forensic, the efect
deeply moving. Rusty metal information
posts ofer testimony to its awfulness at the
push of a button. The recorded voice of a
woman describes in hideous detail what it
was like to see victims of a grenade attack
dragged back to the east side.
The colourful graiti nearby is almost
painfully jarring. “If you ever wonder if you’re
seeing East or West in old photographs, just
look for the graiti,” says Anne Mueller,
tour guide at the Urban Nation museum in
Schöneberg, later that day. “The east side
was untouched because of the ‘death strip’
[a 150-metre-wide no-man’s land strewn
with barbed wire, watchtowers and machine
gun posts], but on the west side it was very
common to paint.”
At Urban Nation, work by some of the
world’s best street artists is presented in an
almost conventional gallery setting. One
such piece is My Florist Is A Dick, a sinister
depiction of a riot policeman brandishing
a lower, by Shepard Fairey, aka Obey, who
came into prominence ater creating Barack
Obama’s famous ‘Hope’ campaign poster.
Creation being a natural response to
destruction, it doesn’t feel like much of
a stretch to link the Wall and the Second
World War with Berlin’s palpable dedication
to artistry. This city has experienced so
much disruption, but this hasn’t just enabled
town planners to hit the reset button, it’s also
allowed art and artists to lourish.
“Initially, the people doing it in the city
were punks and migrants,” explains Anne.
“In the 1970s, Berlin still had a lot of war
damage and people thought it might be
nice to bring some colour back. Authorities
weren’t very strict about it.” When the Wall
came down in 1989, it created a large channel
of relatively cheap real estate, right in the
middle of the city. Artists didn’t hesitate to
ill the void and, whatever their medium,
they’ve never really let. urban-nation.com
berliner-mauer-gedenkstaette.de JLTHE TATTOOED WALL
In 1976, David Bowie moved to
Berlin. “He expected a postwar
city with a grim, downtrodden
atmosphere,” explains Philippe,
our Berlin Music Tours guide. “But
no, it was all surprisingly relaxed.”
Philippe paints a vivid picture
of the German capital during this
era. “In Berlin you could party
for 24 hours,” he says. “With it
being under military occupation,
you might expect otherwise, but
you have tens of thousands of
young men here, basically waiting
for something to happen. There
was an atmosphere of ‘do as you
please’. For a party animal such as
David Bowie, that will shape how
you live your life.”
My Bowie Berlin Walk lasts
nearly four hours, with a fair
chunk spent near Hansa Studios,
where the artist recorded Low
in 1976 and Heroes in 1977. It was
situated close to the Wall. “The
[East Berlin] guards had direct
visual contact into the studio,”
Philippe tells us. “They were
young men, 19 or 20, with a gun,
doing their military service, but
keenly aware that if they were
posted on this particular corner,
there was a chance they’d get to
groove along to Western music.”
At this point, the opening
bars of Heroes suddenly ring out
from an nearby window nearby.
A coincidence? Or a neat trick
cooked up by Philippe? Either
way, it feels thrilling.
We head next to the Reichstag,
where Bowie played to West
Berliners in 1987; thousands of
East Berliners gathered on the
other side of the Wall. “You could
hear them,” explains Philippe.
“They were shouting ‘Down with
the Wall’.” musictours-berlin.com
JFCBOWIE IN BERLIN
October 2019 85BERLIN