The visual artist Christoph Niemann writes an art blog for the New York Times. He has recently moved to Berlin, Europe’s hippest city (which is why all the artists move there these days). Where I also happen to have been born.
(It hasn’t rubbed off on me much, obviously. To wit, in the decade and a half since it’s become Europe’s capital of cool – as the mayor likes to say, “poor but sexy” — I’ve spent maybe a total of six years there, five of which were in high school. As I write this I’m sitting at a Starbucks in a Chicago suburb. Where it’s nice and sunny. And the only hipsters I’ve seen are high schoolers whose combined slovenly outfit cost roughly $400 at Urban Outfitters.)
Anyway, I vividly remember the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, even if I was still a little kid at the time. My parents took us to the Glienicker Brücke, a famous Cold War exchange spot for spies, and we greeted the odd-looking East German cars as they slowly rolled into Free Berlin. (That’s the West, for those of you who skipped European history that day.)
I’ve noticed that a lot of people this side of the Atlantic have pretty much forgotten about the Fall of the Berlin Wall, a day that changed the world when the Soviet totalitarian tyranny — by far the most murderous regime in history — finally crumbled.
Christoph Niemann remembers that day, too. This is his artistic recounting of his experience of Berlin and the Berlin Wall. Go and have a look.
(Thanks to Steven Baird for the tip.)
I’m glad you enjoyed it!