Oliver Meline was born in East Berlin in 1964. He is a painter. No more is known about him. His painting “Willkommen” (“Welcome”) in the East Side Gallery criticises the circumstances of German reunification.
Meline's dramatic work “Willkommen” (“Welcome”) depicts a man wearing only shoes falling backwards from a platform into a black-and-red abyss. With this painting, the artist expressed his dismay that people from East Germany voluntarily renounced their newly gained autonomy in favour of rapid unification with West Germany. He feared it would bring expropriations and unemployment. He factored in the decay of the wall as an element of his work: It would crumble just as people’s expectations of reunification were replaced by a harsher reality.
