Anne Elizabeth Moore: Commercializing the Fall of the Wall
Modern-day American border guard Shawn Carter works for the Chicago Transit Authority. His first morning of work at the Western Brown Line El station, a few days before the November 9 anniversary of the so-called Western defeat of Communism, he was shocked to find a massive intact section of the Berlin Wall five yards from his post.
"I'd never seen it before!" he said, excited. The descriptive literature closest to his seat detailed shootings and escape attempts and Ronald Reagan's demands that Gorbachev eliminate the barrier to capitalism - exciting moments in the history of what, otherwise, was a slab of concrete people lived with for 28 years. The moment he got to work, Carter said, he pored over it. "It's amazing to see what people went through, that people lost their lives."...
... Still, the fall of the Wall has come to symbolize the justice inherent in free-market economies, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the tourist shops along Unter den Linden in Berlin. These sell trinkets and gewgaws to any comer, each festooned with a brightly colored bit of felled capitalist resistance.
Necklaces, bears, postcards, snow globes and diminutive Brandenburg Gates are available adorned with crumbling chunks of the Wall. (Prices start at around 10 euros and quickly become more expensive, depending on how well you want to remember the GDR.) If you can't decide on what occasion you may wear a memoir of the barrier that at least 138 people lost their lives trying to pass, you can purchase a stand-alone, inch-diameter, certificate-authenticated "piece of German history" for around 2.95 euros - about $4.25 USD.
While the pickaxes and memento collecting started immediately, the Wall's first commercial appearance did not come until five days later. Selling reminders of the cold war to Americans was a craze kicked off by radio personality Steve Cochran of KDWB in Minnesota's Twin Cities. On November 14, 1989, he offered two chunks to callers as prizes on his drive-time commercial radio show. This inspired immediate outrage over the crass sale of the Communist keepsakes that lasted until the Christmas shopping season swung into high gear two weeks later. By then, department stores in most US downtowns were selling bits of the Wall too.
By 1990, GDR souvenir sales were common enough in tourist shops in Berlin, and independent vendors roamed the streets with smaller displays.
Today, at any given moment, perhaps 5,000 euros worth of Wall memorabilia is on retail display today at each of 15 major tourist shops in Germany's capital city, resulting in around $115,000 worth of Communist merch for sale every day, still two decades later. Already sold are the 45 several-ton sections of Wall situated throughout the world - 27 of which are now in the United States. Most were sold at unknown costs, likely in the tens or hundreds of millions, not including shipping or handling. Economically speaking, sales of the Wall may by now have exceeded the $7 billion cost in local talent the thing was originally built to restrain...
... Not so in Dixon, Illinois, about an hour and 45 minutes west of the Western Avenue Brown Line stop in Chicago. The boyhood home of Ronald Reagan, like the El station, boasts an intimate connection with this piece of history. In fact, several years ago, the city installed a replica of the Berlin Wall in its Wings of Peace and Freedom Park. In recognition of the former president's "efforts to attain worldwide peace and freedom" (according to the Dixon Tourism Directory web site), several full sections of cement wall stand, brightly painted. Unfortunately, they are totally unmarked as fakes. News outlets, tourists and tea-party patriots regularly overlook their replica status and assume them to be real.
And under capitalism, this makes sense too. They are, after all, still authentic pieces of some wall.
Maybe the resounding lesson of the Berlin Wall for young people is: In the free market, history just doesn't matter...
Read entire article at Truthout
"I'd never seen it before!" he said, excited. The descriptive literature closest to his seat detailed shootings and escape attempts and Ronald Reagan's demands that Gorbachev eliminate the barrier to capitalism - exciting moments in the history of what, otherwise, was a slab of concrete people lived with for 28 years. The moment he got to work, Carter said, he pored over it. "It's amazing to see what people went through, that people lost their lives."...
... Still, the fall of the Wall has come to symbolize the justice inherent in free-market economies, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the tourist shops along Unter den Linden in Berlin. These sell trinkets and gewgaws to any comer, each festooned with a brightly colored bit of felled capitalist resistance.
Necklaces, bears, postcards, snow globes and diminutive Brandenburg Gates are available adorned with crumbling chunks of the Wall. (Prices start at around 10 euros and quickly become more expensive, depending on how well you want to remember the GDR.) If you can't decide on what occasion you may wear a memoir of the barrier that at least 138 people lost their lives trying to pass, you can purchase a stand-alone, inch-diameter, certificate-authenticated "piece of German history" for around 2.95 euros - about $4.25 USD.
While the pickaxes and memento collecting started immediately, the Wall's first commercial appearance did not come until five days later. Selling reminders of the cold war to Americans was a craze kicked off by radio personality Steve Cochran of KDWB in Minnesota's Twin Cities. On November 14, 1989, he offered two chunks to callers as prizes on his drive-time commercial radio show. This inspired immediate outrage over the crass sale of the Communist keepsakes that lasted until the Christmas shopping season swung into high gear two weeks later. By then, department stores in most US downtowns were selling bits of the Wall too.
By 1990, GDR souvenir sales were common enough in tourist shops in Berlin, and independent vendors roamed the streets with smaller displays.
Today, at any given moment, perhaps 5,000 euros worth of Wall memorabilia is on retail display today at each of 15 major tourist shops in Germany's capital city, resulting in around $115,000 worth of Communist merch for sale every day, still two decades later. Already sold are the 45 several-ton sections of Wall situated throughout the world - 27 of which are now in the United States. Most were sold at unknown costs, likely in the tens or hundreds of millions, not including shipping or handling. Economically speaking, sales of the Wall may by now have exceeded the $7 billion cost in local talent the thing was originally built to restrain...
... Not so in Dixon, Illinois, about an hour and 45 minutes west of the Western Avenue Brown Line stop in Chicago. The boyhood home of Ronald Reagan, like the El station, boasts an intimate connection with this piece of history. In fact, several years ago, the city installed a replica of the Berlin Wall in its Wings of Peace and Freedom Park. In recognition of the former president's "efforts to attain worldwide peace and freedom" (according to the Dixon Tourism Directory web site), several full sections of cement wall stand, brightly painted. Unfortunately, they are totally unmarked as fakes. News outlets, tourists and tea-party patriots regularly overlook their replica status and assume them to be real.
And under capitalism, this makes sense too. They are, after all, still authentic pieces of some wall.
Maybe the resounding lesson of the Berlin Wall for young people is: In the free market, history just doesn't matter...