The Latest at Goethe

The thirty stones of the wall that the Goethe-Institut sent on an uncertain journey around the world six months ago were 2.5 metres high and 20 kilos heavy. Now, in Berlin the returned stones are being weighed in – with unexpected results. By Johannes Schneider

No, it is not a wall. The way that the eight stones from the wall in the world are exhibited in the rooms of the Stiftung Haus der Geschichte in Berlin’s Kulturbrauerei does not possess the foreboding feel of a wall of separation. It is lacking the monolithic aspect. When they are not put together to form a wall, the extruded foam stones that were painted in different countries as part of the Goethe-Institut’s wall in the world project are robbed of their menace. The overall statement seems optimistic: every wall can split, even crumble.

Yet the way the individual foam stones were painted speaks another language that is far more oppressive. A Palestinian school class shaped a piece of the wall in the style of the “fence” between Israel and the West Bank, including the barbed wire. In its associative work on physical and social boundaries, a Mexican artists collective takes up the “death train” that carries the poor of southern Mexico to the American border. Yemini artist Reema Quasim broaches the issue of the ever more rigid veiling policies in the once secularized south of her country by giving her stone a veil made of paint and lacquer. All of them tell stories of a world where not everything has really gotten better.

Message in a bottle from Berlin to the world

This in every way erratic impression is part of the idea behind the wall in the world project, as its initiator Michael Jeismann, head of the capital office of the Goethe-Institut, explains. They wished to send a “message in a bottle to the world,” Jeismann said at a panel discussion at the Stiftung Haus der Geschichte, to receive messages back from those countries “that have their own problems of division or reunification.”

Jeismann is impressed by the dedicated response from around the world: “As a historian, you think you already know everything. But, I was literally astounded at how much the Cold War grasped and still grasps the whole world.” Many borders continue to be manifest, while elsewhere, in Yemen for example, society had changed dramatically as a result of reunification, increasingly leading to the oppression of women.

Nevertheless, all of these demarcations do not bear one significant unique feature of the Berlin wall, as Jeismann’s co-panellist Axel Klausmeier, director of the Berlin Wall Memorial, said: “The Berlin Wall was a work of a Communist dictatorship, which turned inwards all by itself,” said Klausmeier underlining the “incomparableness” of the German dividing complex.

Hammer and chisel

The danger of misconceiving this dimension at first made him hesitate a bit at the invitation of the Goethe-Institut and Stiftung Haus der Geschichte. Klausmeier was finally convinced by the movement of the wall in the world “from Berlin into disparateness,” a scenario that always accompanies the starting point of the act; the unique historic division of the city of Berlin.

This is also revealed by a look at the central exhibits of the evening: three pieces of wall painted by the Chinese artists Zhang Xiaogang, Wang Guangyi and Huang Rui. Wang Guangyi’s wall piece in particular refers blatantly to the German wall history, showing a cultural revolutionary working away at the crest of the Berlin Wall with hammer and chisel. On a red background, the dates 1961 and 1989 repeat themselves.

“This does not dispute the uniqueness of the German wall, but shows the reference value it still bears today,” said Jeismann. The political topicality of the wall in the world is more than tangible in China especially. A Chinese journalist who wished to report on the act was forced to learn that “in China, 1989 is a taboo year.” This fact only intensifies Jeismann’s conviction that it was right to include China in the tour schedule of the wall in the world.

Transforming the wall into a symbol of freedom

This tour is gradually coming to an end. An exhibition of nine stones closed this weekend in Berlin and on 9 November, the stones will be part of the domino installation at the Festival of Freedom along the course of the wall in Berlin. Later some of them will become part of the permanent exhibition of the Haus der Geschichte in Bonn. Walter Hütter, president of the Haus der Geschichte and host of the discussion, welcomed this new signal: “When we presented parts of the real wall in Bonn in the nineties, it was clear to us that we would present them as a closed wall.”

The exhibits from the wall in the world could form a counterpoint to them, Hütter believes. “The way that we used to talk about walls had something divisional about it. Today, they bring us together.” Jeismann added “This transformation of the wall into a symbol of freedom is what the Chinese artists grasped.” Therefore, their works in particular with their “provoking topical relevance” are a special inducement to always critically analyze our own freedom.