Berlin: The War and the Wall

First, I’m a bit bummed to be leaving Berlin.  It was certainly one of my favorite stops thus far, as I suspected it would be.  Carla and Johannes were amazing hosts to us and we had a lot of fun with them.  We also really enjoyed hearing their perspective on the things we were learning and hearing their tips on what to do.  Concordians, Carla and Johannes say hi!

The War

Instead of mentioning sights in the order we saw them, I think I’ll go by chronological order of the history that each of the sights we saw were referring to, starting with World War II.  Probably the most World War II history we saw was in the Berlin Jewish Museum (it seems most of Berlin focuses more on the Wall, which I’ll talk about in just a bit).  The Jewish Museum actually recounts ~1600 years of German Jewish history of which the Holocaust, or Shoah (the Hebrew word used to refer to the Holocaust), is only a part.  Parts of the museum focus simply on daily life, which likely applied to not just Jews but all Europeans of that age, but the museum also tells about movements of Jews based on where laws allowed them to live.  One recurring theme, it seems, is being invited into towns specifically to become bankers and moneylenders.  This happened because Christians were forbidden from collecting interest on loans to other Christians, which ended up leaving towns needing people to fill these roles.  However, even though this was specifically a role they were given and not one that they really chose, Jews were disliked for this role in society, stereotyped as miserly and many times kicked out of the places where they had established their lives.  The museum also addresses success stories, but it is in the context of this recurring persecution that the museum handles the Holocaust.

Some of the most powerful stories from the Holocaust are actually not in the main part of the museum but in the basement leading into the main part of the museum.  Here, there are exhibits of people’s personal items, letters to family members, etc.  Another part shows the work of the artist Bedrich Fritta, who was in the concentration camp/ghetto Theresienstadt, a prisoner employed to create positive propaganda about the camp.  On the side, though, he created drawings regarding his time in the camp that were at turns sardonic and haunting.  One of the most touching parts of that gallery is a book of cartoons he drew for his son who was turning three in 1944.  His son would survive the camp, though the artist did not.

An adjacent room has an art installation called “Fallen Leaves.”  It is a room whose floor is scattered with different sizes of welded iron faces with their mouths gaping open.  The room is meant to be walked into, though in order to do so you have to step on the faces.  The harsh sound of the metal faces clinking against one another is an intentional part of the installation.

Another part of the museum is the “Garden of Exile,” where huge concrete columns rise at a slight tilt out of the ground, which is also tilted.  It commemorates the Jews who escaped the Holocaust by moving all over the world.  It’s a quite effective monument – because of the tilt, walking between the columns throws your equilibrium off and disorients you; plus, you never know what’s around the corner and can only see in one direction at a time.  The audio guide had the architect mentioning how this was intentionally supposed to mirror the experience of the Jews who had fled.

A very similar monument, but much larger (2700 concrete columns instead of 16) lies in the heart of Berlin just next to the beautiful Tiergarten park: the Holocaust Memorial.  It is similar enough that we wondered if the artists had meant it to be that way. One major difference other than scale, though, is that whereas the columns in the museum were square, these are rectangular, reminiscent of a grave plot.

 A final acknowledgment of the events of the second World War came not in the form of a large monument, but in the form of small engraved metal blocks integrated into the sidewalks, like the one pictured right here.  These commemorated not only where they lived but when and how they died.  These were perhaps the most powerful, if the most understated, reminders of the Holocaust.

So, Mom, you mentioned you’d like to hear “Germany explains Nazism.”  It seemed to us that the tack taken in Berlin was not one of attempting to explain what happened, but rather reflecting in a somber way and, especially in the case of the Holocaust Memorial, in a very public spot.  There is no text on the Memorial, just the implicit reminder of what happened, as if it were warning all to be wary of history repeating itself.

The Wall

As you might remember, after the war, Germany was a country divided between the Soviets and the western powers (the US, Britain and France).  Berlin in particular was quite literally divided with a wall separating West and East Berlin.  Our first stop on the wall was Checkpoint Charlie, so named because it was the third checkpoint after Checkpoint A (Alpha) and Checkpoint B (Bravo) using the NATO phonetic alphabet.  It was one of the most well-known checkpoints at which people could attempt to cross between West and East Berlin, marked with the army checkpoint (below) and the sign warning you that you are leaving the American sector.  By the way, in addition to the American sector, there was also a French sector and a British sector.  Nowadays, as you can tell, it’s quite the tourist destination, complete with a McDonald’s across the street.

The wall next to the Checkpoint, and throughout the city, is now marked by a line of bricks (below).

Checkpoint Charlie turned out to be a fortuitous first stop, as it had a big informational exhibit that basically reviewed everything I had forgotten from AP European History about what happened in Germany after WWII, and by extension, the entire Cold War – things like the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Marshall Plan, the uprisings against Soviets in Hungary and the Czech Republic, and the Vietnam War.

The Checkpoint was particularly important as it became the main way that people attempted to get from East Germany to West Berlin (and from there to places far and wide).  The Checkpoint told the stories of hundreds of people who fled East Germany in that area, successfully or unsuccessfully.  Anyone who attempted to flee was considered an enemy of the state

.  People got creative – creating hiding spaces in cars, procuring US Army uniforms that would allow them to cross, falsifying documents, etc.

After brushing up on our history, we stopped by the Brandenburg Gate.  The Gate, built in the 18^th century, became a lasting symbol of Berlin.  It was famous enough to get the attention of Napoleon during his reign, and apparently important enough to not be destroyed during the division of Berlin.  The Gate was just next to the wall on the East Berlin side, and there was a checkpoint there that theoretically allowed people to pass between.  During Reagan’s presidency, he is famously known to have given a speech on the gate, commonly quoted as saying “Mr. Gorbachev!  Tear down this wall!”  Apparently Obama recently visited Berlin and also spoke on the gate, but his speech was declared distinctly not as memorable.  Oh well.

A bit south of the gate lies Potsdamerplatz, a plaza full of modern buildings and a few pieces of the wall still in their original spots.  The entire plaza had been engulfed by the wall system (which, I should say, encompassed not just the one wall, but a whole militarized zone between two walls that allowed the East Germans to keep a very close watch on who crossed from East to West).  Potsdamerplatz, then, represents a bit of a phoenix rising out of the ashes, and that is why all of the buildings there are so modern.

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One of our last stops in Berlin was to see the East Side Gallery, which is the longest remaining section of wall, still in its original position.  Both sides are heavily graffitied, but on the Eastern side of the wall the walls are covered in murals from when the wall was being dismantled and forward.  Many of the murals refer to peace, liberation, etc.  

One of the most famous panels depicts Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and East German President Erich Honnecker kissing (which, by the way, was painted from an actual picture)

The Wall was one of the things I was most excited to see on this trip. It’s a piece of history I was actually alive for, something that affected people I actually know, like Carla and Johannes and their families. Though they were quite young when the wall fell, it was really special to learn from them about what living in Berlin since then has been like. In our next post, we’ll tell you what we learned about what it was like to live in East Berlin.