Just Another Bookmark of the Wall

by

Laine Farley

Bookmarks as souvenirs are commonplace, but how many incorporate a piece of the location they commemorate? I received one such unusual example recently from a friend who visited Berlin a few years ago. This bookmark has a piece of the Berlin Wall encapsulated in plastic above a moody photograph of the former checkpoint between East and West Berlin with the once ominous warning “You are leaving the American Sector.” In an effort to determine whether this could be an actual piece of the famous wall, I learned about the fate of the wall and the creator of these striking bookmarks.  

In a CNN article titled “The Berlin Wall: A scattered symbol” published in 2000, author Paul Sussman summarized the dispersion of the wall noting that “There can be few countries in the world that don't have at least a piece of it on display somewhere.” From Berliners wanting a part of their own history to museums and corporations aiming to preserve and showcase a symbol of a major historical event, the wall exists nowadays mostly in fragments. 

In the days after the wall fell on November 9, 1989, people who chipped away the wall with sledgehammers were nicknamed “Mauerspechte” (wall woodpeckers). The largest section remaining at the original site is now called the East-Side Gallery and has been decorated by artists from around the world. Microsoft created an online exhibit called Hope, Anguish and the Berlin Wall to showcase the 12-foot-high, 4-foot-wide, 3.5-ton section of the Berlin Wall, given to the company by Daimler-Benz AG of Germany.

Sussman noted that parts of the wall became souvenirs such as key rings, paperweights, pendants, doorstops, bookends, paving slabs and even wall clocks, and that “One enterprising East Berliner, Volker Pawlowski, made a fortune from Berlin Wall postcards, each incorporating a tiny nodule of the wall.”  Lesezeichenedition Pawlowski is the name on the back of my bookmark. Surely this is the same person.  

In an August 2003  article by Kerstin Gehmlich titled “Wall Still Splits Berlin,” it seems that on the anniversary of the wall’s first appearance in 1961, Berliners were divided about whether to declare the remnants as a World Heritage Site. Pawlowski was identified as a former construction worker who bought large segments of the wall and in 1991 began a business to sell fragments. Credited with supplying 90 percent of the wall fragments sold in Berlin—some 30,000-40,000 per year—he claimed he was selling far fewer than in 1991, and that the packaging now matters to more demanding buyers. “It's like perfume. People don’t buy it for the smell but for the packaging.” 

His investment in creative packaging seems to have paid off. Indeed he even got a patent for the little plastic holder he used on the bookmark as well as postcards. An earlier article by Gehmlich, “Berlin Wall as Cash Bonanza,” describes how he acquired and stored segments of the wall totaling about 300 meters. He used fragments in key rings and plastic globes as well as the paper products, becoming known as “the man who owns the wall” in Berlin’s souvenir shops. 

Fragments of the wall were in the news again recently as the Outdoor Arts Foundation erected a monument in St. Petersburg, FL from three large pieces. The Foundation plans to “erect a monument in each of the 48 contiguous states by the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall, Nov. 9, 2009.” Even though “the pieces of the Cold War barrier are being used to bring people together,” the project is not without controversy. The original owner of the fragments has brought a lawsuit against his daughter, saying she did not have authority to sell them to the foundation.  

There is even an academic study of turning architectural fragments into souvenirs. In “Exorcizing Remains: Architectural Fragments as Intermediaries between History and Individual Experience,” Melanie van der Hoorn explains why people desire these fragments:

In two cases, the demolition of the Berlin Wall and the deserted national-socialist seaside resort of Prora (Germany), alienating associations and large-scale phenomena are concretized and individualized through active personal handling. The circulation of architectural remains from one owner to another is charged with meaning; stories told about these objects are a means to give sense to a more complex history and the ruins themselves function as valuable intermediaries between history and individual experience. The social life of architecture does not always end with its destruction, quite the contrary. Slashed into pieces, recycled, transformed, it continues to live in fragmented form.

As in other articles, she quotes from people who took fragments, saying they wanted a memento of something that was part of their lives. She observes that these relics, also spoken of as reminders, mementos or souvenirs are objects that “evoke memories, help us to remember a certain period, an event or a person.” She provides a photo of Pawlowski’s “clip card” which features a plastic container containing a wall fragment similar to the one on the bookmark, and she quotes him as saying it is impossible to imagine Berlin tourism today without his clip card. In all of these accounts, only postcards or “clip cards” are mentioned, but not bookmarks. Perhaps they were less successful although Pawlowski created combination bookmark/postcards as in the U-Bahn example. Or perhaps bookmarks were simply less interesting to writers even though combining a fragment with a bookmark, another object used to remember and mark events, seems only natural, and reinforces the idea of a memento.

On 21 July 1990, Roger Waters of Pink Floyd fame produced a concert staging of The Wall in Berlin to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall. Some of the lyrics, written in the late 1970s, seem especially fitting:

I have seen the writing on the wall.
Don't think I'll need anything at all.
No, don’t think I’ll need anything at all.
All in all it was just bricks in the wall.
All in all it was just bricks in the wall.

Bookmark specifications: Original Berliner Mauerstein * the wall * le mur
Dimensions: 2” x 8 1/8”
Material: Paper with plastic
Manufacturer: Lesezeichenedition Pawlowski
Date: 1990s
Acquired: From a friend who got it while visiting Berlin

Bookmark specifications: Berlin U-Bahn Subway metro
Dimensions: 2 3/4” x 7 7/8”
Material: Paper
Manufacturer: Lesezeichenedition Pawlowski
Date: 200os
Acquired: From a friend who got it while visiting Berlin


Laine Farley is a digital librarian who misses being around the look, feel and smell of real books.  Her collection of over 3,000 bookmarks began with a serendipitous find while reviewing books donated to the library. Fortunately, her complementary collection of articles and books about bookmarks provides an excuse for her to get back to libraries and try her hand at writing about bookmarks. Farley’s web site is Collecting Bookmarks (Physical, not Virtual) , and she can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it