The Street Art That Is Helping Berlin To Heal
Can street art help a city to heal its scars?
When I learned that Globetrotters Monthly Challenge theme this August would be Street Art, my mind instantly travelled there: Berlin.
Berlin! I have been there twice, and the first time I was there I noticed one specific thing about the capital of Germany: It feels guilt, a lot of guilt.
One can spot this guilt all around the city. At the countless monuments, memorials, and artworks devoted to World War II, the Holocaust, and the Cold War. Most of these works, despite beautiful, are understandably gray in color.
A city that still digests the horrors of World War II, and still somewhat believes it has to repay something to the world. And the same city that still has scars of being torn apart, becoming ground zero for a whole world that was cut in half by two struggling giants. Berlin became the symbol of a broken world that lasted for four decades.
But it is exactly in the greatest scar of that great city that the colors bloom their brightest. The remaining parts of the Berlin Wall long became an open-air gallery, that to some extent purged all the dark from the past and celebrated life in a city that needs to show everybody it is much more than its history.
A city that feels the need to scream “I’m Alive!!”
The art at the west face of the wall started in the mid-80s, and as far as I could notice, it is as flourishing as ever.
So keep on, Berlin! Keep throwing colors over the wall of shame, so as Fulvio Pinna would say, freedom is ashamed no more.
I would like to share these two stories, the first one is from Anupa Jayakody, and her three days around Berlin;
The second one is the beautiful Anne Bonfert story full of amazing photographs of the Berliner autumn. Need to confess that I have a kind of soft spot for that season.
