No Limit

There are no more boundaries: at least that's what one believes at the beginning of the 1990s. The Berlin Wall falls, the world comes together and becomes interconnected. The first nodes of the World Wide Web are established, the first search engines are programmed. In Berlin, techno becomes the soundtrack of reunification, neon colors dominate the scene, piercings and tattoos conquer the mainstream, and the lower back tattoo becomes a stylistic symbol of the decade. But beneath the cheerful surface, old conflicts resurface, and ghosts from the past return. In East Germany, but not only there, a right-wing youth culture emerges on an unprecedented scale. In the disintegrating Yugoslavia, the unimaginable happens: the first war in Europe since 1945. Political Islam becomes a global threat, and the long decade ends on September 11, 2001, with the attack on the World Trade Center, which had also been a symbol of playful, globalized postmodernity. In a large, colorful panorama, Jens Balzer recounts a decade in which people believed in the future and in "anything goes" – yet also marks the beginning of a new era of boundaries, identities, and struggles.