5,000 photos from the fall of the Berlin Wall

Why did Robert Conrad take so many pictures of the fall of the Berlin Wall? He took about 5,000 photos of the concrete structure that was almost completely torn down in 1989/90 over the span of just a few months. The wall was "a formative, grim topic for all of his life," Conrad, who was born in East Germany in 1962, told DW.

A selection of his historical photos is on display until April 18 as part of the open-air exhibition "The Disappearance of the Wall" on Steinplatz square in Berlin, the site of the Technical University where Conrad studied art history and architecture.

Under the East German regime, he was not allowed to study at a university for political reasons. Even then, he secretly took photos of the wall. When the Berlin Wall unexpectedly fell on November 9, 1989, he was "virtually well-trained for such a photo project," he says.

He was talented, passionate about photography, and self-taught. He documented decaying houses and the demolition of entire streets across East Germany with his camera.

His hometown of Greifswald on the Baltic Sea was affected, too, as were towns in the West. Conrad moved to East Berlin in 1986, three years before the fall of the Wall. He longed for a life in West Germany however, and applied to leave the country. His application was approved for February 1990. But by then, the Wall had already been open for three months.

Hidden away in archives

His photos document how the Berlin Wall disappeared from the cityscape bit by bit: a hole in the wall, a toppled watchtower or a subway station unused for decades, where no trains stopped. He also photographed other areas along the 150 kilometers of border fortifications. "At some point, there were thousands of pictures," he says of the photos he spent decades cataloging.

It was not until the new millennium that his private collection slowly emerged from oblivion, thanks in part to the Berlin Wall Memorial and the Stasi Records Office who had recognized its value and purchased photos by Robert Conrad.

The Wall chronicler is particularly grateful for commissions such as the open-air exhibition. Free of admission, it was made possible by a cooperation between the Robert Havemann Society and the Berlin district of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. The project is particularly appreciated during this period of restrictions for museums.

'Bleak, cold style'

Conrad's main concern has always been "to show this monstrosity in an endlessly long series of photographs." As an architectural historian, he has always been interested in the story of the structure dubbed by the East German regime as the "anti-imperialist protective wall." In reality, its sole purpose was to literally block the path to freedom for East Germans, people like Robert Conrad.

And yet, in his role as a photographer, he never allowed himself to be deterred from "capturing the graphic qualities of the architecture with a certain aesthetic ambition," when looking at the Wall. Conrad makes no secret of also being fascinated by it in a certain way. Despite all his personal disgust, this "bleak, cold style" also somehow appealed to him from a professional point of view.

Nevertheless photographer describes the structure that separated East and West Germans  for 28 years as "architecture at its most vicious." 

When the wall came down, Robert Conrad took the photos of the aftermath of this momentous event just for his own private use. Today, the photos are available for everyone to see. "The Disappearance of the Wall" with accompanying texts in German and English is meant to be a traveling exhibition that can go on tour from Berlin.