My wife and I kiss in front of the famous “fraternal kiss” of the East Side Gallery. That’s the Soviet general secretary, Leonid Brezhnev, giving a kill to the East German general secretary, Erich Honecker.
In 1989, tens of thousands of protesters tore down the Berlin Wall. But as The New York Times points out, the irony is that in 2013 people are protesting because they want the Wall to stay up–or at least one stretch of it.
The East Side Gallery is the longest remaining section of the Berlin Wall–about one mile long. But what makes the East Side Gallery unique are the stunning paintings, some by world-renowned artists, that adorn this section of the Wall. According to The New York Times, thousands of Germans have shown up in recent days to protest the removal of a 70-foot section of the East Side Gallery to make room for an access road to luxury apartments (another irony). The plan is to relocate this portion of the Gallery to a nearby park.
Construction workers had removed a 4-foot slab before being blocked by protesters, and the project has temporarily been put on hold. Check out the New York Times story.
My wife and I saw the East Side Gallery in August of 2011 while I was in Berlin doing research for my novel, The Puzzle People.
By Doug Peterson
