Known as “The Kiss” or “Brother Kiss,” this famous painting on the East Side Gallery of the Berlin Wall depicts East German President Erich Honnecker welcoming Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev with a kiss during the 30th anniversary of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR), which was East Germany at the time. It was customary for Socialist leaders and party members to greet each other with a bear hug and a kiss, but the intimacy of the moment, captured initially on black and white film but reproduced over the years in paintings, was so powerful that the painting became an icon.
