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The Berlin Wall was a key site of contestation between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic in their Cold War struggle over political legitimacy. On both sides, the Wall became a tool in intense publicity battles aimed at building legitimacy and collective identity at home, and undermining them in the other Germany. The public perceptions and politicized uses of the barrier evolved through stages that reflected the relative fortunes of the two German states, moving gradually from extensive East-West parallels in the early 1960s toward a growing divergence by the 1970s and 1980s, which became increasingly indicative of East Germany's weakness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The building of the Berlin Wall on 13 August 1961 had repercussions not only on the international scene, but also for the power relationship between state and society in the German Democratic Republic. This article considers the short-, medium- and long-term reactions of the East German population to the border closure from a personal and political perspective, examining key groups such as educated elites, workers, and young people. The closed society elicited a new deference in the short term, but the author argues for considerable continuities of low-level disruptive behavior before and after 13 August. In the longer term, there was a generation born behind the Wall which by simple habituation rather than a conscious decision was forced to accept the new contours of the geopolitical landscape created by the Wall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: After the fall of the Iron Curtain, the East-Central European cities had to re-invent themselves to quickly adapt to a globalising world. Urban identity production policies were usually geared to connect to a chosen pre-socialist “Golden Age”, ignoring the socialist past as a simple disturbance of a “normal” development path. This story the cities were to tell, however, frequently conflicted with the socio-economic realities of a rather unsmooth transformation process, making the socialist past part of the urban identity. In the case of Berlin, a post-socialist and at the same time a post-western-stronghold city, urban identity production is bound to be more complicated than anywhere else. After the failure of the policy to “critically reconstruct” the cosmopolitan metropolis of the 1920s and thus erasing the past of the divided city, policies developed in the run-up to the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall aim at turning the Cold War past into a central element of the story that is to support its urban identity, notably leading to the comprehensive re-emergence of the Berlin Wall in the cityscape. This policy – unmatched in other East-Central European cities – has its origins in a historic struggle for identity, leading to the questionable attempt to make “change” the main story Berlin is to tell. This theme however – in conjunction with the reconstructed Wall as image brand – may fall short of creating an urban identity accepted by large population parts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]