Artist Provokes Locals with Rebuilding of the Berlin Wall
Helmut Preller is wearing the kind of white overalls typically worn by housepainters as he sits in room number 3 on the second floor of a former guesthouse that was once called Stadt Lübeck. His laptop lies open on the table, on the window sill stands a monitor connected to a video camera. He is keeping watch on the wall next to his house night and day.
Preller winds back the video recording on his laptop. "He must be on here," he hisses. Someone has been attacking his wall, and Preller is looking for the perpetrator. It's not long before he finds what he's looking for. A clock on the screen shows the time: 3:15 p.m. A red station-wagon can be seen stopping on the right-hand side, a man gets out, in his left hand he holds a tool, in the other a spray can. He looks around then runs up to the wall, hammers against it, sprays something, then goes back to the car and drives off. On Aug. 27 he broke a hole through the wall, painted a pig and drew a circle around the hole. "It's an asshole," Preller says. "He means me."
On Aug. 13, 2009, Helmut Preller put up a wall in the eastern German town of Schönberg just a few kilometers from the former border that used to divide the former East and West Germanys before 1989. The wall, erected right by a main road, was made of thick white chipboard topped with barbed wire. It was intended to be as a work of art. Preller, who hails from Hamburg, the port city situated in the former West, is a painter and poet. And he wanted to create a memorial to the people who lost their lives in the death strip between Schönberg and Lübeck.
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Preller winds back the video recording on his laptop. "He must be on here," he hisses. Someone has been attacking his wall, and Preller is looking for the perpetrator. It's not long before he finds what he's looking for. A clock on the screen shows the time: 3:15 p.m. A red station-wagon can be seen stopping on the right-hand side, a man gets out, in his left hand he holds a tool, in the other a spray can. He looks around then runs up to the wall, hammers against it, sprays something, then goes back to the car and drives off. On Aug. 27 he broke a hole through the wall, painted a pig and drew a circle around the hole. "It's an asshole," Preller says. "He means me."
On Aug. 13, 2009, Helmut Preller put up a wall in the eastern German town of Schönberg just a few kilometers from the former border that used to divide the former East and West Germanys before 1989. The wall, erected right by a main road, was made of thick white chipboard topped with barbed wire. It was intended to be as a work of art. Preller, who hails from Hamburg, the port city situated in the former West, is a painter and poet. And he wanted to create a memorial to the people who lost their lives in the death strip between Schönberg and Lübeck.