Last updated: · By Stanislav Arnautov · Berlin
Quick answer
The Berlin East Side Gallery triptych (~$310): 1.3 km of the original Berlin Wall painted by 118 international artists in 1990, the year after reunification. The most politically specific and most geographically specific art in the DeckArts range. Two most famous murals: Dmitri Vrubel’s “Brotherly Kiss” (Brezhnev and Honecker embracing) and Birgit Kinder’s “Test the Rest” (Trabant breaking through the Wall). On warm white. DeckArts triptych from ~$310. Ships from Berlin — the city on whose wall this was painted.
The Berlin East Side Gallery is the longest open-air gallery in the world: 1.3 km of the original Berlin Wall on the eastern bank of the Spree river in the Friedrichshain district of Berlin, painted by 118 international artists in the spring and summer of 1990 — approximately six months after the Wall’s opening on 9 November 1989 and approximately six months before German reunification on 3 October 1990. The East Side Gallery was painted at the specific historical moment when the Wall was still physically standing but politically irrelevant: the artists painted the eastern face of the Wall (which had been inaccessible during the Wall’s operational period) during the 10-month window between the Wall’s opening and its formal demolition. It is the most geographically specific, the most politically specific, and the most historically specific art in the DeckArts range: DeckArts ships the East Side Gallery triptych from Berlin, the city on whose Wall it was painted. External references: East Side Gallery Berlin Official; Visit Berlin — East Side Gallery. DeckArts from ~$310.
The Berlin Wall: 1961–1989
The Berlin Wall (Berliner Mauer) was constructed beginning on 13 August 1961, on the order of the East German leadership (the SED — Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands) under Walter Ulbricht, with the approval of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. The Wall’s construction began overnight on 12–13 August 1961: East German soldiers and workers began erecting barbed wire barriers along the sector boundaries, cutting off West Berlin from East Berlin and from the surrounding East German territory (the German Democratic Republic, DDR). Within days, the barbed wire was replaced with concrete blocks; within years, the Wall evolved into a 155 km total structure of concrete walls, watchtowers, and the “death strip” (Todesstreifen) — the cleared, mined, and guarded strip between the Wall’s inner and outer barriers.
The specific biographical facts about the Berlin Wall’s 28-year existence:
The Mauerfall (Wall’s death toll): The number of people killed attempting to cross the Wall is documented at 140 (the most current figure from the Berlin Wall Memorial’s research, as of 2022). The highest-profile death: Peter Fechter, 18 years old, shot on 17 August 1962 while attempting to climb the Wall on the Zimmerstraße in East Berlin. He lay wounded in the death strip for nearly an hour, calling for help, in full view of East and West Berlin citizens, journalists, and soldiers on both sides, before dying. The specific biographical fact: he died one year and four days after the Wall’s construction began, at 18 years old, in public view, while neither East German nor American or West German soldiers intervened. Peter Fechter is buried at the Invalidenfriedhof in Berlin.
The Wall’s specific structure: The most recognisable element of the Berlin Wall — the smooth concrete panels painted on the West Berlin side by West Berlin graffiti artists and protesters — was the Wall’s western face, which faced West Berlin. The eastern face, facing East Berlin, was the plain concrete construction surface that East German citizens were forbidden to approach. The East Side Gallery is painted on the eastern face — the face that East Berliners were not allowed to see during the Wall’s 28-year existence.
9 November 1989: The Fall
On 9 November 1989, the Berlin Wall opened. The specific sequence of events: in the context of the collapse of communist regimes across Eastern Europe in the autumn of 1989, the East German government announced a relaxation of travel restrictions for East German citizens. At a press conference in East Berlin at approximately 7pm on 9 November 1989, SED spokesman Günter Schabowski was asked when the new travel regulations would take effect. He had not been fully briefed; he looked at his notes and said: “Sofort, unverzüglich” — “Immediately, without delay.” He was apparently unaware that the announcement was intended to take effect the following day after a specific administrative process. His words were broadcast live on East German television. Within hours, tens of thousands of East Berlin citizens gathered at the Wall’s checkpoints. The guards, without clear orders, opened the barriers. Crowds flooded through from East to West and from West to East. The Berlin Wall — 28 years, 140 documented deaths, 155 km of concrete — opened because a government spokesman did not know when his own government’s announcement was supposed to take effect.
The specific phrase “Sofort, unverzüglich” and the specific moment of Schabowski’s improvised announcement (he was not supposed to include the travel regulation announcement in his press conference at all; it was included in his briefing notes by mistake) are the most specific biographical elements of the Wall’s fall. The Wall fell because of a bureaucratic error at a press conference. See: Visit Berlin — East Side Gallery.
The East Side Gallery: 118 Artists, 1990
The East Side Gallery was created in the spring and summer of 1990, approximately 6 months after the Wall’s opening. The initiative came from a group of international artists who contacted the East Berlin district administration of Mitte in early 1990 with a proposal to paint the eastern face of the surviving Wall segment on the Spree riverbank in Friedrichshain. The East Berlin administration approved the proposal; the artists were allocated the 1.3 km section between the Oberbaumbrücke and the Ostbahnhof.
118 artists from 21 countries participated in the East Side Gallery’s creation. The artworks were made between February and September 1990; many artists were given specific stretches of Wall surface and worked independently; some coordinated with adjacent artists. The East Side Gallery was inaugurated on 28 September 1990 — five days before German reunification on 3 October 1990. It was created literally in the final weeks of East Germany’s existence as a separate state.
The specific historical condition of the East Side Gallery’s creation: the artists painted the eastern face of the Wall — the face that had been inaccessible to East German citizens during the Wall’s 28-year operational period. The western face had been painted by West Berlin graffiti artists and protest painters throughout the 1970s and 1980s; the eastern face was plain concrete that East Berliners had been forbidden to approach. The East Side Gallery’s artists were the first people to paint the eastern face — and they did so while the Wall was still physically standing, in a country that was dissolving itself into the reunified Germany during the same months.
The Brotherly Kiss: Brezhnev and Honecker
The most famous mural in the East Side Gallery is Dmitri Vrubel’s “Mein Gott, hilf mir, diese tödliche Liebe zu überleben” (“My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love”), universally known as the Brotherly Kiss. It depicts Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and East German leader Erich Honecker in a fraternal embrace, cheek-to-cheek, their lips near each other in the specific form of the socialist fraternal kiss (the bruderlich Kuss) that was the standard greeting between communist leaders at state occasions.
The specific biographical fact: the image is based on a real photograph taken by Régis Bossu in East Berlin in October 1979, during the 30th anniversary celebrations of the DDR, showing Brezhnev and Honecker in the actual fraternal embrace. The photograph was widely reproduced in both East and West during the Cold War. Vrubel painted his mural from this specific photograph, with the addition of the German text below the embracing figures: “Mein Gott, hilf mir, diese tödliche Liebe zu überleben” — “My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love.” The specific irony: the embrace that was a ritualistic diplomatic gesture between the leaders of the Soviet empire and its most obedient satellite state is depicted in a way that makes the political relationship legible as a specific kind of love — and as a specific kind of danger. The “deadly love” is the love between the DDR and the Soviet Union that produced 28 years of the Wall, 140 documented deaths, and the specific bureaucratic error that ended it.
Dmitri Vrubel (born 1960, Moscow) painted the original mural in 1990; in 2009, as part of the East Side Gallery’s 20th anniversary restoration, he repainted it at his own insistence because the original had deteriorated severely. The repainted version (2009) is the version currently visible. Vrubel has stated in interviews that the mural is not simply a political satire but a genuine meditation on the specific quality of political love — the love between states and their leaders that produces both the warmth of the embrace and the coldness of the Wall.
Test the Rest: The Trabant Through the Wall
The second most famous East Side Gallery mural is Birgit Kinder’s “Test the Rest”: a Trabant (the notoriously underpowered, two-stroke-engine, fibreglass-bodied East German car that became one of the most iconic symbols of life in the DDR) breaking through the Berlin Wall, its nose penetrating the concrete, the wall cracking and crumbling around it. The licence plate on the Trabant reads “NOV 9 89” — 9 November 1989, the date of the Wall’s opening.
The Trabant’s specific significance: the Trabant (Trabi) was produced from 1957 to 1991 in Zwickau, East Germany. It had a two-cylinder two-stroke engine of 26 horsepower, a fibreglass body (Duroplast, a composite of phenol resin and cotton wool fibre), a maximum speed of approximately 100 km/h, and a production waiting list that, by the 1980s, was approximately 10–12 years long. East German citizens would register on the Trabant waiting list at birth, wait a decade, and receive a car that Western Europeans would consider barely roadworthy. The Trabant is the most specific material symbol of the DDR’s economic programme and its relationship to the West’s consumer culture.
Birgit Kinder’s choice of the Trabant breaking through the Wall encodes the specific irony of 9 November 1989: the cars that streamed through the Wall’s checkpoints on the night of 9 November 1989 were Trabants — the most characteristic vehicle of the East German everyday, small, slow, noisy, and arriving in their tens of thousands at the West Berlin border crossings, driven by East German citizens who had never seen West Berlin’s streets and who were encountering Western consumer abundance for the first time. The Trabant breaking through the Wall is the most iconographic image of the specific quality of that night: not a military triumph but a domestic car, on a November night, driving through concrete. See: East Side Gallery Berlin Official.
The Other Notable Murals
The East Side Gallery’s 105 surviving murals (of the original 118; some have been lost to deterioration or overpainting) include several works that are internationally known beyond the Brotherly Kiss and the Test the Rest:
Thierry Noir’s colourful heads (1990): French graffiti artist Thierry Noir had been painting the western face of the Berlin Wall since 1984, making him one of the first and most prolific West Berlin Wall painters. In the East Side Gallery, he contributed his characteristic colourful cartoon-like faces — the simplified, bold-coloured heads that are his specific visual signature and the most immediately recognisable of the non-representational murals in the gallery.
Bodo Sperling’s “Rekonstruktion der Realität” (Reconstruction of Reality, 1990): A trompe-l’oeil mural depicting a crowd of diverse people pressing through a gap in the Wall toward the light — the specific visual programme of a crowd emerging from the dark of the Wall’s shadow into the light of the other side. The most specifically documentary and most emotionally direct of the East Side Gallery’s murals.
Kani Alavi’s “Es geschah im November” (It Happened in November, 1990): A mural depicting hundreds of faces pressed against the Wall, emerging through it, a mass of humanity pushing toward the opening — the specific experience of the Wall’s opening night of 9 November 1989 as a crowd event. Kani Alavi (born in Iran; based in Berlin since the 1980s) painted this from his own experience of being present on the night of 9 November 1989 when the checkpoints opened.
Preservation and Controversy: The Wall That Was Twice Saved
The East Side Gallery has been threatened with demolition twice in its history: once in the early 1990s (when the Wall’s physical materials were being rapidly demolished and sold — Wall segments were sold internationally, fragments were sold as souvenirs, and the majority of the Wall’s physical structure was demolished for road construction and urban redevelopment); and once in 2013, when a Berlin property developer (Living Bauhaus) sought to demolish a 22-metre section of the East Side Gallery to construct a riverside apartment building access road.
The 2013 controversy was the most publicly visible: the Berlin city government approved the developer’s application; the 22-metre Wall section was removed in March 2013; international protests from artists, politicians, and the public (including an online petition with over 400,000 signatures) led to a temporary halt of the demolition and a political debate about the East Side Gallery’s protected status. The Wall section was eventually reinstalled after restoration. The controversy established the East Side Gallery’s contested status in Berlin’s urban development programme: it is simultaneously a protected historical monument, a tourist destination generating significant revenue for the Friedrichshain district, and a physical obstacle to riverside development on one of Berlin’s most commercially attractive waterfront locations.
The East Side Gallery was designated a protected monument (Denkmalschutz) in 1991, one year after its creation. Despite this designation, sections of the Wall have been removed for construction purposes multiple times since 1991, with official approval for each removal granted by the Berlin monument protection authorities on specific grounds. The total length of the surviving East Side Gallery has decreased from the original 1.3 km in 1990 to approximately 1.3 km today (several removed sections were replaced and reinstalled). The preservation debate continues. See: Visit Berlin — East Side Gallery.
Berlin in 2026: The East Side Gallery Today
In 2026, the East Side Gallery is the most visited outdoor attraction in Berlin, receiving approximately 3 million visitors per year. The original murals have been repainted multiple times — many by the original artists (the 2009 restoration for the 20th anniversary involved a significant repaint programme) and some by assistants when the original artists were unavailable. The condition of the murals varies: some are well-maintained; others show significant deterioration from vandalism (tourist graffiti on the murals is an ongoing problem; protective anti-graffiti coatings have been applied but are regularly overridden), weathering, and the physical instability of paint on 35-year-old concrete.
The East Side Gallery’s specific urban context: it is located on the eastern bank of the Spree river in Friedrichshain, immediately adjacent to the Oberbaumbrücke (the bridge connecting Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg) and across the river from the Mercedes-Benz Arena (formerly the O2 Arena) and the Holzmarkt creative district. The Warschauer Straße S-Bahn station is at the gallery’s northern end. The riverside path along the East Side Gallery is one of Berlin’s most popular cycling and walking routes. The gallery operates as an open-air public space: there is no entrance fee; access is 24 hours. DeckArts ships from Berlin, approximately 4 km from the East Side Gallery.
East Side Gallery for Home Decor
The Berlin East Side Gallery triptych (~$310) is the most geographically specific, most politically specific, and most historically specific art in the DeckArts range. Its specific domestic value: for anyone with a connection to Berlin (born there, lived there, visited there, works for a Berlin company, is from Germany, studies German history or politics), the East Side Gallery is the most specifically personal art available at DeckArts. It is not a generic European or global artistic tradition; it is a specific 1.3 km stretch of a specific wall in a specific city, painted in a specific 10-month window by 118 artists from 21 countries in the year of that country’s reunification.
For a person with no direct Berlin connection, the East Side Gallery’s biographical programme is still permanently inexhaustible: the Wall opened because a government spokesman said “Immediately, without delay” without knowing when his own government’s announcement was supposed to take effect. Peter Fechter, 18 years old, died in the death strip calling for help that nobody provided. The Trabant’s 10-year waiting list as the symbol of a country’s economic programme. Dmitri Vrubel’s “deadly love” between the Soviet Union and its most obedient satellite. These are specific, permanent, inexhaustible biographical facts about the most significant geopolitical event of the second half of the 20th century.
On warm white (the most appropriate wall colour for the East Side Gallery’s vivid colour programme): The East Side Gallery’s murals use a vivid, varied colour programme — the Brotherly Kiss’s specific flesh tones and dark blue background; the Test the Rest’s cream Trabant against a cream-and-rubble palette. On warm white: all chromatic events in the triptych advance clearly from the warm neutral ground. The most appropriate wall colour for the East Side Gallery’s broad chromatic range. View East Side Gallery Triptych at DeckArts →
Best positions: Above the primary living room sofa (155–165 cm, 50–75% of sofa width) for a Berlin-connected or politically engaged household’s primary statement. Above the home office desk at 155–165 cm for a person who works in German politics, journalism, NGO, or diplomacy. In the hallway on warm white for a Berlin-born or Berlin-based household’s threshold statement: the city’s defining historical event above the domestic threshold.
Four Complete East Side Gallery Programmes
Programme 1: The Berlin Urban Living Room (~$310)
Warm white primary sofa wall + East Side Gallery triptych (~$310) at 155–165 cm (50–75% of sofa width) + warm grey sofa + concrete or industrial-finish coffee table + directed 2700K warm LED track spot (separate dimmer). The Brotherly Kiss and the Test the Rest above the Berlin living room sofa. “The Wall fell because Schabowski said ‘sofort, unverzüglich’ without knowing when the announcement was supposed to take effect. DeckArts ships this from approximately 4 km from where it was painted.” Total art: ~$310.
Programme 2: The Political History Home Office (~$310)
Warm white facing-desk wall + East Side Gallery triptych (~$310) at 125–145 cm (seated eye level for a home office desk position) + directed 2700K warm LED spot. The most geographically specific political art above the home office work position. For journalists, researchers, politicians, diplomats, NGO workers, and anyone whose work connects to German, European, or Cold War political history. Total art: ~$310.
Programme 3: The Berlin Threshold Hallway (~$310)
Warm white hallway wall + East Side Gallery triptych (~$310) at 155–165 cm above a hallway console + one simple concrete or ceramic object on the console below + directed 2700K wall sconce beside the console. The city’s most famous wall above the apartment’s threshold wall. Every arrival and departure is a passage past the Berlin Wall’s most visited section. Total art: ~$310.
Programme 4: The Berlin + Night Watch Two-Triptych Gallery (~$620)
Warm charcoal primary sofa wall + Night Watch triptych (~$310) anchor at centre (the most eventful painting in Western art history; Dutch Golden Age; three attacks) + East Side Gallery triptych (~$310) on the adjacent secondary wall at 155–165 cm (the most geographically specific modern political art; Berlin 1990). Two triptychs; two completely different biographical centuries and traditions; two permanently inexhaustible biographical programmes. Total art: ~$620. See: Gallery Wall 2026.
FAQ
What is the Berlin East Side Gallery?
The largest surviving section of the Berlin Wall (1.3 km) on the eastern bank of the Spree river in Friedrichshain, Berlin, painted by 118 artists from 21 countries in 1990 — approximately 6 months after the Wall’s opening (9 November 1989) and approximately 6 months before German reunification (3 October 1990). The most famous murals: Dmitri Vrubel’s Brotherly Kiss (Brezhnev and Honecker, “My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love”, based on a 1979 Régis Bossu photograph) and Birgit Kinder’s Test the Rest (Trabant breaking through the Wall, licence plate “NOV 9 89”). Designated a protected monument 1991. Approximately 3 million visitors per year. See: East Side Gallery Berlin Official. DeckArts triptych from ~$310. Ships from Berlin, approximately 4 km from the Gallery.
What is the Brotherly Kiss painting at the East Side Gallery?
Dmitri Vrubel’s “Mein Gott, hilf mir, diese tödliche Liebe zu überleben” (“My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love”), painted in 1990 and repainted by Vrubel himself in 2009 for the 20th anniversary restoration. It depicts Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and East German leader Erich Honecker in a fraternal embrace (the Bruderkuss — socialist fraternal kiss), based on a real 1979 photograph by Régis Bossu taken at the 30th anniversary celebrations of the DDR. The text below: “My God, help me to survive this deadly love.” Vrubel has described it as a meditation on the specific quality of political love — the love between the DDR and the Soviet Union that produced the Wall and ended with “Sofort, unverzüglich.” See: East Side Gallery Berlin Official. DeckArts East Side Gallery triptych from ~$310.
How did the Berlin Wall fall?
On 9 November 1989, SED spokesman Günter Schabowski announced at a press conference that East German citizens could travel freely to the West. When asked when this would take effect, he looked at his briefing notes and said: “Sofort, unverzüglich” — “Immediately, without delay.” He had not been fully briefed; the announcement was intended to take effect the following day after a specific administrative process. His words were broadcast live on East German television. Within hours, tens of thousands of East Berlin citizens gathered at the Wall’s checkpoints; the guards, without clear orders, opened the barriers. The Berlin Wall — 28 years, 140 documented deaths, 155 km of concrete — opened because a government spokesman did not know when his own government’s announcement was supposed to take effect. See: Visit Berlin — East Side Gallery. DeckArts East Side Gallery triptych from ~$310.
Article Summary
The Berlin East Side Gallery is the largest surviving section of the Berlin Wall (1.3 km, Friedrichshain, Berlin), painted by 118 artists from 21 countries in 1990. Eight specific biographical facts: (1) The Wall was constructed beginning on 13 August 1961 on Walter Ulbricht’s order, with Khrushchev’s approval; (2) 140 documented deaths at the Wall over 28 years; the most famous, Peter Fechter, 18 years old, died in the death strip on 17 August 1962 calling for help that nobody provided; (3) The Wall fell because Günter Schabowski said “Sofort, unverzüglich” at a press conference without knowing when the announcement was supposed to take effect; (4) The East Side Gallery was painted on the eastern face of the Wall — the face East Berliners were forbidden to approach for 28 years; (5) Dmitri Vrubel’s Brotherly Kiss (Brezhnev and Honecker, “My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love”) was based on a real 1979 photograph by Régis Bossu; (6) Birgit Kinder’s Test the Rest depicts a Trabant (10-year waiting list, 26 hp, DDR’s most characteristic vehicle) breaking through the Wall, licence plate “NOV 9 89”; (7) Designated protected monument 1991; threatened with partial demolition in 2013 for riverside development; international protest with 400,000+ signatures; (8) The East Side Gallery was inaugurated on 28 September 1990 — five days before German reunification on 3 October 1990. DeckArts East Side Gallery triptych (~$310): on warm white, above the primary sofa wall (155–165 cm), above the Berlin-connected home office desk (125–145 cm), or in the hallway (155–165 cm). Ships from Berlin, approximately 4 km from the Gallery. 30-day return.
About the Author
Stanislav Arnautov is the founder of DeckArts and a creative director from Ukraine based in Berlin.
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