Before I begin: we have been a bit lax about keeping up with the blog. Seeing our friends and family (and, of course, the sights) in Berlin, Amsterdam and Leuven (Belgium) has been wonderfully taking up our time. But we still wanted to share what we learned about East Berlin.
One of the first sites we went to (just a block away from Checkpoint Charlie) was a small museum dedicated to telling how the "Ministerium fur Staatssicherheit" - also known as the Stasi - operated and controlled the activities of the people, housed in part of the building where they operated. It was quite informative, showing how they kept a file system and several things that they had a hand in, including travel, arts, work, etc. It showed one particularly funny document that condemned a guy as being a "Punk Rocker." It also discussed how it shut down a theater group using what they called "psychological methods." Apparently, after the Stasi was shut down, people could go and find their files to see what the Stasi had dug up on them. There was also a larger museum on the Stasi and Gestapo, but we didn't manage to see it.
On another day, we ventured into East Berlin to see what it looked like. Our first stop was Alexanderplatz, a square in what used to be East Berlin that has retained some of its socialist character, as you can see from the picture at right. Also, because it was redeveloped in the 1960s to become the East Berlin city center, it is where you can find a few important structures. One of these is the world time clock, or the Weltzeithur (below), which shows the hour at each of the different time zones with example cities in each time zone. It is also topped by a rotating solar system.
Also in this picture, you can see the Fernsehturm, or the TV tower. According to this site, the history of the tower goes a little like this:
Construction for the GDR transmitter started in the 1950s and the tower erected between 1965-69 was intended as the tallest tower in Europe second only to Moscow’s own TV tower.
[...]
The tower’s second legend is that although it was intended to demonstrate technological advance it was doomed to an ironic fate. To the embarrassment of GDR authorities – the steel sphere below the antenna produced the reflection of a giant cross. Hence the popular joke, not appreciated by the SED government, that this was God’s revenge on the secular socialist State for having removed crucifixes from churches.
We continued on through Alexanderplatz to Karl-Marx-Allee (Boulevard, if you like). This street is pretty interesting. Beginning in 1949, it was actually called Stalinallee, and was sort of meant to be the place where Stalin could showcase how awesome East Berlin was, and by extension, how awesome socialism was. At right, we took a selfie with the street sign (like classy folks), and below you can see an example of the architecture meant to show socialism's strength.
In 1961, the street was renamed Karl-Marx-Allee as part of the process of "deStalinization" (that was actually the term used on a sign we saw, no relation to the process of removing salt from water, desalinization). One of the blocks we walked down apparently used to have a giant statue of Stalin, but as you can imagine, that was also removed.
One quite nice thing about Karl Marx Allee was that they put signs up for people interested in the history of the place. If you're ever in Berlin, there's a free, English-language tour of Karl-Marx-Allee via these interesting and informative signs. We would recommend them if you have a free afternoon. They look like this --------------------->
One of the other sort of funny things we saw along this street was Cafe Moskau/Москва. It was a formidable building, complete with giant mosaic of people of the world (ostensibly happy with their lives under socialism) as well as the giant name of the restaurant flanked by a Sputnik lookalike.
Note that the sun in the mosaic (top left, not all too visible in this picture, sorry) is also modeled on Sputnik.
The whole display reminded me of this song (a version with English lyrics like "love tastes like caviar," if you like) which I then had in my head for the rest of the day. By the way, I talked to our host Carla about this song and she said it sort of occupied a similar cultural niche as "The Chicken Dance" does in our culture. Or "Don't Stop Believin'." Or "Bohemian Rhapsody." Basically the song you play at the end of the party.
Back from my digression to East Berlin! We had the amazing opportunity to eat dinner with Carla's family. Her father was able to give us a few really interesting insights into how life was in Berlin. They lived in West Berlin, and among other things told us about the difficulties that posed for traveling. West Berlin was, after all, was surrounded by East Germany. The Cold War and the Communist regime posed their own problems for East Germans; they in effect could only travel to other communist countries.
Another thing Carla's father told us about was how difficult it was for East Berliners to buy daily necessities. He told us about someone he knew who was buying some sort of construction material (I forget exactly what) just after reunification. He called the store and when he asked how much they had, he was surprised to hear them say he could order as much as he wanted. He apparently then ended up ordering much more than he ended up needing.
Carla also told us how the desire to have 'modern-looking' buildings also affected West Berlin. In fact, West Berliners were paid to remove traditional decorations from the facades of their buildings at the time to make them look more modern. Later on, she told us, some people put the decorations back up, but it often didn't quite look the same.
All in all, Berlin was definitely one of our favorite stops, as I mentioned before. We learned a lot from people whose lives and families were actually affected by the developments of the last several decades. Thanks again, Carla and Johannes, for hosting us and helping us understand more about Berlin!
One of the first sites we went to (just a block away from Checkpoint Charlie) was a small museum dedicated to telling how the "Ministerium fur Staatssicherheit" - also known as the Stasi - operated and controlled the activities of the people, housed in part of the building where they operated. It was quite informative, showing how they kept a file system and several things that they had a hand in, including travel, arts, work, etc. It showed one particularly funny document that condemned a guy as being a "Punk Rocker." It also discussed how it shut down a theater group using what they called "psychological methods." Apparently, after the Stasi was shut down, people could go and find their files to see what the Stasi had dug up on them. There was also a larger museum on the Stasi and Gestapo, but we didn't manage to see it.
 |
| Street leading up to Alexanderplatz |
Also in this picture, you can see the Fernsehturm, or the TV tower. According to this site, the history of the tower goes a little like this:
Construction for the GDR transmitter started in the 1950s and the tower erected between 1965-69 was intended as the tallest tower in Europe second only to Moscow’s own TV tower.
[...]
The tower’s second legend is that although it was intended to demonstrate technological advance it was doomed to an ironic fate. To the embarrassment of GDR authorities – the steel sphere below the antenna produced the reflection of a giant cross. Hence the popular joke, not appreciated by the SED government, that this was God’s revenge on the secular socialist State for having removed crucifixes from churches.
We continued on through Alexanderplatz to Karl-Marx-Allee (Boulevard, if you like). This street is pretty interesting. Beginning in 1949, it was actually called Stalinallee, and was sort of meant to be the place where Stalin could showcase how awesome East Berlin was, and by extension, how awesome socialism was. At right, we took a selfie with the street sign (like classy folks), and below you can see an example of the architecture meant to show socialism's strength.
In 1961, the street was renamed Karl-Marx-Allee as part of the process of "deStalinization" (that was actually the term used on a sign we saw, no relation to the process of removing salt from water, desalinization). One of the blocks we walked down apparently used to have a giant statue of Stalin, but as you can imagine, that was also removed.
One quite nice thing about Karl Marx Allee was that they put signs up for people interested in the history of the place. If you're ever in Berlin, there's a free, English-language tour of Karl-Marx-Allee via these interesting and informative signs. We would recommend them if you have a free afternoon. They look like this --------------------->One of the other sort of funny things we saw along this street was Cafe Moskau/Москва. It was a formidable building, complete with giant mosaic of people of the world (ostensibly happy with their lives under socialism) as well as the giant name of the restaurant flanked by a Sputnik lookalike.
Note that the sun in the mosaic (top left, not all too visible in this picture, sorry) is also modeled on Sputnik.
The whole display reminded me of this song (a version with English lyrics like "love tastes like caviar," if you like) which I then had in my head for the rest of the day. By the way, I talked to our host Carla about this song and she said it sort of occupied a similar cultural niche as "The Chicken Dance" does in our culture. Or "Don't Stop Believin'." Or "Bohemian Rhapsody." Basically the song you play at the end of the party.
Back from my digression to East Berlin! We had the amazing opportunity to eat dinner with Carla's family. Her father was able to give us a few really interesting insights into how life was in Berlin. They lived in West Berlin, and among other things told us about the difficulties that posed for traveling. West Berlin was, after all, was surrounded by East Germany. The Cold War and the Communist regime posed their own problems for East Germans; they in effect could only travel to other communist countries.
Another thing Carla's father told us about was how difficult it was for East Berliners to buy daily necessities. He told us about someone he knew who was buying some sort of construction material (I forget exactly what) just after reunification. He called the store and when he asked how much they had, he was surprised to hear them say he could order as much as he wanted. He apparently then ended up ordering much more than he ended up needing.
Carla also told us how the desire to have 'modern-looking' buildings also affected West Berlin. In fact, West Berliners were paid to remove traditional decorations from the facades of their buildings at the time to make them look more modern. Later on, she told us, some people put the decorations back up, but it often didn't quite look the same.
All in all, Berlin was definitely one of our favorite stops, as I mentioned before. We learned a lot from people whose lives and families were actually affected by the developments of the last several decades. Thanks again, Carla and Johannes, for hosting us and helping us understand more about Berlin!
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