Under communist Czechoslovakia Located in a secluded square across from the
French Embassy, the wall had love poems and short messages against the
communist Czechoslovak government since the 1960s, but the first message connected to John Lennon was painted following the 1980
assassination of Lennon, when an unknown artist painted a single image of the singer-songwriter and some lyrics onto a stone slab foundation of a former public fountain. Following this, a small memorial was created with candles, flowers, photographs and newspaper clippings talking about the murder. Western media was banned in the country at the time, therefore the image and memorial was seen by the authorities as representative of western culture and political resistance, thus in April 1981 it was painted over with green paint and removed by the
Czechoslovak secret police who saw it as a protest against the government. The day after the wall was repainted it was filled with political messages, such as "
Palach would cry", and poems once again. The wall would be repainted and re-graffiti-ed after that, with cameras and over-night guards being stationed at the wall to prevent further attempts, but this was ultimately fruitless as the wall would always end up being marked anyway. In 1988, the wall was a source of irritation for
Gustáv Husák's
Marxist–Leninist government. Following a short-lived era of democratization and political
liberalization known as the
Prague Spring, the newly installed communist government dismantled the reforms, inspiring anger and resistance. Young Czechs wrote their grievances on the wall and, according to a report of the time, this led to a clash between hundreds of students and security police on the nearby
Charles Bridge. The liberalization movement these students followed was described as Lennonism (not to be confused with
Leninism), and Czech authorities described participants variously as alcoholic, mentally deranged, sociopathic, and agents of Western
free market capitalism.
Post velvet revolution and contemporary developments After the fall of the
iron curtain and replacement of the communist government the wall continuously underwent change and the original portrait of Lennon was long lost under layers of new paint and graffiti. On 17 November 2014, the 25th anniversary of the
Velvet Revolution, a group of art students called Prážská Služba repainted the wall to white leaving a single line of black text, “wall is over”. The Knights of Malta initially filed a criminal complaint for vandalism against the students, which they later retracted after contacting them. On 22 April 2019,
Earth Day, the environmentalist group
Extinction Rebellion repainted the wall as a demand for the Czech government to act on
climate change. The wall was almost entirely painted white, with the unpainted parts of the wall reading in large, negative space, block print letters
Klimatická Nouze (). Members of the public were encouraged to add their messages, resulting in calls for action painted in several languages. A large image of a skull was also painted. The repaint was carried out in a manner which allowed some of the existing artwork to be included on the new wall. In July 2019, artists painted a memorial on the wall for Hong Kong democracy activist
Marco Leung Ling-kit, who became known as a martyr and a symbol of hope for the
2019 anti-extradition bill protest movement. The image on the wall depicts the yellow raincoat he was wearing during the
banner drop that eventually led to a fall from the building, along with some words of solidarity: “Hong Kong,
Add oil.” In October 2019, the
Sovereign Military Order of Malta and the administrative district of
Prague 1 started a reconstruction of the Lennon Wall. A representative of the Order of Malta, Johannes Lobkowicz, in regards to why the wall would be renovated, said "Our goal was to stop the wall from being a cheap tourist attraction, where anyone could draw nonsense or vulgarisms. It wasn't a dignified state [for the wall]". At the same time as the wall was being renovated the wall was also declared a memorial site, this being the first time the wall was given an officially recognized status as an important landmark. On 15 May 2024 the Romani artist Maxim Muchow added a portrait of the late Romani singer Věra Bílá to the wall. ==Lennon Walls in Hong Kong==