A few years later, on june 13, 1990, the official demolition of the Berlin Wall began with the removal of a piece of the along Bernauer Strasse. When symbols are spoken about in such different ways, it is important to clarify the meaning of the term .

The word symbol has a clear theological meaning: religious creed or belief. Every church building is, in this sense, symbolic, for the way in which the pulpit and the alter, the baptismal front and the pews are arranged reflects central questions about a particular religious denominations form of belief. There are, in addition to this, a multiplicity of less clear meanings of the word, both within theology and outside of it. lf one calls the demolition of a church a symbol, then one is using one of these unclear meanings. Something "significant" occurred when the tower collapsed into itself. Was it defeat, or being forced to bid farewell to something familiar, to habits of thought, for example, about the Christian community, whose errors one must learn to recognise when they cannot stand up to history?

Or that it might be more appropriate to come together in a modest, simple space? The intact church should also mean something, should be symbolic in this less clear meaning of the term. But not only is the meaning of the word unclear, that which is symbolises is unclear as well.