Berlin: European phoenix

BERLIN
We all know San Francisco, the city that rose from the ashes of the 1906 earthquake. And of course London survived and rebuilt after the Battle of Britain – more than a year of relentless Nazi bombing that killed 3000 civilians.  Baghdad and Dresden, Nanjing and Tokyo have all had their share of modern and ancient catastrophes.  But consider Berlin.  I can’t imagine any city that can match the setbacks—mostly self inflicted -- and the amazing rebirth of this city.  Here is an introduction to that story:

Frederick the Great Glory Days - Sansouci Palace

18^th c.: During the 18^th century the consolidation of Prussia, Berlin as we know it took shape with the creation of the main platzes, grand boulevards including Under den Linden, and The Brandenburg Gate. Then the Prussian state declined and Nepolean occupied Berlin, removed the Goddess of Victory off the Brandenburg Gate and shipped it back to Paris as war booty! Some Berliners even cheered as he forced much needed government reforms.

Napolean's Booty - B'burg Victory

19^th c.: For the 100 years between Napoleon’s occupation and WWI Berlin was the cosmopolitan capital of a more and more militaristic nation that evolved from Prussia into Germany under a succession of kings and the hero of German unification, Otto von Bismarck. 

Early 20^th c.: Berlin was home to culture and the arts and to thinkers such as Karl Marx.  In the 20’s, despite post WWI hyper-inflation, Berlin became the most liberal city in Europe, known for its hectic night life and flourishing art scene that included Berthold Brecht, Marlene Dietrich, German Expressionist painting, and high theater and low-brow cabaret.  The 1929 crash on Wall Street pulled the rug out from under Germany’s economy, and the political street battles between the surging Nazis and flagging Communists grew nasty.  Ultimately the unthinkable happened: Hitler was made chancellor and formed a government.  (In Berlin three-quarters of the citizens voted against him.

WWII: The 30's were a time of terror under the watchful eye of the Gestapo.  A growing number of people disappeared -- sent to prisons, concentration camps and off to fight aggressive wars in Poland and France.  Exultant at his early successes, Hitler began constructing grand buildings for his Thousand-year Reich. The first Allied bombs landed on Berlin in 1940.  It was not until 1943, however that the US and British bombing raids became relentless, killing over 20,000 Berliners.  Despite Hitler’s rhetoric, the city’s morale sank as it became clear that the German military machine was not invincible. The cynical joke ran “Enjoy the war while you can.  The peace is going to be terrible.”  With Soviet troops just blocks from his bunker, Hitler, unrepentant, committed suicide ranter than surrender.  An additional 125,000 civilians died in the ground battle of Berlin, and 80 percent of buildings were severely damaged.  Two million Soviet soldiers moved in and the Cold War began.

GDR Death zone, wall + Alexander Platz TV tower

Cold War: For more than forty years Berlin was the nexus of the Cold War.  The blockade of the 50’s and the fences and eventually death zone and wall of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s showed just how nasty the divide was.  It personally affected all Berliners. When the wall came down in 1989 and the Germanys reunited in 1990, for the first time in 60 years the real work of rebuilding one city could begin.  Add to this the return from Bonn to Berlin of the federal capital (by a razor-thin parliament vote)  in 1999, and the stage was set for a new era.

Free (and frequent) expression

R'stag solar, H'caust mem, B'burg Gate, US Emb, F Gehry blg

N Foster designed Reichstag Dome

Today: What has been accomplished in the past 20 years seems  miraculous – particularly in a democratic nation with countless and complex wounds stretching back to before WWI to consider and address.  We have found that the treatment of this history in Berlin is admirably direct. Exhibits about the wall, Nazi Germany and the SS, the GDR, Jewish history in Germany, the Holocaust --each tells what happened with data, photos and no excuses.  The memorials are real, prominent and thoughtful…having survived the intense scrutiny of Berliners and the rest of the nation.  Beyond that, the then new buildings that are filling in the destroyed areas of the city are in many cases architecturally stunning – beautifully combining the remains of old building with new additions where possible (e.g., the Reichstadt, Museum of History), and simply starting from scratch when necessary (e.g., British Embassy, Jewish Museum, Sony Center).

Plaques to murdered Jews in front of their pre-WWII Homes

There is no excuse for the horrors Germany has wrought on itself, its citizens and the world.  Nonetheless, it is remarkable, 60 years later what has been accomplished here to memorialize that history and move forward in this vibrant 21^st century capital city.


Peter

Empty Library

BERLIN
We are standing in front of one of the main building at Humboldt University on Unter den Linden Street.  This is the “University of Berlin” where Einstein taught in the ‘20's and 30’s when at the pinnacle of his career in Germany.  As we face the building we stand in a cobblestone square.  One of Berlin's ubiquitous construction sites is behind us.  But it is what is beneath our feet that draws our attention.  Set into the cobblestones is a sheet of thick glass about 1.5m square.  We peer down but see nothing but white.  An illuminated room?  But then, when we crane our neck we notice that at the edges of the blank are shelves.  We circle the square and now see shelves line each wall of a large (8mx8m?) room.  All is white, the shelves and the floor of the subterranean room.  The shelves are empty.

Empty Library - Opern Platz, Berlin

It was in this plaza (then called Opernplatz) that on May 10, 1933  Josef Goebbels and the Nazi ceremoniously burned 20,000 books housed in the University of Berlin library, that conflicted with Nazi ideology.  They included books by German (Herman and Thomas Mann) and foreign (HG Wells, Ernest Hemingway) writers.

This “empty library,” alone, cold, sealed under glass in the square, is chilling reminder of the times when people have destroyed books in an effort to manipulate history itself in their favor.


Peter

Berliner Mauer/ The Berlin Wall

BERLIN

Cities, states, countries build walls to keep people (i.e., attackers or unwanted immigrants) out:

The Great Wall of China, the fence between the US and the Mexican border, the wall in north Jerusalem between the Jews and the Palestinians. . .  These are walls for protection and defense; walls of exclusion.

Cities, states, countries also build walls to keep people in: prisoners.

The Berlin Wall is such a wall, erected in 1961 to imprison the people of the German Democratic Republic (the GDR) behind the “iron curtain” of the Soviet bloc.

On Tuesday, we visited the Berlin Wall Memorial on Benauer Strasse, which is a preserved section of wall plus two interpretive centers and a viewing tower.  We watched two documentaries that explained how and why the wall was built.  We learned that by 1961 East Germany had lost 1/6 of its population due to residents fleeing to the West.  Overnight on August 13 of that year 40,000 soldiers, policemen and militia from the GDR began to replace the rather flimsy barriers with a concrete wall 3 meters high.  All streets to West Berlin were blocked off.  In actuality there were two walls, the fence on the border, and then a “sperrgebiet,” or forbidden zone, with watchtowers, tank barriers, automatically shooting rifles, a carpet of steel spikes on the ground (known by many as “Stalin’s lawn”) and hidden land mines, which became known as the “death zone” as guards were instructed to shoot to kill anyone trying to cross it.  Officially, between 1961 and 1989, 136 people were killed attempting to cross the wall, but hundreds more died trying to escape the border in other ways. Some escaped successfully.

The happy ending to this story is that the Wall came down on November 9, 1989 during massive protests by the East German people.  Berlin and the new unified German government continue to remind citizens and visitors of the Wall’s history, however.  A more famous (and tackier we’re told) memorial is at Checkpoint Charlie, the site of the Allied military post and the American standoff with the USSR.   Throughout the city there are pieces of standing wall and markers where the wall existed along with placards commemorating those who lost their lives trying to escape.  You can also buy little bits of the wall at tourist shops.

People express their ideas and wishes on walls as well: the Democracy Wall in Beijing 1978-9, the Berlin Wall 1990-2011:

One Berlin Wall “memorial” is actually an outdoor art installation.  Called the “Eastside Gallery,” it is a 1.3 kilometer stretch of existing wall painted by different international artists initially in 1991.  The paintings here cover many topics—they are exuberant, symbolic, mostly hopeful.  (See the examples in the photos I’ve uploaded.)

The opening lines of Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall” keep coming to mind: “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall. . .”

Beth

Plug It In!

BERLIN
When we lived in Beijing in 2000 our house had outlets with five different plug-patterns.  In the kitchen, for example there were three outlets next to each other – one requiring a unique three-prong pattern, two of them positioned at oblique angles; one with three large British-style prongs; and a third with a European configuration of two round prongs.  Naturally the plug for the light, or mixer or toaster would not match any of the outlets.  This fact drove me crazy.  “Why can’t there be some standardization?”  I muttered under my breath week after week until I finally found a dusty electronic supply store that sold dozens of varieties of adapters converting every conceivable plug pattern to every conceivable outlet pattern.  As a bonus it sold converters that would (sort of) step up our 110 60 Hz electrical appliances to 220 50 Hz.  Needless to say, when all was in place our house was a Rube Goldberg contraption of converters, multiple adapters, and cords leading to and from each electrical device.

It was with this picture in mind that Lily and I found ourselves at the five story department store at Hermannplatz U-Bahn (subway) station on our second day in Berlin.  Back in our Berlin apartment we had US cords (for the computers, ipods and ipad) and UK cords (for phone chargers) and German recessed, grounded outlets.  Beth, with her usual long distance foresight had anticipated this problem from the US months ago and we had in our luggage an assortment of adapters including a US three-prong to two-prong one.  Unfortunately, plugging the US three to two prong adapter into Beth’s German adapter and into the wall outlet gave only a tantalizing burst of power, only to die.  My theory was the Beth's German adapter was missing the grounding required by the German outlet.  Bottom line…crisis! We couldn’t charge all of our treasured electrical equipment.

Lily and I found the right department store after visits to several less well endowed shops and with the helpful translation skills of our friend, Sasha.  We had even found the electrical department in the store and the shelf dedicated to adapters.  Our problem:  Every converter was designed to convert the German plug into other nations’ outlets – made for traveling Germans, not visiting Americans living in the UK.

After carefully and with dwindling hope inspecting each of the dozen or more adapters we resorted to asking for help.  With my college German and fluent hand motions and his adequate English the electronics sales person rummaged through a bin we had already inspected and, voila! He pulled out an adapter that had six-hole outlet pattern on one face and the coveted grounded German plug on the other!  Lily and I had not been so excited since our German multi layered cakes were served at the restaurant earlier in the day!  We bought two – the last two in the whole five story department store.

Back in our apartment we performed several incantations.  We inserted the adapter in the outlet.  We inserted a US three prong plug in the adapter.  The power light flickered on. It worked!  We then tried the UK phone charger cord.  It worked.  Phew!  We are back in business.

Now to figure out how to connect to the internet.  We agreed to leave that for tomorrow.


Peter

Curry Wurst and other German Delicasies

BERLIN
Each day when we are hard at work exploring Berlin, we always needed to stop for lunch. As our week progresses though, we find the food possibilities are multiplying, making it increasingly hard to decide where to go. In this post I will describe our different options and how they relate to German culture. Number one: curry wurst. Berlin is not Berlin without a curry wurst shop on every corner, there is even a curry wurst museum and movie about the invention. Our first exposure to this popular lunch was across from the German history museum. My dad and I walked up to the man and watched him make our order. First he took a bratwurst from the sizzling pan and put it on a fancy contraption which cut it into several large chunks. Next, he put them in a small paper dish and smothered them in sweet catchup. Lastly, he sprinkled the sausage with a yellow, Indian curry powder. The result was scrumptious! Whether they are served with pommes (fries), a bread roll, or just plain, they are definitely worth  going our of your way to a small, umbrellaed stand to try the amazing Berliner delight. 

Number two: cakes and coffee. Unlike the British with their afternoon tea (in other words, a small cup of tea with three tiers of pastries, scones, and sandwiches) the Germans don't have to pretend that they can make it to dinner with just a cup of tea.  They truthfully call their break cake time. our family completely agrees with this statement so on most days around 4 in the afternoon we sit down in a little shop for cake. Every shop we've gone to so far has been amazing! We have tried far too many cakes to count and they have all been really tasty. Some of our highlights have been apfelstrudel, a square of chocolate with ginger inside, mocha cream cake, lemon tart, and dark chocolate cake. 

Number three: waffles. Although one may think of Belgium when waffles are mentioned, near the flea market in Berlin we found the most amazing, off-the- beaten track waffle place in the world (as far as we know). As we stepped inside, the cute mismatched couches and chairs clustered around low tables caught our eyes. But the uniqueness of this place was in its savory waffles. The batter was unsweetened and contained bits of carrot and zucchini, making it colorful but a bit unusual. On top of one waffle we had tomato and mozzarella and on the other, smoked salmon, lettuce and dill sauce.  Talk about everything on a waffle! Now we can say that we have discovered some of the highlights of German cuisine and will probably try to make curry wurst at home some time.

Abby