Many sections of the Berlin Wall have been loaned or gifted across the world. 5 sections are in South Korea, understandably sending a message to the division there, others are in Japan, the UK and the United States amongst other places. As I come across sections I will place them below.

Christchurch, New Zealand

Two sections of the Berlin Wall were placed in Rauora Park, near Cashel Street, in the center of the city. These segments were imported in 2017, stored for some time, and then placed in the park having been decorated with street art.

London, England

Imperial War Museum

In Southwark the Imperial War Museum displays segments in Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park to the left of the main entrance. This section of the Berlin Wall from a street called Leuschnerdamm in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin. One side of the wall section is covered in graffiti, including the inscription ‘CHANGE YOUR LIFE’, by the artist Jürgen Grosse, known professionally as ‘Indiano’. The design is similar to the one in Sydney (below).

Lewisham Shopping Centre

Two sections of the wall currently on display at The Migration Museum in Lewisham, these separate surviving segments of the Berlin Wall are directly painted on by contemporary artists STIK and Thierry Noir. Between 1984 and 1989 Thierry Noir illegally painted over five kilometres of the Berlin Wall. Noir’s aim was to perpetrate an act of artistic resistance with the intent of changing the perception of the Berlin Wall, to demystify it and remove its threat by making it colourful and ridiculous. The Berlin Wall stood for 28 years, a physical and metaphorical barrier between Eastern and Western Europe as a division between cultures and political systems. It was an embodiment of enforced separation.  The artists act of creating a new work on surviving sections removes the intrinsic historical connotation of the Berlin Wall as a physical and mental barrier. This is a similar approach to the New Zealand artists in Christchurch. In 2019 these 2 sections were at the Imperial War Museum the display features two figures facing towards each other, the ‘past engaging with the present’.

The sections of the wall are designed to be a doorway to the Museum and is a symbol of friendship to all without exception.

The German School, Richmond

The school is an international private school for pupils aged 3 – 19 which follows the German curriculum (following the Baden – Wurttemberg model) leading from the Kinderhaus to the Abitur and IB. The school promotes German language and culture and acts as a school for the German diaspora in London and more widely. More details are here. Many thanks to Susanne More, teacher of History for arranging the visit and tour of the school, her reflection that it was now possible to walk around it on all sides, in a foreign land and that it does not instil fear in people any longer is an important one to think about.

This Berlin Wall fragment was placed at the school in 1994. Initially the fragment was gifted to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). The fall of the Berlin Wall was one of the monumental events that led to the founding of the EBRD. Their task was to promote the development of Eastern Europe however the City of London would not allow the section to be placed in the Exchange Square near Liverpool Street and so it was sited in Richmond. More details are here. This fragment originally was placed in Bernauer Strasse, which in 1945 was the border between the localities of Wedding (west) and Mitte (east). Initially there were houses very close to the border and people jumped from windows into the West. The DDR blocked up the windows then demolished the houses to prevent such escapes.

The National Army Museum, Chelsea

A section of the Berlin Wall now stands in the National Army Museum in Chelsea. At 3.6m tall and 2m wide, the wall allows visitors to imagine what it was to be living in the shadow of this physical and ideological divide. It is placed in the foyer alongside a a Fox armoured car. Elsewhere in the museum there is an interesting exhibition about the role of the British Army in Germany since 1945.

Elsewhere in Germany

Unsurprisingly, many fragments of the Berlin Wall were distributed throughout Germany from small villages to major cities. Those I have visited I include here.

Hamburg

On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall, the Axel Springer SE donated a segment of the Berlin Wall to each federal state. A Berlin Wall segment can be found in Hamburg at the Platz der Deutschen Einheit (Square of German Unity) in front of the Elbe Philharmonic Concert Hall, it was moved there in 2012.

Inner German Wall Museum in Mödlareuth

Although the focus of this fascinating museum is the inner German border that divided this village in half as it was situated partly in Bavaria and partly in Thuringia. Between 1949 and 1990, the northern part was in East Germany and the southern part in West Germany. A small section of the Berlin Wall is on display there. Interestingly, it includes a door which East German border guards used to inspect the border line which was located west of the wall.

Osaka, Japan

Two segments are displayed at the Toukokuji Temple in Osaka. The two segments of the Wall, standing here since 1998, are a donation of two Koreans. Along with it goes their request to reunification of the two parts of the country. At the time of my visit (April 2024) there was a request for donations to restore the segments.

Schengen, Luxembourg

Two segments stand about 100 m from the place where the Schengen Agreement was signed in 1985.

Seoul, South Korea

Three sections of the wall are displayed along the recently restored Cheonggyecheon stream in central Seoul and were presented in conjunction with the restoration project. The sections are adjacent to the Samilgyo Bridge across the stream. This is the most impressive display of segments, with the small square designed to reflect a German space, with cobble stones, benches and original street lights. A bear the symbol of Berlin stands in front of the wall.

Singapore

In October 2016, two panels of the Berlin Wall were unveiled on the university campus. The panels were gifted to Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to mark 50 years of diplomatic relations between Germany and Singapore. They were loaned to the University by the Ministry and are on display at a garden behind Tembusu College

Sydney, Australia

A section of the Berlin Wall was placed on display outside the Goethe Institute in the suburb of Woollahra in 2019. The section was shipped to Australia in the early 1990s by German-Australian businessman Peter Kubiak and it stayed in storage for many years and contact was lost with him. Following a social media campaign the segment was transported to its current location in 2019.

Gdansk, Poland

The structure consists of two authentic fragments of walls: the brick wall of the Gdańsk Shipyard and the concrete Berlin Wall. These fragments are joined by a floor arrangement with the inscription Drogi do wolności. Roads to freedom. The text is written on the pavement in various languages and leads to Solidarity Square (Plac Solidarności). The text on the plaque next to the Berlin Wall fragment reads: “A fragment of the Berlin Wall, a symbol of the division of Europe into free and enslaved, whose fall on 9 November 1989 became a sign of German unification and the restoration of European unity”.

There is a similar installation in Berlin, with a fragment of the Gdańsk Shipyard wall placed next to the remains of the Berlin Wall.

Warsaw, Poland

The museum of John Paul II and Primate Wyszynski in Warsaw

Museum of John Paul II and Primate Wyszynski contains 2 sections which commemorate the Polish Pope’s contribution to peaceful change in Europe and the world at the end of the 20th century.  The installation of the segment was initially in the entrance to the museum in May 2020 on the anniversary of the 100th birthday John Paul II. The museum has had a reorganisation of its exhibits, and the fragments now stand in the car park either side of the path leading to the museum and church.

The Solidarity Monument

A concrete wall intersected by a huge rust-coloured “Solidarity” logo is located in central Warsaw at the junction of the Swietokrzyska and Kopernika streets.

Unveiled on the 32nd anniversary of Poland’s first partially free elections, the monument was located on a stone square. Its main elements are a concrete wall into which 4 fragments of the Berlin Wall with distinctive graffiti and a huge, spatial inscription of “Solidarity” have been incorporated. The movement’s scaled-down, rust-coloured logo floats above the square’s surface and pierces the concrete barrier. Next to it, two quotes – statements by Ronald Reagan and John Paul II – are placed on the wall.

References

1. A comprehensive list of Berlin Wall locations is available here or at https://www.berliner-mauer-weltweit.eu/
2. Wikipedia also have a comprehensive list of Berlin Wall segments here .
3. What happened to the Berlin Wall? (ERNS November 2019) here
4. The Wall.Net – the Berlin Wall across the world. Details here