Berlin's History

Street Performers
Parizter Platz

Yesterday was a holiday celebrating the 21 years of Germany's reunification.  And what better day to make my first incursion into the touristic/historical center of the city!

After a morning spent writing and looking into potential hosts for a short trip to Hamburg, I finally walked outside of my flat to stroll in the general direction of the Brandenburg Tor, where I would meet Harvey for a free, guided walking tour of Berlin's center.  Free?  Jawohl!

I almost regretted the idea when I first emerged from the U-Bahn and found myself in a sea of tourists.  Straight ahead stood the famous Branderburg Gate, its beauty although compromised by some sort of construction structures, which had been erected in the background.  Something else immediately caught my eye though: the Quebec flag (no red maple leaf in sight!), waving high on top of a prominent building, right in the middle of Paritzer Platz for everyone to behold!  "Alright," I joked to myself, "this place ain't that bad."  I sat down and ate a curry wurst mit pommes frites, exchanged a few words with some locals I shared a table with, and went inside of Starbucks to empty my bladder (in the toilet).

Our guide was a young British fellow by the name of Tom.  His enthusiasm and sense of humor seemed quite promising, and so both Harvey and I took out our notebooks (I think we were the only ones to do so, dorks that we are!) in anticipation of the three hours that would follow.

Tom talked about the square we were in, and about the architecture of the American and French embassies.  (I didn't test whether he knew that blue and white flag with the fleurs de lys on it.)  He then pointed out the ritziest hotel in all of Berlin (from a slavic root meaning "swamp"!), the Adlon or something like that.  It was there, we learned, that Michael Jackson made the tabloids after he held and dangled his baby outside the window.  Great.

We proceeded to some real historical site: the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.  There I finally stood, amongst more tourists, as well as a few families with kids, who ran and jumped from block to block, happily oblivious to the symbolism of the monument.  

(In case you wonder, the Germans are indeed faced with this dark part of their history, as there are several holocaust memorials all around the city.)

But this particular one, build as recently as 2005, is perhaps the most famous.  It is imposing, very squarish, hard and orderly-looking.   It is definitely plain and grave, and we learned that this is meant to remain open to several interpretations.  6 millions Jews were murdered in Europe during WWII.  The Nazis also targetted homosexuals, disabled people, pacifists and communists, but this one specific memorial highlights the atrocities committed against the Jewish people.  Tom brought our awareness to the fact that these were 6 millions individuals, that is, 6 millions personal tragedies, 6 millions hearts which were systematically murdered, in an industrial fashion.  In my body and being, I felt a struggle between numbness and despair.  Then Tom pointed out that genocide is still occurring today, in Rwanda and Darfur for instance.  I was glad he said that, though rapidly anger rose inside of me, along with the tears in my eyes.

As we proceeded to the next landmark, I still felt somewhat disconnected from time.  I walked silent.  "How are you feeling?" asked Harvey.  "… full." I said.  "Not full in the sense of a limit," I added, "rather like… full… you know?"  I breathed and held the feelings in my heart, wishing that my being present with such suffering could contribute to the healing of the world.  Probably in vain.

Next, Tom led us in front of some apartment buildings; an old woman with a walker, a few trees, a parking lot: nothing impressive there.  Yet we stood on the very spot where Hitler hid in his bunker, twelve feet underground, for the last six months before he finally admitted to have lost the war, and committed suicide.

We stood right there where it happened: the most infamous megalomaniac, shooting himself in the head, after blaming his generals, the SS forces, and the German people for failing him and losing the battle.

He was a sick, sick man.

It was a sick, sick time.

Site of Hitler's Bunker
(Weeping Willow, though no tears for the Führer

How scary to think that such a dictatorship may come about following economic turmoil, that the masses can be so vulnerable and gullible in times of instability and scarcity.

Germany is drawned in the middle of a continent; it is surrounded by nine other states (today).  "National Socialism" was a terrible experiment from which the entire world has learned.  Nationalism can be so destructive.  Nationalism is such a joke.  I won't go into it at the moment.. but I have lots to say about the rise of nationalism and its parallel to the emergence of the new bourgeois class, and of capitalism.

Nationalism is a shadow on cavernous walls.  Puppets are dancing in front of the people's eyes, and a few with a lot of power are holding the strings...

 

But back to Berlin.  Time for Russia to do away with Hitler's remains, bury him once, and dig him out years later to turn his bones to ashes and throw 'em into the water, somewhere unspecified.  No resting place for the Führer, no way!

And as for Germany, let's take it over and divide it in half.  The French, Americans, and British can have the West.  The Soviets will take the East (1945) and keep it communist.  And the capital?  Let's also cut it in half (1961), regardless of the fact that it is geographically part of the East!

And there it goes up: the Berlin Wall! 

One of the three remaining strips of Wall

Before the Wall was built (1949-61), over 2,7 millions of East Germans went to the West through Berlin.  That was 1/6th of the population!  The Soviets needed to stop the bleeding... so they thought they'd build a dam.  And they did... overnight!  That's right, one morning people woke up to an altered landscape. There it stood, with no way to go through anymore.  60 thousand people lost their jobs that day (they worked on the other side).  Many never saw their family and loved ones again.  The Walls (There were actually two of them) weren't actually tall at all - merely 13 feet! - but they were practically impossible to cross because of the "Death Strip", a sandy zone between them, with a lovely landscape design full with land mines, gunmen, dogs on long lines, and barbed wire. 

Tom told a few defection stories, one of which about people attempting to jump off their third floor balconies hoping to land on the other side... before the Soviets dealt with that problem.

The Wall stayed up for 28 years.

Tom  was young and a very comfortable and eloquent communicator.  He reminded me of my brother.

I felt bad that i wouldn't have much to tip him at the end of the tour.

On another stop we saw Humboldt Universität (Nothing to do with Northern California!), an institution which hosted a few dudes you might have heard of: Engels, Marx, Einstein, Feuerbach, the Grimm Brothers, Marcuse, Plank, Schopenhauer, and W.E.B. Du Bois, for example!

Humboldt Universität

Close-by, at Bebelplatz: another memorial.  This one to the 25 thousand books that were burned by the Nazis, in 1933.  The Book Burning Memorial has a plaque in front of it, which includes a quote by nineteenth-century German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine: "Where they burn books, they will in the end also burn people." 

 “Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen"
Heinrich Heine, 1820 !!

We ended our tour on the steps of the Reichtag, home of the German parliament.  There, our guide treated us to a final demonstration of his exceptional storytelling abilities.  As animated as he had been during the last three hours (or more?), he gave us the captivating story of how the Wall came down and Germany reunited, exactly 21 years ago.
I believe the Fall of the Berlin Wall might be the first "political/historical" memory I have.  I was seven 
years old.  What I didn't know, is that the whole way it all unfolded was sort of a political mistake!
Gorbachev had launched his reforms and allowed for nations in the USSR to gradually gain more freedoms and independence... But the German Communists held tight... and things escalated with the Leipzig Protests, and eventually East Germany's leader, Erich Honecker, mistakenly declared the all travel restrictions to be lifted, and the Wall to be opened....
On October 3, 1989, at 9pm, over 8 thousand East Berliners showed up to the Northern gate of the Wall, and walked, one by one, their passport in hand to the other side.  There waited a herd of Western Germans - they had witnessed Honecker's unexpected (by the people AND the his party) and radical declaration on television - to welcome them with chocolates and champagne and Levi's jeans... strangers met each other to instantly become brothers and sisters!  They celebrated this long awaited for freedom and openness... partying together in West Berlin, for three days... 
And when they sobered up, the process of reunification was well on its way...


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After the tour, Harvey and I took the train and went to Silver Future... a wonderful bar with a sign inside that said:  "Congratulation, you have just left the hetero-normative zone".




Wow... what a long journey it has been!