Berlin is a city that spawns an irnpressive imagery related to the history of the 20th century. Few other cities contain so many !andmarks of the great events that shaped Europe and the world. From the ruins of the past century, Berlin is now trying to set itself up as German capital, center of political and economic power, which embodies the German democracy that sees itself as modest and exemplary. The collapse of the Wall is an event that has undoubtedly led to a break of intelligibility for those who lived within it. However much it opens de facto new prospects for the future, this break of intelligibility also foreshadows a radically new relationship with history. ln reunified Germany and especially in Berlin a large scale job of reevaluation of the past has begun, airning at bringing sense to the new historica~ political, economie and social order born from 1989. The treatrnent of the high places of communism, which takes place in conjunction with an extensive work on the past of the GDR, addresses multiple requirements formulated in political and economie terms as weil as in terms of identity. It is important to understand both how the construction of official narratives of the communist pastis part of an overall dyoamic of incorporation and of registration of narratives of the new Germany in the urban space of the capita~ and to pa y special attention to the reception of these reconstructions of the past within the 11public arena" in Berlin How does a common history of the GDR take shape? And how, in turn, do alternative narratives of the city and its past contradict the interpretations sometimes homogenizing proposed by the "New Berlin"?
