1 Pieces of
Berlin Wall,
Brehmestrasse,
Berlin-Pankow,
1991

The Wall retained a strange kind of' magic in the days and
months that followed, as Berliners and tourists hacked away at
the concrete. Pieces of the Wall did indeed have a special aura:
they were treated as holy relics that bespoke our deliverance
from the Cold War. For that brief moment, the Wall was in
demand precisely because it was disappearing. Detached pieces
of it were valued as evidence of an apparently spontaneous will
to destroy the Wall. The cold night air during that winter of
1989-90 was filled with the sound of pik-pik-pik. First Berliners,
then tourists hacked away at the Wall. They contributed in a
minuscule way to the removal of the concrete, but more signifi-
cant was their ritual participation in the removal of the symbolic
barrier. It was in this carnival atmosphere that the concrete was
divested of its murderous aura and invested with magical proper-
ties (its high asbestos content aside) that made visitors take it
home to display on mantels around the world.

These magical properties translated into its market value. The
Wall, symbol of the epic confrontation between capitalism and
communism, became a capitalist commodity. Enterprising locals
sold hacked-off pieces of concrete from tables set up at Check-
point Charlie and the Brandenburg Gate ( fig. 2 ). Others would
rent you a hammer and chisel so that you could chop your own.
Still other entrepreneurs, more ambitious and better capitalized,
filled crates and trucks with this East German state property and
supplied genuine Wall fragments to American department stores

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