Birgit Kinder painted the Trabant breaking through a Berlin Wall segment at the East Side Gallery. Her work, commonly known as “Test the Best,” shows the front of an East German Trabant automobile bursting through the concrete barrier.
The Trabant was a small car manufactured in East Germany and became an instantly recognizable symbol of everyday life behind the Iron Curtain. Kinder’s image turns that familiar vehicle into a visual statement about movement, escape, and the Wall’s collapse.
The East Side Gallery was created in 1990, after artists from many countries painted a long surviving section of the former border wall along the River Spree. It became one of the world’s largest open-air galleries and includes more than one hundred murals.
Kinder’s mural is sometimes mistakenly attributed to other famous East Side Gallery artists, especially Dmitri Vrubel, who painted the “Fraternal Kiss.” The Trabant image and the Brezhnev-Honecker kiss are separate works by different artists.