Holes in the Wall: Cold War Fantasies and Everyday Experience in 1980s Berlin

We're happy to announce another lecture to be held in our historic Horner Memorial Library, this time with a topic that falls into the living memory of many of us: Holes in the Wall: Cold War Fantasies and Everyday Experience in 1980s Berlin   In the decade before the Wall came down in 1989, Berliners on both sides of the East-West divide had largely come to accept it as a fact of Cold War life; but the Wall was always more than a concrete piece of urban geography. By looking at the various people who helped make the Wall—from border guards to American GI tourists to graffiti artists—this talk will explore everyday life in Berlin as a way to rethink how the Cold War worked. Our lecturer, Paul Steege, is associate professor for Modern European History at Villanova University. He has written extensively about Berlin, including the book Black Market, Cold War: Everyday Life in Berlin, 1946-1949, and is completing a book on everyday violence in the city over the course of the twentieth century. In the early 1980s, he passed the Wall every day on his way to school in West Berlin - maybe even the exact same piece that is now installed on the Leidy Terrace?! We hope you will be able to join us for this talk on November 14 at 5:30pm - please RSVP to the office by email or phone.