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In 1990, the East Side Gallery was created on what today is the longest remaining section of the Berlin Wall as some 118 artists from 21 countries created murals celebrating the fall of the divide.

Moscow artist Dmitry Vrubel was there to paint “Brotherly Kiss,” an image of former Soviet Union leader Leonid Breschnew and East German regime head Erich Honecker in passionate embrace — which remains one of the gallery’s most iconic works.

Along with the art, a counterculture flourished on the bank of the Spree River behind the former Wall as hundreds of people set up homes and creative spaces in caravans and improvised dwellings.

But 35 years later, these people are gone as the East Side Gallery — a tourist hotspot with over 400 million visitors annually — is overshadowed by real estate development. 

“The white buildings that have been constructed there are luxury apartments and hotels,” Anna von Arnim-Rosenthal says as she stands between the Spree River and the Wall and points to a building complex on the other side of the riverbank.

A cultural historian who has been managing the East Side Gallery for the Berlin Wall Foundation since 2018, von Arnim-Rosenthal reflects on the radical changes in the area since the early-mid 1990s.

A wagon fort in the middle of Berlin

After 1991, artists and alternative types from around the world settled on the borderland of the former East Berlin when the area was still a wasteland. But already by 1996, under pressure from the Senate — and amid bad press claiming the area attracted crime and drugs — the site was cleared for urban development. The wagon dwellers inhabitating the area had to move on.

In the early 2000s, the banks of the Spree River were sold to American billionaire Philip Anschutz. “And that’s why we now have high-rise buildings, hotels, the Uber Arena, offices, the mall, and so on,” says von Arnim-Rosenthal of the massive development in the Friedrichshain area. “Alternative lifestyles have been pushed to another location.”

The only remnants of the alternative trailer camps, or Wagenburgen, is a hole in the wall that the residents built there as a shortcut.

Rab Lewin, a Scotsman who lived temporarily in squats and trailer camps in Berlin from 1992, photographed these alternative communes – even though photography was actually prohibited in the so-called East Side Wagenburg.

His images portray the everyday life of the community and make it clear how much the area has changed.

“We are now standing exactly where Rab took the picture,” says von Arnim-Rosenthal, holding his image of caravans standing close together amid a wasteland. The view today is marked by a towering Mercedes Benz star logo above a corporate glass building.

The Anschutz Group developed an entire urban quarter here with office buildings, hotels, and the Uber Eats Music Hall — in an area formerly known as the Mercedes-Benz Arena.

Meanwhile, there have been repeated protests against the Anschutz Group’s projects, especially after the conservative evangelical entrepreneur, Philip Anschutz, was accused of financially supporting campaigns against queer people.

Between development and preservation

The fact that Berlin drove out the alternative lifestyle and supported the development of the area with luxury apartments and hotels must be viewed in a historical context, says von Arnim-Rosenthal.

“People didn’t really want the Wall in the cityscape anymore; there were only a few voices that wanted to preserve it,” she explains. “So people tried to find compromises: to continue developing the city, but still preserve this place.”

Despite the development, the East Side Gallery and its art and spirit of freedom is still there, she adds: “The idea was to reinterpret the Wall that cost so many people their lives and turn this place of fear and death into a place of art, encounters, and freedom.”

The East Side Gallery manager stops in front of her favorite work of art: “The Diagonal Solution” by Russian artist Mikhail Serebryakov. The picture shows a raised thumb held up by a chain. “The artist’s message is: make the best of a bad situation,” she says.

This article was originally written in German.