The record
An original wall segment with a cash machine set into it, by Elmgreen & Dragset, in the courtyard of Berlin's national museum of contemporary art.
A segment of the Berlin Wall stands in the courtyard of the Hamburger Bahnhof with a cash machine built into its face. It is Statue of Liberty, made in 2018 by the artists Elmgreen & Dragset: an original piece of the Wall, an ATM and stainless steel, just under three metres tall. It has been on permanent display since 21 June 2019.
The museum describes it as two objects standing for two systems, the communist East and the capitalist West, and as three things at once: a memorial to the division, a monument to the brief moment of open possibility after the Wall fell, and a warning about the selling off of history and of the city. The machine is real and does not work. According to the donor, the artists found it particularly hard to get hold of a piece of the Wall without graffiti on it — which says something about how thoroughly the surviving concrete has been turned into the painted object people expect.
The collector Heiner Wemhöner of Herford saw the work at Art Basel, bought it, and gave it to the Friends of the Nationalgalerie so it could stand here. The Berlin Wall Foundation's directory of surviving traces lists it as MAU-757; its entry spells the donor's name Wernhöfer, which is a slip.
Most of this catalogue is the Wall as souvenir, gift or trophy. This is one of very few records in it where the concrete has been made to argue with its own afterlife.
How did it get here?
Made by Elmgreen & Dragset in 2018; bought by the collector Heiner Wemhöner and given to the Friends of the Nationalgalerie, on display at the Hamburger Bahnhof since 21 June 2019.
Sources & verification
Donation: “Statue of Liberty” by Elmgreen & Dragset from 21 June 2019 in the courtyard of Hamburger Bahnhof — Staatliche Museen zu Berlin ↗
Statue of Liberty, 2018, a segment of the Berlin Wall with an ATM, stainless steel, 298 × 149 × 148 cm, donated by the collector Heiner Wemhöner of Herford and on permanent display in the courtyard from 21 June 2019; described as two objects for two systems, and as a memorial to division, a monument to the time after the fall of the Wall, and a warning about the selling off of history and the city.
Source accessed 2026-09-17
Heiner Wemhöner schenkt Museum Kunstwerk — Westfalen-Blatt ↗
Wemhöner saw the work at Art Basel, bought it and gave it to the Friends of the Nationalgalerie for display at the Hamburger Bahnhof; the cash machine does not work; the artists found it especially hard to find a piece of the Wall without graffiti.
Source accessed 2026-09-17
MAU-757 Mauerelement mit Geldautomat — MAUERSPUREN, Stiftung Berliner Mauer ↗
A wall element with an art installation in the form of a cash machine at the Hamburger Bahnhof, made by Elmgreen & Dragset in 2018 and given to the museum in 2019; catalogued as MAU-757, with the donor's name given as Wernhöfer.
Source accessed 2026-09-17
Last verified: Not yet verified
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