The record
Ben Wagin's living memorial of 1990, with original wall elements set among trees on the old border line by the Spree.
Ben Wagin laid out the Parlament der Bäume on the former border strip by the Spree in 1990, planting trees among original wall elements and painting the slabs with the names of the dead and the years of the division. It is the earliest artist-made memorial in this catalogue and the only one where the wall is one material among several — the work is as much about what grew on the line as about what stood on it. Part of the site was built over when the parliamentary quarter went up, which is its own comment.
How did it get here?
Original elements, rearranged in place by the artist in 1990 rather than moved to a new site — a fourth relationship to the original, alongside preserved, reassembled and marked.
Sources
Sites — Stiftung Berliner Mauer (Berlin Wall Foundation) ↗
The Foundation's own listing of the sites it runs and documents, with addresses and what survives at each.
Institutional sourceSource accessed 2026-09-17
Denkmal Schiffbauerdamm — Mauerstück von Ben Wagin, Wikimedia Commons ↗
Photographic documentation of Wagin's wall pieces at Schiffbauerdamm.
PhotographSource accessed 2026-09-17
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