It was twenty years ago today.

Creative Tourist remembers the fall of the Berlin Wall, in a new show at Imperial War Museum North

We love the Quays. The ebb and flow of the Ship Canal; the rapid ascent of Media City and, of course, the monumental architecture of The Lowry and the Daniel Libeskind-designed Imperial War Museum North, two buildings joined by a footbridge that spans a spectacular waterfront – and all of it paying tribute to an industrial past that still resonates today.

Imperial War Museum North pays its own tribute to the past this autumn – in this case, to the fall of the Berlin Wall. In a small but impressive photo show (there are 29 photos on display), timed to coincide with the twentieth anniversary of the wall’s collapse, the Museum reveals never-seen-before images taken by British army photographers and others during the wall’s tumultuous history. ‘The fall of the Berlin Wall had a huge impact not just on Berlin but on world politics,’ says exhibition curator, Claire Wilson, as she explains why the Museum is marking the anniversary. ‘Other Communist states saw what was happening in East Germany and thought that they could perhaps do something similar.’

The exhibition features some iconic photography: East German workmen building the wall in 1961, a farmyard cut in half by the newly constructed wall that now runs through it, memorials to those killed trying to escape and, towards the end, a solitary child chipping away at the wall after its collapse. ‘The wall represented 28 years of separation for many families,’ says Wilson, ‘of not knowing what was happening to loved ones in either side of Berlin, and some of the photographs show the emotional impact that had on ordinary people.’

As an interesting aside, elsewhere in the Museum are a number of fascinating East German objects: a checkpoint sign signalling the end of the British Zone, a classic Trabant (the ultimate Cold War car), a watchtower searchlight (believed to be the only surviving one of its kind) and a section of the wall itself. And, until 18 October, you still have a chance to see outsize portraits we mentioned last month – visible from both the main entrance and as you stand with The Lowry behind you, looking across the water to the museum beyond.

Living with the Wall: Berlin 1961-1989, Imperial War Museum North. Until 21 Mar 2010. Free.

Image: A child using a hammer and chisel to remove a piece of the Berlin Wall after its opening by the East German Government on 9 November 1989. Courtesy Imperial War Museum.

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