Luxury Home Developer Wants to Tear Down Part of the Berlin Wall’s Remains
Cultural preservation met urban development over the weekend with protests to save the Berlin Wall
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It’s been nearly a quarter century since the fall of the Berlin Wall—a symbolic end of the Cold War and a physical destruction of the barrier separating East and West Germany. Parts of the Berlin Wall still stand, including the 1,420 yard-long portion now known as the East Side Gallery, a long, chipped stretch of concrete heavily adorned in paint.
But threatening a 22-meter piece of the East Side Gallery, says the CBC, is “a 14-storey luxury apartment block featuring floor-to-ceiling glass fronts.” To build their new apartments, Berlin-based Living Bauhaus wants to rip down the wall. And Berliners, it seems, are not happy with this idea.
“Several hundred demonstrators turned out on Friday, when work to remove the Wall temporarily stopped mid-morning after a crane had removed a first panel,” says The Local.
”I cannot and do not want to tolerate the little that remains standing of the Berlin Wall being damaged,” local Green party politician Hans-Christian Ströbele said.
The CBC says that the art on the wall will not be destroyed with the wall. Rather, the paintings will be moved to a nearby park. The protests stalled the deconstruction efforts for now, says Der Speigel. The wall will remain up for sure until at least March 18—the scheduled time of a meeting between the city and the developers.
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