Celebrations marking the fall of the Berlin Wall and the transformation of the Goethe Institute grounds into a public space

Right up to the end, no one really believed it would happen, but then down it came, the wall surrounding the Goethe Institute in Johannesburg. Driving the digger was Dieter Haller, Germany’s Ambassador to South Africa. With this performance, the Goethe Institute joined with its partners in commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall some 20 years ago. Knocking down parts of the wall around the Goethe Institute formed the climax of ‘Cracking Walls’, a series of events that the Goethe Institute organised together with the German Embassy in South Africa, the Centre for Information and Research (CSIR) and GTZ. Running throughout was the thematic leitmotif of the wall as a symbol of a divided society.

(Pictured here: Pulling down parts of the wall around the Goethe Institute in Johannesburg. Photo: Irene Lukassowitz, GTZ)

The fall of the Berlin Wall changed the societal and political landscape in Germany, in Europe and indeed far beyond. Some 15 years after the people in South Africa peacefully drew a line under the Apartheid regime by staging their first democratic elections, walls are dividing society in South Africa more than ever before. They separate rich from poor and exclude instead of uniting. They suggest a sense of security in a country with one of the highest violent crime rates in the world. With this event, Katharina von Ruckteschell, who heads the Goethe Institute in South Africa, wanted to send out a message: ‘We wanted to turn the grounds around the Goethe Institute into a public space again and make them accessible to the people in our city. We wanted to invite people in instead of keeping them out by having a wall.’

The Cracking Walls series was opened on 7 September 2009 with the GTZ exhibition Developing Security – Securing Development and included the joint GTZ-CSIR seminar event, Boundaries – how we define safety in public spaces. The theme of security is of decisive importance for GTZ as a government-owned development organisation. For Peter Conze, Country Director at GTZ’s South Africa Office, there cannot be any development in the long term without a minimum level of security. ‘With ‘Cracking Walls’ we wanted to approach this sensitive issue at an artistic level. We didn’t just want to deal with this theme intellectually, but wanted people to experience it.’