Berlin (West)

Berlin in the 1980s was in a state of suspension, with the physical trappings of the Cold War still omnipresent but subtly in decay. This collection of images, mostly dating from 1982, gives a vivid snapshot of the city’s multi-liminal character in those years, focusing mainly on the everyday trappings of division, including not only well-known setpieces of ‘The Wall’, such as Potsdamer Platz or Bernauer Strasse, but also lesser-known quirks such as border-straddling transport infrastructure (such as the extraordinary Wollankstrasse S-Bahn station, accessible only through a ‘hole in the wall’, as well as the better-known Friedrichstrasse) or anomalies such as the Steinstücken ‘exclave’. More generally, the S-Bahn network within West Berlin, latterly a quasi-extra-territorial DDR operation widely boycotted by West Berliners, is documented in its final state of truncation and rampant decay, seen most spectacularly in the images of the wildly overgrown Gesundbrunnen station – together with an early 21st-century image (from exactly the same viewpoint) of the latter’s rebuilt state as a bustling, modern national transportation hub. These historic photographs, which are made available in partnership with DOCOMOMO-International - the global network for documentation and conservation of the modern movement - are available as an open-access library of images, free of copyright restrictions. These files, which are divided into West Berlin and East Berlin sites, may be copied, edited and shared on condition that the appropriate citation is used, as per the terms of the attached Creative Commons Attribution licence.