The Other Side

In collaboration with Central- and Eastern-European Studies at the University of Groningen Noorderlicht Gallery will host a series of four meetings in November and December. On each Sunday afternoon a short lecture from an expert will be linked to personal experiences from the photographers from The Other Side exposition.

Fall of the Wall
A reexamination by Dr. Stefan van der Poel
With photographers Sabine Joosten and Bert Verhoeff

The anti-fascist Schutzwall was built to protect the socialist ideal state against ‘fascist infiltrators’ from the West who would want to undermine the GDR. In reality, it functioned as a prison wall to keep GDR inhabitants ‘inside’. Between 1949 and 1961 alone it was estimated that 2.7 million citizens left the country. The abandonment of the Brezhnev doctrine in Moscow and the opening of the Hungarian-Austrian border sealed the fate of the Wall in 1989.
Stefan van der Poel looks back on 25 years since the fall of the Wall.