The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape

by Brian Ladd

Buildings matter. So do statues, ruins, and even stretches of vacant land. Buildings provide shelter for human activities, but it is the activities, not the shelter,

Every city and every country must weigh development against preservation. Why is Berlin special? Certainly not for its beauty or its state of preservation. Berlin is fascinating, rather, as a city of bold gestures and startling incongruities, of ferment and destruction.

Buildings matter for me here not because of any intrinsic beauty or value, but because they

are the symbols and the repositories of memory.

the Wall was in demand precisely because it was disappearing.

The Wall, symbol of the epic confrontation between capitalism and communism, became a capitalist commodity.

The idea of leaving pieces on their original site made no sense at all to most Berliners. Proposals to preserve parts of the Wall, and to create a Wall memorial in Berlin, faced organized and unorganized opposition. Every suggestion to preserve one section or another was met with a chorus of objections, particularly from neighbors.