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30 years on, Berlin Wall comes back to life with VR
BERLIN, Oct 25, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – A packed bus approaches Checkpoint
Charlie, the Cold War’s most famous border crossing, as grim-faced East
German guards whisper among themselves about whether to hold you for
questioning.
After a few heart-stopping minutes, you and your fellow passengers are free
to pass into the smog, soot and shadowy intrigue of 1980s East Berlin.
Even 30 years after the fall of the Wall, time travel is not yet possible.
But a German startup using virtual reality technology is offering history
buffs what it calls the next best thing.
“Our idea was that if we can’t take you back in time yet, let’s try to
create the perfect illusion of it,” TimeRide founder Jonas Rothe, 33, told
AFP.
“This isn’t a museum and we don’t want to be. We want to let you lose
yourself in the feeling of being a participant in history.”
TimeRide Berlin opened in late August ahead of celebrations of the 30th
anniversary of the triumphant fall of the Wall on November 9, 1989 in a
peaceful people’s revolution.
It taps into a growing desire for “authentic”, interactive and immersive
historical tourism, Rothe said, especially in a cityscape that has undergone
a dramatic transformation in those three decades.
– Where’s the Wall? –
Many tourists are disappointed to find few traces left of the loathed
barrier that divided Berlin for nearly 28 years, which was rapidly torn down
in the rush toward reunification in 1990 and its aftermath.
Rothe, who was born in the eastern city of Dresden but just a toddler when
the Wall came crashing down, said he wanted to give his customers a vivid
sense of a lost world.
TimeRide guests get a quick introduction into how vanquished Germany was
divided into sectors after World War II, and how the communist authorities in
1961 sealed the border overnight to stop a mass exodus to the west.
In the next room, three protagonists — a rebellious tile layer, a
disillusioned true believer, and a West Berlin punk who spent a lot of time
in the east’s underground scene — introduce themselves via a video screen.
Visitors choose one of the trio to “lead” them on the tour, then board a
mockup bus and slip on a pair of VR goggles.
The “ride” takes in the tense border crossing, the elegant Gendarmenmarkt
square with its two cathedrals still bearing heavy damage from World War II,
and new pre-fab high rises on Leipziger Strasse that were then the height of
residential luxury.
Stasi agents keep not-so-subtle tabs on citizens from unmarked cars, while
consumers queue up for scarce fresh produce and communist propaganda spouts
from megaphones.
Rothe said he aimed to create a fully immersive experience.
“Of course smell has the strongest connection to memory but it’s not easy
to recreate without giving people a headache,” he quipped, thinking in
particular of the unmistakable stench of exhaust from East German Trabant
cars.
The bus ride reaches its finale at the Palace of the Republic, a pleasure
palace as well as home of the rubber-stamp parliament which was demolished in
2008, and features actual footage of the joyous fall of the Berlin Wall.
“Those images never fail to move people — it was a decisive turning point
in the history of Germany, Europe and the whole world.”
– ‘Old spy movies’ –
Business has been brisk in the weeks ahead of the anniversary.
Colin MacLean, 47, a Scottish IT professional, said he had come to learn
more about East Germany because his wife grew up under communism, and he’s a
fan of Cold War thrillers.
“I like that kind of melancholic feeling that you get from old spy movies
and stuff — big squares with just two people walking over them, that kind of
thing,” he said.
Robert Meyer, a 55-year-old west German, often used to visit family living
on the other side of the Wall.
“The way they showed the border crossing was so real,” said Meyer, who
works in aviation safety.
“You’d have these guards and you were powerless before them — they could
just treat you like they wanted.”
His wife Iris Rodriguez, 47, a restaurant owner originally from the
Dominican Republic, said the “happy ending” had touched her.
“It was like everyone was in prison and in the end they came free,” she
said. “Thank God all that’s over.”
– ‘Really be careful’ –
For all the frisson of border crossings and Stasi surveillance when seen
with historical distance, the real-life suffering of dissidents under
communist rule should not be taken lightly, Rothe said.
“What we don’t show are the escapes, and in particular the deaths at the
Wall.”
An estimated 327 people perished trying to cross the border between East
and West Germany to freedom, according to a government-commissioned study
whose findings, however, remain disputed.
Rothe said that given the massive potential interest he could imagine
offering a Nazi-era tour, but that the historical taboos would make it
riskier.
“You’d have to really be careful about what you’d show and how respectfully
you’d do it,” he said.
“You’d have to shine a light on all sides so that there would be no issue
of glorifying anything, or showing anything that was unbearable.”
Anna Kaminsky, head of the publicly funded Foundation for the Study of
Communist Dictatorship in East Germany, said that although young Germans were
not always very well-informed about the Cold War, they tell pollsters they
are very interested.
“It’s essential to use new technology to teach the next generation about
that period, and to give them a sense of what it felt like to live behind the
Wall,” she told AFP.
BSS/AFP/GMR/0917 hrs