“Our
Berlin Wall” in the Irish Times: From
global event to domestic metonym.
Events such as the building and fall of
the Berlin Wall can be viewed simultaneously as local, national and global
phenomena which are carried by and reinterpreted, indeed reconstructed within
the communal imagination. Consequently,
they are remembered not only for their own local or national impact, but also,
on the international stage, for how they resonate – for readers outside the original
national borders – with events, people and places closer to home. This chapter
explores changing representations of the Berlin Wall within the Irish Times, during a ten-year period
from Gorbatschev’s coming to power in 1985, through the Wende period and German reunification to the fifth anniversary of
the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1994.
Drawing on a broad data-set, the study
demonstrates how, beyond simple depictions of the Wall as a part of ‘normal’
life in Berlin and the ultimate fall of the Wall as a global event, the Wall is
also exploited by Irish Times journalists
and those they quote as a rhetorical device to shape and challenge individual
and collective opinion of domestic events within the island of Ireland. While the
Wall constitutes a symbol of immutable division and irresolvable conflict, its
fall emerges as a metonym for the sudden and unexpected collapse of a broader, apparently
solid, entity; the chapter concludes with an analysis of the use, over this
ten-year period, of this metonym in a range of domains within the Irish context
including North-South relations, constitutional amendments, urban planning and
presidential elections.