Lot 710 D

The curtain goes up, the view opens onto a stage bathed in morning twilight - the leading tragedy of the German domestic border is presented. The scene is spooky, surreal and at the same time bitterly serious. A watchtower with two border guards in the turret, surrounded by a wall, barbed wire fence, spotlights and stacked concrete slabs. The scene reflects the everyday life of the border fortifications between two states. In the night of 13 August 1961, the GDR leadership gives the order to seal off the sector border to West Berlin with wire fences and concrete slabs on the thoroughfares. On 20 September 1961, the decision is made to build a two-meter-high wall. In June 1962, the construction of the so-called Hinterland begins; the area between, brightly lit at night, forms the almost insurmountable death strip. The "antifaschst protective wall", as the functionaries call the structure, officially serves to defend from external enemies. The soldier on duty quickly realises that it is his job to keep his own citizens away from the border. C.O. Paeffgen's excerpt shows a status quo, routine spreading out in the service of the German domestic wall. For the artist as well as the West Berlin people, the wall means a circumscribing way of life on an island in the middle of the GDR: freedom of movement ends at the wall, the regulation of permits to the East, border traffic to the West, whether by plane, car or train: everything is arduous. The apparent idyll of the scene seems so profoundly and oppressively deceptive and at the same time cynical, commented on in the choice of scale: the stage with the half-open curtain is reduced in size as if for a stage-set in a Punch and Judy show.

MvL