From Confrontation to Détente? Controversies About a Planned Cold War Museum at Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin

Abstract

In 2006, as a reaction to criticism that Berlin was neglecting its duty to adequately remember the German division and the cold war, the government of the city-state of Berlin agreed on a "Master Plan for Remembering the Berlin Wall". Its final element is a new cold war museum at Checkpoint Charlie which aims to tell the international history of the cold war. The museum project has become the subject of controversies between private and public museums, political parties, the state government of Berlin and the federal government, as well as representatives of the victims of communism and academic historians from Germany and beyond. The controversy is less about historical scholarship but rather a kind of «cold war» about the meaning and memory of that conflict between by those who grew up and were socialized during the cold war.