Death at the Berlin Wall, by Pertti Ahonen
2012; Oxford University Press; Volume: 127; Issue: 529 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/ehr/ces263
ISSN1477-4534
Autores Tópico(s)Italian Fascism and Post-war Society
ResumoFifty years after its sudden construction on 13 August 1961, the Berlin Wall continues to resonate in the popular imagination, mostly as a symbolic divide that has gradually been overcome since German reunification in 1990. In this fruitful examination of twelve people killed at the Berlin Wall, Pertti Ahonen seeks to move beyond the ways in which these victims were instrumentalised in the service of the Wall’s shifting Cold War meanings. Instead, he aims to restore a face and occasionally a voice to people whose deaths reduced them to the status of Cold War icons. Taking us from the first shooting victim (Günter Litfin in August 1961) to the last (Chris Gueffroy in February 1989), Ahonen uses this small but diverse subset of ‘Wall victims’ to delve into the messy personal and situational contexts that made each death unique. He effectively challenges efforts to simplify that contextual messiness in the name of political or ideological coherence, and highlights the cracks in the authoritative public explanations at the time of each death as well as in the legal proceedings and commemorations since the Wall came down in November 1989.
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