WHEN I was in Standard Four, I had a history teacher called Mrs Len who was fiendishly strict.

Her modus operandi, as she strode into class at every History period, was to have a rapid-fire quiz to jolt our memory on matters pertaining to the past. Get it wrong and you ended up standing on your chair for the remaining 45 minutes.

What we very quickly came to realise was that her 40 questions for the 40 of us remained always the same. So, it came to be that our classmate closest to the door eventually became an authority on Mrs Len’s opening question, “Apa itu Sejarah?” (What is history?)

Now 30 years later, my classmate’s rote recitation remains branded in my brain: “Sejarah adalah cerita benar mengenai benda, perkara, tempat, manusia dan peristiwa yang telah berlaku.” (History is the true story of things, cases, places, people and events that have occurred.) Props to Mrs Len, wherever you are!

This definition came screaming back to me recently as I followed the storm that’s brewing around the remains of the iconic Berlin Wall.

Little is left of the wall that once symbolised the Cold War and which many happily hacked at when it fell in November 1989. On my maiden trip to Berlin seven years ago, I had expected to see much more.

Instead, I had to be content with a snapshot at the 1.3km-long East Side Gallery, the longest remaining stretch of the Wall and the site of current contention.

This stretch was originally graffiti-free during the 28 years it stood dividing Berlin. In 1990, some 120 international artists were invited to cover it with murals. It is now thought to be the world’s biggest outdoor gallery and in 2008, the city restored the paintings at a cost of more than 2 million euros. It received the residents’ blessings, as they too wanted it preserved for posterity and as a “colourful testament” to Germany’s reunification.

However, in the typical case of moolah trumping memories, the authorities have allowed a developer to remove sections of this remaining wall to build an access road to a new luxury apartment complex that is currently under construction nearby.

This prompted protests and vigils at the site with residents bearing placards with snide statements like “culture instead of luxury apartments.” Work was halted temporarily as all parties sought to find an amicable solution, but it was recently resumed. To date, 6m out of the planned 22m has already been dismantled.

A spokesman for the developer, meanwhile, tried to placate the irate public by explaining that the removed sections would be relocated to the riverside park behind the current gallery.

It’s akin to some wiseacre deciding to move the A-Famosa from Malacca City to its outskirts to make way for a cineplex. “It’s still the A-Famosa mah – different place only!”

The development in Berlin, which is part of the controversial Mediaspree riverside construction project, has riled many Berliners who accuse Mayor Klaus Wowereit’s government of selling out to money-driven urban developers at the expense of the city’s uniqueness.

This runs in tandem with the growing debate over the gentrification of Germany’s capital, which was at one time a Mecca for creative sorts post-reunification. Coupled with rising rents and the typical Wohnungsnot (acute housing shortage) that currently plagues almost all of Germany’s big cities, residents feel that their causes and voices are being ignored in favour of outsiders with big bucks to spare.

“It’s unbearable to see that the wall here is being so brutally torn down,’ said artist Thierry Noir, whose painted section of the wall is one likely to be relocated. “We painted these images for future generations, as a memorial, and now it’s simply being removed.”

Media reports also quoted Antje Kapek, a trained urban planner and politician with the local Green Party who said: “The city government is ignoring the historical, cultural and tourist significance of this gallery and memorial.” Her counterpart of the centre-right Christian Democrats, Florian Graf, echoed her sentiments: “It is a symbol of the city’s identity.”

Doubtless for many, the wall is a reminder of a painful past that no one wants to repeat. Yet if we keep intoning “never again” we must be able to show our future generations why. Just like how we want to preserve everything good that we’ve done.

Knowing our past helps us chart our future. Or are our history teachers’ – including Mrs Len’s – painstaking efforts to make us appreciate the subject all in vain?

Brenda Benedict is a Malaysian living in Frankfurt. She is thankful that she was able to see and touch the East Side Gallery.

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