East Side Gallery
- Advika Jalan
- Dec 27, 2018
- 2 min read
After World War II, the victors USSR, USA, UK and France divided up Germany into four occupation sectors- one for each country. Later, USA, UK and France combined their sectors to create the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), also known as West Germany. The Russian sector came to be known as German Democratic Republic (GDR), also known as East Germany. In addition, the capital city of Berlin was also similarly partitioned into East and West Berlin (which led to the issue of West Berlin being smack in the middle of East German territory). Over time, West Germany and East Germany became increasingly different- one followed a democratic capitalist system, and the other a socialist system. West Germany enjoyed increasing prosperity, leading to East Germans fleeing to West Germany, by exploiting the loophole created by West Berlin existing within GDR's borders. Naturally, the Soviets would have none of that, so a wall was built overnight on 13th August 1961, to prevent East Germans from crossing over to the West. This caused Winston Churchill to declare that "an Iron Curtain has descended over Europe," and the Berlin Wall came to be a famous physical embodiment of the Cold War.
Finally, the walls that tore apart the city were brought down on November 1989. The jubilation was evident on both sides, and in order to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall, a number of murals were painted on the wall. This section of the wall is known as the East Side Gallery.
The Fraternal Kiss, painted by Dmitri Vrubel, also called "My God, Help Me To Survive This Deadly Love." This mural on the East Side Gallery is one of the most famous ones, and it shows Leonid Brezhnev (General Secretary of the Communist Party of Soviet Union) and Erich Honecker (General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party) kissing. Believe it or not, but the "socialist fraternal kiss" was a real custom- socialist leaders would greet each other by kissing on the cheeks, but if they were exceptionally close, they kissed on the mouth, The mural is based on a 1979 photograph of Brezhnev and Honecker, at a time when Russia and East Germany had signed a ten-year long mutual support agreement. The most important element in this mural is the irony: the painting of love on a wall of division.
I like this mural- the Trabant breaking through the wall. The Trabant is an East German car, which someone once described to me as a "glorified lawn mower." A famous symbol of East Germany, the car has a fascinating history (you can read up more about why I think the Trabi is a marvel in my blog post on the DDR Museum).
East Side Gallery, besides being a visual treat, is a powerful reminder that whether or not we like it, physical and metaphorical walls have been the cause of our undoing. In today's context, it is even more important to remember this.
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