The above statement is the eloquent quote by JFK which translated into English means: I am a Jelly Donut. Of course in fact what he meant was: I am person of Berlin. And after this weekend I would like to echo the sentiment of JFK in his speech made from Berlin, where he indeed called himself a Jelly Donut, and say, I now feel akin to the Berliner.
Berlin is the most interesting and extraordinary city I have ever been to. It also fringes on the bizarre in so many ways. Though my final impression of the city is one of awe and respect, my first impression was not so positive. After leaving the airport outside of the city I hopped on a bus to get into town. I was told to get off at ‘Rudow’ to catch a train to the city center near the Hostel my friend and I were going to be staying. I was a little concerned though when I got on the bus I saw that all the stops had ‘Rudow’ in the name. So I rode for a while hoping the stop I needed to get off at would become apparent. As I sat on the bus I took in the other people around me. All of them were very quiet and looked a bit miserable, frowning or with heads hung down. I thought of Amsterdam and how when I arrived there everyone was smiling and talking cheerfully or singing even on public transportation. However, their faces reflected the countryside, or suburbs, we were riding through that were in shades of brown and gray and very desolate. The few buildings to be seen were very small houses all looking very similar. I got off the bus where I though I might be able to catch the train into town. However, when I got off it was apparent that I would not be able to catch it here and that I was still in this desolate countryside. I realized as I sat there waiting for the next bus that just until recently this was East Germany and was under Soviet control and wow did it still resemble it. It was not hard to imagine the grim life that would have been lived here less then two decades before and why so many people risked their lives to leave this area.
As I finally made my way into Berlin itself my impression did not change. I walked to my hostel from the train station nearby. The neighborhood consisted of huge roadways cutting across mostly dilapidated but not old looking buildings and industrial canals, all still very colorless in shades of grays and browns. This is what much of Berlin looks like. There are miles of areas that look just like this with little pockets of prettier or more modern looking buildings or squares. But even in the most elegant and famous parts of the city, like Museum Island where much of the famous and gorgeous building of Berlin stand, there are still large patches of destitute or destroyed buildings or huge construction sites marring the views. This all creates a melancholy and dark ambiance to the city. However, I started to learn over the course of the weekend that one has to understand Berlin to appreciate it. And that if one understands Berlin and can appreciate it then it becomes a Mecca of artistic and historical insights and every block and every destitute building becomes meaningful and inspirational.
I came to this realization during a walking tour that my friend and I took around the city lead by a woman of not even 30 years but who had still spent a third of her life under the soviet’s repressive occupation. She explained that the city was so utterly destroyed by domestic strife leading up to WWII, WWII itself, and the soviet occupation of the eastern half of the city that almost nothing was left from the pre-WWII era of the city. And that nothing in the way of rebuilding of the wondrous old emblematic buildings or even of decent housing had really been able to take place in the city until after the reunification.
The city really is a living monument to itself and its history, which is perhaps one of the most intense in recent times. My weekend there was focused on this unique history. This included the 4 hour historical tour I just described. On it we saw the Imperial Cathedral, which is pictured above in sharp contrast to the ruins of the Imperial palace blown up by the soviets. We also saw the monument to the victims of tyranny and war, the monument to the books destroyed by the National Socialists, the memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe, the remains of the Berlin wall, Checkpoint Charlie, the Brandenburg Gate, Hitler’s bunker, and a lot of other interesting historical artifacts and places.
I also went to three museums. I saw the Museum of German Jews first. It is kind of odd and moving to be going through this museum dedicated to the positive accomplishments and the devastating history of Jews in Germany knowing that nothing that celebrates German Jewry would have been able to exist a hand full of decades ago. The museum is very well done, however, and the building its self is one of the most amazing pieces of architecture I have ever encountered. It is built to resemble a broken Star of David. The building is quite tall and as you walk through it you encounter what is called the voids which are large deep chasm that are the gaps between the triangles in the star. Some of the these voids are just pits of darkness, some are open and light pours in to them, and one had thousands of metallic screaming faces pilled up at the bottom of the void. And there is the holocaust tower there which is one of the eeriest places I have ever been. It is a huge completely empty tower with an extremely high ceiling painted completely black so when you look up it is as if you are looking into complete nothingness. The room is so dark you can not really see who else is in there and the only light is a very thin line of white light coming down from one corner of the ceiling. It is very cold in there and there is a mysterious almost ghostly sound that seems to permeate from the huge concrete walls. The only object in the room is a latter stretching up to the blackness starting just high enough to be out of reach of anyone.
I went to two other museums both as amazing and unique as this one. I went to the Old National Gallery witch consists of German expressionism from the 18th and 19th century. And also to the German Museum of National History. This second museum was perhaps the most interesting museum I have ever been to. I am very interested in German history and this was a huge museum chalked full of facts and artifacts from all points in German history. The area about National Socialism in the museum was particularly amazing to me as I took a course last semester at Clark on Nazi Germany and much of the pictures and copies of posters we were shown by the professor in that class were on display in their original and horrid form.
Also, the second night we were in Berlin we went to the Reichstag. The Reichstag the parliament building of Germany and has been destroyed and rebuild many times. This latest reconstruction of it has a glass dome on top of it. One can climb to the top of this dome and not just get a great view of the city but also you can peer down into the parliament chamber below you. This is supposed to represent transparency in the new German republic so that nothing like the tyranny that Germany has had to suffer so much of can happen again. Like I said the city is a monument to itself, its mistakes, its victims, and its own suffering. Every build, square, and monument, is completely full of layers upon layers of meaning built into them. I could write another several pages on all this symbolism in everything I saw. This is why the city transitioned in my mind to a place still of great darkness and melancholy but also of great depth and beauty.
I also had some more light-hearted times though while in Berlin. My friend and I went to several Breweries and Beer halls to sample the legendary local brews. We also ate some amazing Turkish food, as Berlin has the largest Turkish population of any city in the world other than Istanbul. I also had some traditional potato dishes and sausages, and currywursts.
Now I’m back in London. As always not a bad place to have to return to. I am going to Parliament tomorrow for an event celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Crick Report, which is the Report to Parliament that really got the ball rolling on the mandating of citizenship education here. I am very excited to meet some interesting people there and see parliament. And then I’m going off to Scotland this weekend. More to come soon…
No comments:
Post a Comment