Construction of the Berlin Wall began 55 years ago today. The wall and the city it divided became highly symbolic of a lot of political and cultural issues beyond its brutal reality, some hearkening back to Berlin’s pre-Nazi Weimar reputation as a place on the edge of catastrophe.
We’ll begin with this evocative performance of Lou Reed’s “Berlin” in Paris in 1972, with John Cale on the piano and Nico looking on.
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Ed Kilgore, a contributing editor of the Washington Monthly, is a columnist for New York. More by Ed Kilgore
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