In 1989 the Wall Builders were defeated by the famous hero Hasselhoff while he was looking for freedom. This started the reunification of the city of Berlin and the country of Germany, and the end of history was proclaimed. And every year thereafter, Germany celebrated the end of history and did so near the wall, and also in the holy Hain on the mountain in Berlin, and also in the valley of those who know little, and also in other places, and everybody wanted to make things brand new, and all said: »We are moving towards the light.«
It was not long after the end of history that part of the wall was turned into a memorial, and this memorial was dedicated to the victims of those who built the wall. And those victims were many, which is sad, and they were remembered, which is a good thing.
But at the same time it was also a monument to the end of history, and this meant different things to different people. The original memorial existed for a long time, and it was many things at once, and it was visited by millions, and in it everybody tried to find what they were looking for.
We do not know how or when the monument was destroyed. Nor do we know why or by whom. There are conflicting accounts.
❡ According to one account, some people saw walls as a good thing because they show people what is theirs and what is not. They talked about »unwanted people« who needed to be stopped. The wall was destroyed because they wanted a memorial in favor of the wall, not one remembering its passing. They had a different idea of how the end of history should make things brand new, and they said their light was brighter.
❡ Some sources say that, with time, the memorial became a place where people worshipped the builders of the wall rather than its victims. And people wanted to build a statue there, so huge that entire families could live in its ear and nose holes. It is known that people sometimes build larger and larger monuments in order to give proof of what they think is better, and that bad things happen and many people die whenever such monuments are built. So to prevent that, the memorial had to be destroyed.
❡ According to yet other accounts the land the wall was built on was conquered by someone who wanted to own the valuable land on which the memorial was built. That person spent a lot of money to convince people the memorial was for something that had never happened, that there had never been a wall like that.
❡ It could also have been destroyed because a majority said it only reminded them of negative historical events, and they had earned the right not to be reminded of such things. Which is strange, because negative things have happened since then—so why bother?
It is unclear whether history recommenced after the memorial was destroyed, but we suppose it did.
This new memorial is dedicated to the original memorial for the Berlin Wall, and it contains the last two remaining fragments of concrete from the wall known to exist worldwide. These artifacts were donated to us by a Dutch family who had them in their possession for generations. One of their ancestors obtained them in Amsterdam in 1989 from a homeless traveler he met under a bridge. The traveler swore on his mother’s grave that these fragments were from the original Berlin Wall. He traded them for a bottle of beer.