The 30th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall is not only reason for Germany to celebrate but is also an important day at the Wende Museum in Culver City, California. The museum’s main focus is representing and preserving art and historic artefacts of the Soviet bloc countries which were significant for the Fall of the Berlin Wall and evidently led to the so-called “Wende”.
November 9, 2019 marks the 30th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall and will be celebrated with several weeks of celebration starting October 2nd when the German Consulate in LA will celebrate the Day of Unity hosted at the Wende Museum one day before the actual holiday. The celebratory events will culminate in “a major event on November 9th”, as Jessica Hoffman from the museum told us in an interview. One highlight of that event will be the opening of the new exhibition “The Medea Insurrection: Radical Women Artists Behind the Iron Curtain” which focuses on female artists from eastern Europe as well as East Germany. The main goal of this exhibition is to show the importance these women and their art played in countercultures of their countries. The museum hereby wants to correct the historical misinterpretation of the significant contribution of the women and their art, which until now had been minimized. “Several artists […] will speak at the November 9 event about their experiences in East Germany and other Eastern Bloc countries”.
Further information on events commemorating the Fall of the Berlin Wall as well as who will speak at the event is yet to be announced, since the planning is still in progress.
The Wende Museum has hosted commemorative events in the past. Ten years ago, for the 20th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall, ten wall segments were moved to Wilshire Boulevard, one of the main streets connecting East and West Los Angeles, and placed in front of the Variety Building, were they can be visited to this day. As a symbolic gesture they built replicas of the real wall pieces that blocked the Boulevard to symbolize the separation of East and West Los Angeles and later that day teared down these replicas.
The pieces are of major relevance to many people. As Jessica Hoffman told us, “they have become a popular site for photographs as well as for protest, whether it is newlywed Korean couples taking photos against the backdrop of the wall in hopes for a reunified Korea or (others) protesting division and human-rights abuses”. Pieces of the Berlin Wall are symbols of hope, which have been sent all over the world after the fall. Now that governments want to build new walls, it is of uttermost importance to use a day like this years anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall as a reminder to work and stand together for the importance of tearing down existing walls separating countries, separating families.
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