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CHAPTER 3
The materiality of the Berlin Wall
Methods and aims
As we have seen in Chapter 2, the Berlin Wall was very important to the
way we view the Iron Curtain. In many ways the two became synonymous
in people’s minds and this has affected how people think of the Iron
Curtain and the Cold War. I did not start my research here just for this
reason, because I wanted to get away from my own preconceived ideas of
what the Iron Curtain was, or still is. But the Berlin Wall was still present
even when I visited other places. People that I interviewed in my study
areas, particularly in Italy/Slovenia, would refer back to the Berlin Wall as a
sort of case of reference of what the Iron Curtain ‘should’ look like. The
reason this study is located ahead of my other studies within the thesis is to
help the reader get a clear background before embarking on my other two
case studies.
The aim of this study was to get a better understanding of the material
side of the Berlin Wall as Chapter 2 mainly focussed on the idea of the Iron
Curtain and the Berlin Wall and to get an understanding of what it used to
look like as well as what it looks like today. This was not a case study as such
and the fieldwork for this study was therefore not as detailed as for my two
other case studies but here I was able to use the report of an archaeological
study carried out by the Department of Architectural Conservation at the
Brandenburgh University of Technology, Cottbus, Germany. In combination
with this study I made observations of my own during two visits to
Berlin in 2009 and 2010 during which the section of the former wall from
Friedrichstrasse train station to Kreuzberg was covered. This was not a
complete recording of all remains that endure from the former wall but
rather a way of getting an understanding of what the wall looks like today
and to help me understand what it may have looked like in the past. I also
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