Legacy of Berlin Wall: What is ‘wall sickness’, and how is it still relevant today?

Wall disease

German psychologist Dietfried Müller-Hegemann took note of her case, coining the term “wall disease” to describe the condition that seemed to affect not just the body, but the mind. The woman’s suffering was not an isolated case.

“Wall sickness”, or Mauerkrankheit in German, referred to the psychological and emotional toll felt by those living near barriers. “Hegemann observed that his patients who lived close to the Berlin Wall showed higher rates of psychosis, schizophrenia, and phobias. Those East Germans who lived in the shadow of the Wall suffered rage, dejection, and alcoholism — and were more likely to kill themselves. And the closer to the physical wall his patients lived, the more acute their disorders,” Marcello Di Cintio wrote in Walls; Travels Along the Barricades (2012).

“The symptoms of wall disease included a sense of being locked up and of being isolated from friends and family. More severe cases stemming from the Berlin Wall could include psychosis, schizophrenia, and behavioral problems such as alcoholism, anger, despondency, dejection and suicide,” Jessica Wapner wrote in Wall Disease: The Psychological Toll of Living Up Against a Border (2020).

The Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989, exactly 35 years ago. Berliners hailed the day as a moment of liberation and unity. But with walls continuing to divide peoples around the world, from Gaza to Mexico, the legacy of Mauerkrankheit lives on.

Epidemic of mental distress

“The emotional liberation of 1989 did not cure the broader epidemic of mental distress caused by border walls,” Di Cintio wrote. “The ‘Berlin strain’ of the Wall disease may have been cured years ago, but wall disease remains a global pandemic. Sufferers of the disease (can be found) in Palestine, Cyprus, Belfast and along the US-Mexico border. Our contemporary walls and barriers continue to inflict psychic pain on those that live in their shadows.”

While governments defend border walls as necessary for security — be it for stopping undocumented immigration or terrorism — there is mounting evidence that these barriers cause more harm than good.

“People living near border walls often experience higher rates of depression than the regional population at large. They experience ‘othering,’ that is, viewing those on the other side of the wall as alien and dangerous despite the lack of evidence supporting that view. Poverty rates are often high in borderland regions,” Wapner wrote, adding that “The wall imposes its mass on the very brain cells of those living nearby, reshaping mental maps and, in turn, their view of the world around them.”

And though the Berlin Wall has fallen, its successors have only multiplied. “Border walls failed to disappear after the Berlin wall’s fall. Then came the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In the decade that followed, forty-seven new border walls arose around the world. In the US, the Secure Fence Act of 2006 authorised the building of hundreds of miles of fencing along the border with Mexico, and it paved the way for a proliferation of new cameras, satellites, and drones for surveillance. Today there are more than seventy significant security barriers at borders worldwide,” Wapner said.