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When the iron clutches of the Cold War broke apart twenty years ago, the world rediscovered itself. The Goethe-Institut has also taken up the theme of walls for the anniversary – from an international perspective. At the Festival of Freedom, the journey of the wall in the world will come to an end. By Michael Jeismann

Everywhere even today it takes enormous effort to integrate experiences of the New and the Different after the fall of the wall in the political order just as in the everyday life of societies. Old and new conflicts flow together; there are dangerous legacies and risky new beginnings.

After 1989, the Goethe-Institut was soon aware how important it is to understand this epochal threshold as a collective experience, regardless of what the respective national or even regional situation appeared to be. All were caught up by the rapids; the biographies of many people were catapulted into an uncertain future. It was hard to foresee on which shore one would land – and some still haven’t landed yet today.

The Goethe-Institut’s global network offers the best preconditions to trace the experiences and prospects of the epochal break internationally. On the twentieth anniversary of 9 November 1989 the Goethe-Instituts worldwide will remember and ask how this occurrence has since made an impact on the cultural relationships between each of the host countries and Germany. It is a collective pause for thought in the light of an incident that is unique in its genesis, in its mood and in its consequences. The symbolic weight of the fall of the wall continues to be felt just as the many real upheavals that it triggered. In this quality, the fall of the wall is a pivotal event for all humanity; a happy one on the whole, yet for many people tough to get through in their everyday lives.

The illusion of clear separation

Europe’s transformation also had a global impact. It was not merely that after the west/east order scheme ended international politics needed a new system of coordinates, in which interests and conflicts could be newly shaped (as, for example, in human rights policies). In fact on a worldwide scale a situation arose in which old, dividing walls were torn down while at the same time new ones were being built. In 1990, parallel to the German events, in Yemen, a land once known as “Felix Arabia,” the border fell between the Socialist, modern south and the Islamic north with its pronouncedly traditional clan culture. The unification of the two parts of the country is still not doing well today; the societal views are too dissimilar.

Some even fear a new division or want the border back to protect them from the respective others. This is where the historic ambivalence of borders and their fortifications becomes directly apparent, for depending on how you look at it, walls can mean not only separation, isolation or constraint, but also protection. In stone, they “make things clear,” and are the standing illusion that the “inside” and the “outside” are clearly separate.

Twenty Years Later – Goethe-Institut Projects on the Anniversary of the Fall of the Wall:

The long-lasting isolation of China is an excellent example of controlled stagnation and the opening of China is a model case of the dynamics set loose when boundaries have fallen. The fall of the wall and the continuing dynamism of globalization make the attraction of the wall again just as current as its absurdity.

This is also demonstrated in the eminent European issue of the division of Cyprus in a Turkish north and Greek south, yet also in the seemingly futile conflict between Israel and Palestine. The Israeli security wall, built to repel terrorist assaults, also separated people who once lived side by side. Here, too, the ambivalence of borders is apparent.

The continuation of the Cold War according to the Iron Curtain scenario is denoted by Korea, divided into a Communist North with its leadership cult and a Democratic, market-economy-based South. As much as the people yearn for an end to division, the fears and anxieties of how they should possibly manage reunification politically, culturally and economically are just as obvious on both sides.

Mexico is also in Europe

The border between Mexico and the United States falls into another category altogether: the kind that walls off the rich from the poor. The prosperity divide follows its own rules. Europe has its own “Mexican” border with the new impenetrability between Ukraine and the Central European states as well as in Spain, Italy and Portugal or on the Canary Islands, where desperate Africans attempt to gain footing for a new life in Europe – with uncertain futures.

The wall in the world project pursues these global experiences by sending simulated pieces of wall covered in canvas to many of these regions. On the initiative of the local Goethe-Instituts there, well-known artists were found for the project or, for example in Ramallah or Mexico City, young graffiti artists and architectural students.

The stones of the wall in the world will return to Germany on 9 November and will be part of the celebrations broadcast worldwide on television for the Festival of Freedom. Subsequently the stones will become parts of the permanent exhibitions of the Haus der Geschichte in Bonn, the Zeitgeschichtlichen Forum in Leipzig and in Berlin – not least to remind us that the fall of the wall in divided Germany did not end the tragedy of the world’s divided countries and torn peoples.