Berlin Wall Fragments

Art of Freedom

Tucked into a park that overlooks the Statue of Liberty – the very icon of freedom – rests a pair of 12-foot-high concrete slabs rescued from the dismantled barrier to freedom known as the Berlin Wall. From 1961-89 the Wall separated East and West Berlin, with a “death strip” between inner and outer walls, patrolled by guarded by armed soldiers forbidding passage between the two sectors. Many thousands attempted to flee; hundreds died trying.

Thierry Noir, an artist living in Berlin Kreuzberg near the Wall said, “It was not just a painted concrete wall but a deadly machine, a sort of big crocodile ready to kill people at any time.” So in 1984, with fellow artists, Noir began illegally covering the grey slab with cartoonish heads and other quickly drawn figures with leftover paints and materials scrounged from construction sites. They had to work fast to avoid being captured or killed. Nightly for five years they, in Noir’s words, “subverted this iconic symbol of war into a symbol of hope, granting it a real human significance.”

By the time the Wall came down in 1989, artists had painted nearly five kilometers on the West Berlin side. Their vivid and provocative images came to symbolize liberation and freedom. Reunification of Germany followed, and the collapse of the Berlin Wall became a symbol of the collapse of communism. Most of the demolished structure, hundreds of kilometers long, was used in German reconstruction projects. Some painted sections were gifted by Germany or sold at auction and now reside at cultural institutions, universities, and public sites worldwide.

These two fragments stood between Potsdamer Platz and Leipziger Platz, a segment of the Inner Wall constructed to keep East Germans from escaping to West Berlin. They wer gifted in 2004 by the German Consulate to Battery Park City on the fifteenth anniversary of the fall of the Wall.

Address Kowsky Plaza, North Cove in Battery Park City (near Brookfield Place); www.bpca.ny.gov/place/berlin-wall-segment | Getting there Subway: World Trade Center (E, 1), Chambers St (A, C), Park Place (2, 3), Cortland St (N, R) Fulton St (4, 5); bus: M 20, M 22, QM 11, BXM 18 | Hours Daily 24 hours | Tip Across the Hudson River is another incredible, little-known monument, Empty Sky, a tribute to the 749 victims of 9/11 who lived in or had a connection to New Jersey. Ferry over to Liberty Landing State Park from the Battery Park / Vesey Street ferry landing to see this memorial and to take in the incomparable views of Manhattan.