Iconoclash: Political Imagery from the Berlin Wall to German Unification

By Ellesse Sorbonne, Contributing Editor

Soft drink bottle “Leninade”, 2008
Lenin remains venerated by some and ridiculed by others. In the last
several years his image has become an ironic commodity for youth culture.

November marked the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The event was commemorated worldwide, but perhaps most memorably at Washington, DC’s Goethe-Institut. The German cultural center opted against a conventional, tidy photo exhibit of the Berlin Wall, and instead filled its walls with defaced GDR (German Democratic Republic) relics.

While graffiti-ridden portraits and sculptures may seem odd in a gallery space, the objects powerfully encapsulate the cultural history of the Eastern Bloc—a history of a growing irreverence towards the GDR.

Over its 40-year-command, the GDR’s political iconography gradually slipped from objects of veneration to canvases for satire. The Iconoclash exhibit captures this transition with a bronze bust of Lenin rendered bright pink and a portrait of Erich Honecker, the GDR’s Head of State, with the pseudo-inscription: “Fond Greetings from Moscow/Chile/Hell?”

The exhibit also features the descent of GDR icons into the commercial sector in the 1990’s. Indeed, most of the items on display were salvaged from department stores and flea markets including fragments of the Berlin Wall itself. One of the most poignant pieces is a metal sign warning against trespassing and photography in a restricted zone at the Friedrich-/Zimmerstrasse border crossing. On the back of the ominous notice is a glib hand-written advertisement for souvenirs at the Wall, “Have your passports stamped with an authentic GDR stamp.”

The manipulation of GDR iconography remains popular even two decades after the fall of the regime. Iconoclash highlights recent t-shirts of GDR leaders with mohawks and bottles of “Leninade,” which invite the consumer to “Get Hammered & Sickled!” The exhibit is open to the public until January 8th, 2010.

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