War History Online has an
article about a surprising outcome for the
Berlin Wall:
Where’s the Berlin Wall now? Little of it, which once separated East Berlin and East Germany from West Berlin, remains in its original location in the country’s capital. This one-time barrier, after its breakdown, was either chipped off, torn down, or auctioned off.
This daunting stretch of fortification, which once stood nearly two hundred kilometers in length, encircled what was then known as West Berlin. However, these days, its longest surviving wall tract, known as the East Side Gallery, is situated in Berlin’s Mühlenstrasse, extends to just over a kilometer, and can be viewed in twenty minutes on foot.
According to the Berlin Wall Story, which chronicled the events connected to the two-hundred-thousand-ton monument and was written by German author Hans-Hermann Hertle, after the two Germanys reunited, 65 cranes, 175 trucks, and 13 bulldozers were employed to clear away the wall from the inner city by the end of 1990, and from the outer city in 1992.
Over forty thousand segments of the wall were crushed and used as construction materials for road building. However, a number of segments survived, and were sold as art objects, bought or donated to museums and other institutions all over the world, like the Imperial War Museum in London and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California.
Surprisingly, some of the segments of the Berlin Wall ended up over time in some of the the most unexpected places.
1. Main Street Station Casino, Brewery and Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada
This is probably the most unexpected place for a Berlin Wall segment to be found, in a men’s bathroom in a casino in Las Vegas. The Main Street Station Casino has housed a Berlin Wall portion for almost twenty years. There are three urinals fixed on the graffiti-filled slab of concrete with dimensions of about three meters in width and almost two meters in length. The wall portion is also encased in glass for protection.
Nevertheless, nobody knows how the Berlin Wall segment ended up in such a vague location. According to the owner of the casino, Boyd Gaming Corporation, it had already been mounted when they bought the property, back in the 1990s, from another casino which went bankrupt. “The Berlin Wall is one of the more popular items for sightseers at Main Street Station,” stated Boyd’s spokesman, Davis Strow. He then added that they had to remodel the bathroom due to the an unusual amount of traffic it gets from their customers. They also allow females to take a look at the Wall, escorted by a security personnel, as long as the bathroom is empty.
2. Perfil Group building in Buenos Aires, Argentina
A line of Berlin Wall segments can also be found in the lobby of a Buenos Aires edifice where the Perfil Group, an Argentinian newspaper, has its office. The company bought a total of twenty segments of the historic Wall back in 1991, their reason being that the Berlin Wall had a great significance when it comes to freedom especially the freedom to express: “…it is true to the spirit of a news company who exercises the right of freedom.”
3. Schengen in Luxembourg
Schengen village in southeast Luxembourg may just be a small town, with a population of not more than two thousand individuals, but a portion of the Berlin Wall was put up in the area to mark the historic significance of the village. It was here where The Schengen Agreement was signed in 1985, allowing the citizens of the members states of the European Union to travel free through without having to undergo extensive checks upon reaching the borders. The Berlin Wall segment was erected on the agreement’s 25th anniversary, together with the opening of the European Museum.
The wall remnant, which stands three meters high and one meter wide, is mounted in front of the European Museum and, as the manager of the European Centre and European Museum in Schengen, Martina Kneip, says: “…it stands as a symbol of a border that does not exist anymore.”
4. Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, California
In America, the longest stretch of the Berlin Wall can be seen in front of the Variety Building, located on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. The architecture, which weighs about 25 tons, measures nearly four meters tall and nearly twelve meters wide, and is made up of ten Berlin Wall segments.
The murals seen on four of the segments were originally from the Berlin Wall days, including a green bear painted by Bimer, a street artist in those times.
Paintings on the other segments are recent works of artists like RETNA from LA and Herakut from Germany.
The Wende Museum in LA, a research and education institution that spearheads the preservation of Cold War artifacts, along with the German government and the city of Los Angeles, which brought these segments there in 2009 as part of The Wall Project.
“The museum patronized the project to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and to continue the legacy of the Berlin Wall as a concrete canvas for art and political expression,” says Justinian Jampol, the museum’s founder and executive director. Jampol added that the Wilshire Boulevard segments were discovered and taken from within the border area of Kreuzberg in Berlin.
5. Parque Europa in Madrid, Spain
The 233,000-square-meter Parque Europa is situated on the outskirts of Madrid, and exhibits seventeen miniature replicas of some of the landmarks found across Europe, including an original segment from the Berlin Wall. The fragment is placed at the park’s west end.
The wall portion was donated by the Torrejón de Ardoz’ town council, in which the park is located.
A sizeable portion near the bottom of the slab is missing, showing the steel rod grid beneath. Behind the mounted wall is a small model of Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, which has been the city’s symbol for centuries. During the Berlin Wall-era, the Wall had blocked off the gate from West Berlin.
6. Hilton Anatole in Dallas, Texas
Another two segments of the Berlin Wall are found in the thousand-plus-room Hilton Anatole in Dallas, and is presented as one of the hotel’s highlights.
The hotel is known for housing a massive collection of artworks, numbering a thousand pieces within its 27 floors.
The wall sections the hotel owns have paintings done by German artist Jurgen Grosse in 1990 on them. The segments were given by one of the hotel’s German partners in 1990, and was originally placed in the hotel’s garden before being moved into its Trinity Corridor in 2011.
7. Cheonggyecheon in Seoul, Korea
Korea also has a portion of the Berlin Wall— three of its segments were put up in downtown Seoul, near the stream of Cheonggyecheon, in 2005 as part of the Berlin Square erected on the area. The city of Berlin financed the project, hoping that it will move the citizens of Seoul into considering and praying for the reunification of the Korean peninsula.
As stated by the Korean Times, the Berlin Wall pieces found in the plaza stand over three meters tall with a width of three meters. One side is filled with graffiti, while the other side is blank.
The whole square exudes a German-theme ambiance and look— traditional German gas lamps are in place, along with German plants and chairs. The wall itself is accompanied by a statue of a blue bear, a symbol of Berlin.
8. Western Station on the Brown Line, Chicago, Illinois
A four-meter-tall, one-meter-wide portion of the Berlin Wall is placed in the Western Station of the Chicago Transit Authority’s Brown Line in a neighborhood which is traditionally known as the German Lincoln Square.
The segment was put up on 19 January 2008.
According to the CTA, the Berlin Wall portion was given by the Senate and City of Berlin to Chicago as a celebratory exhibit.
9. The Vatican Gardens in Vatican City
A slab of the Berlin Wall was moved in August of 1994 to the Vatican. It was placed in the city’s charming gardens where, since the thirteenth century, the Popes often go to meditate and relax. The Wall’s section is decorated with a painting of St. Michael’s church.
As ITN Source states, Marco Piccinini, former Ferrari motor sport director and team manager of its Formula 1 team, got the slab through an auction in Monte Carlo in 1990 and gifted it to the Vatican in 1994.
10. Madison Avenue in New York City
Many times passed but tending to be overlooked, a portion of the Berlin Wall stands in Paley Park near 520 Madison Avenue in Manhattan.
Standing at about six meters in length, it is comprised of five segments, the stretch was bought by Tishman Speyer Properties, the park’s owner, from the German government in 1990. Interestingly, Tishman Speyer is also the developer behind Sony Center, a huge commercial complex located in Potsdamer Platz, a former border area of Berlin.
Rico says he saw it in its original location and condition in 1969 (rather like the photo above), and has a piece of it, courtesy of his friend
Dan... (But why is it that he can only hear the Blue Meanie saying: "Argentina, maybe?")
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