Charlottenbruecke, Olympiastadion and the Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin

Today I visited Berlin's western boroughs, Spandau and Charlottenburg. The purpose of the trip to Charlottenburg was clear: Werner March's (and Albert Speer's) Olympic Stadium, constructed between 1934-1936. While there are many other traces of 1930s era architecture in Berlin, only the Olympic Stadium really captures the style of the Nazi dictatorship. The stadium seems low-slung by Miller Stadium standards, but once you go inside you notice immediately that the playing field is set lower into the ground, so there is still plenty of room and there are plenty of seats (approx. 75,000). The playing field actually had to be lowered an additional 2.5 meters in to meet FIFA soccer standards so that Berliners could host the 2006 FIFA World Cup. The stadium was thoroughly renovated by 2004, so it is a vibrant public space, hosting games and rock shows (in fact, I believe that AC/DC played there last weekend).

The secondary purpose of the space was to further legitimate the power and success of Hitler's dictatorship. If not for the Marienfeld directly to the west of the stadium, it might be easier to do. Hitler had the Marienfeld built so that he could hold parades and military demonstrations. Today, the viewing stands are covered over with grass, although the soccer fields are still clearly in use.
Would this be a good site for our students to visit? Yes and no. For one thing, we'll be visiting in March, and depending on the weather it may be a cold, cold tour. Also, there is much visually to see, but far less to read and explore. I think that the Jewish Museum is far more engaging in that respect. So is the Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin.

Although it is impressive in all respects, the DTB is about engineering, and touches far less on political or social history. That's not a bad thing. In fact, I began to better appreciate the Panzermuseum more after I visited here--there's only so much that a museum can communicate unless the narrative is concieved prior to the acquisition of artifacts. The Jewish Museum and the DTB (not to mention the USHMM in Washington DC) are impressive in the way that they provide models for 21st century public learning.  For those museums, a pre-existing narrative could help determine the choice of artifacts and even influence the physical construction of the site. That's a bit more difficult to do when the museum is also a warehouse (like it was in Munster).
The DTB is located in a striking space, much as the Jewish Museum is, and the collection of artifacts are ... well ... breathtaking. From dozens upon dozens of model ships to entire airplanes, the museum overwhelms with stuff. Honestly, I felt like I was in a giant child's cluttered playroom. I would be curious to know what the members of our science department would think of the museum.

A section that struck me as immediately "political" concerned the fire-bombing of Hamburg. The museum contained the remnants of a shot-down British Lancaster bomber (the same type of plane that set Hamburg ablaze in 1942) and immediately behind the plane was a multimedia display of the event itself. Otherwise, the planes spoke for themselves. I was amused when I heard a mother explaining to her child that some planes were military because you could see the "Hakenkreuz" (swastika) on them. The little boy responded: "That's a bad thing, that sign".
Finally, my trip to Spandau and the Charlottenbrueke was linked together by Helmut Altner's memoir, Berlin Dance of Death. At age 17 in April and May, 1945, Altner survived a series of harrowing experieces, including the arial bombing of Spandau, the Soviet assault on the Seelow Heights east of the city, bitter fighting in Spandau and Charlottenburg (around the Olympic Stadium, no less) and a night of terror fighting his way through the subway tunnels all the way to Zoo Station in the center of town. I found his account of the battle so compelling (how he recalled such clear, clean details of the event I can't imagine) that I wanted to go visit the single landmark that I knew still stood. One can see how some of the battle-damage to the bridge has been patched up with additional steel buttressing. Otherwise the bridge is the same.

On the morning of May 2, 1945, a mass of civilians, following behind a military vanguard of armored vehicles and soldiers, tried to break out of the Soviet encirclement and escape to the Americans, who they were sure would treat them better. The Charlottenbruecke was the only remaining bridge to the west. The escapees piled up behind a barracade before racing across the bridge-- in the open-- and scrambling into cover on the western bank.
Helmut Altner: 
"Shots ring out ahead again... Suddenly a truck comes out of a sidestreet and races over the dead and wounded. Its windscreen is splintered, the driver's face distorted and determined. He  races past and we jump out of cover and run across the pavement opposite. All hell has broken loose. Machine-gun salvos hit the walls, shells explode and walls collapse, then we are through and fall exhausted into a quieter place. ...
There are ruins left and right. The flood of people has eased off, pressed tight under cover in a dead angle against the barracade.  ... Everyone runs, racing through the fire. The dance of death has begun and the big reaper is mowing his broad swathes through the rows of women, children and soldiers. 
The street ends and a big road junction appears with house facades and ruins, in which hundreds of people are crowding. ... Occasionally a few people jump up out of the shelter of the steps and run across the bridge. ... Beside me among the soldiers are women with babies in their arms, old women, children and young teenagers of both sexes. I look carefully over the top step. Shots are racing across the bridge, and the horror hits me for the bridge is swimming in blood.
I take another deep breath and jump up into the tacking of the machine-gun bursts, throwing myself into the death mill as the bullets strike all around. The road surface is slippery with blood and there are bodies lying around and hanging over the bridge railings. Vehicles and tanks race across grinding the bones with a crack. I dive forward, not seeing any more, just driven by the thought of getting cover. ...
... I can see figures ahead of me running and stumbling as if through a fog. I am without feeling and run, jumping over the dead and trampling on the wounded. Everyone is for himself and has no time to think of others. Then I reach the end of the bridge and crouch down behind the barracade, grasping for air. Shots wing over my head and hit the bodies. The number of figures on the bridge is increasing. Women with babies in their arms and holding children by the hand, Hitler Youths, girls, civilians, old men and women, fall to the ground, dragging down others with them. ... Death plays his dance, mowing his bloody path. Tanks roll over the bridge, over people, squashing them to a pulp, churning them up with their tracks and a wide street of death and blood, of bits of corpses and torn bodies spans the river murmuring beneath the bridge. 
...There is a sudden explosion on the bridge and an ammunition truck blazes like a red torch in the roadway. ... The bridge superstructure has been destroyed and people are falling into the river from the opposite bank of the Havel and swirling away. All Hell has opened up."

It was strange seeing the bridge and the Deutsche-Industrie-Werke buildings described in Altner's account. 65 years is not really all that much time. Helmut Altner continued to make his way west toward the Elbe River, but Soviet soldiers captured him near Brandenburg. He was released from a Russian prisoner of war camp in 1946 and published his story in 1948. The first edition sold out quickly. No second edition was published. Altner, for his part, used his money to buy a motorcycle and ride to Paris. There he built a new life.

Topography of Terror and "Nazi" Berlin

The Topography of Terror is a complex site, mostly because nobody would want the space to become a site of pilgrimage for neo-Nazis. It seems that the Germans have successfully turned this location into a center for education and public awareness. The museum is located at the former site of the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse offices of the Gestapo, SS, and RSHA (Reichs Security Main Office). It was here that the terror-apparatus of Hitler's Germany found it's headquarters. Much of the exhibit consists of exposed basement walls of the aforementioned structures. You can walk the entire length of the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse basement. Within the past year, a education and document center has opened. The design is modern and the collection is sober. At the same time, it's also highly accessible. It seems to me that the Germans have turned this site against its former owners. The remains of the buildings that once facilitated their criminal activities now serve as a magnet for people who want to understand how they were possible and how they might be avoided in the future.

The Document Center

Inside the Document Center

Jewish Berlin

Yesterday and today I visited sites associated with the history of European Jewry. The Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe is powerful and really brilliant. Fortunately for anybody visiting Berlin, it's directly south of the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate, so there's time for everyone to visit it. Just climb out of a train at the Hauptbahnhof and walk 15-20 minutes. Peter Eisenmann created a monument that would "develop a new idea of remembering" because his field of different sized stelae provide no symbolic guidance. One walks into a monument with "no goal, no end, and no [clearly apparent] way in or out". For an event as inconceivable as the Shoah, words seem insufficient.
Once you find the entrance to the underground information center however, you really understand how incredible this entire construction is. It not only provides historical context. It provides rooms that invite the visitor into the experiences of victims and seeks to humanize a historical event that most of us associate with huge, impersonal numbers. While the fact that it seeks to evoke an emotional response might bother some museum purists, this is not a museum. The "exhibit" halls -- if one can call them that -- are places of reflection and contemplation.
The Juedisches Museum Berlin, however, makes every effort to actively engage the visitor. I was overwhelmed by the richness of the permanent exhibition and had to break off my visit due to "museum fatigue". Even then, as I walked swiftly through the second half of the exhibit, I stopped two or three times because some artifact caught my eye/ear. For example, there was a clip from a brief television interview with Hanna Arendt. I sat down in front of the monitor, listened, and gaped.

This is a museum that deserves an entire day, or perhaps a couple of visits over time. The same is not true for Karlshorst. As much as there is to learn there, it doesn't have the same compelling power of narrative (and it should!). The architecture of the space lends much to the experience. One senses that this place is special, indeed.
This is another museum that seeks to inspire wonder and empathy. Does that limit its authority as an educational site? Does it fail the "objectivity" test? If the other extreme is the Panzer Museum at Munster, I'll take the Jewish Museum any time.

A Brief Note on the Denkmal fuer die im Nationalsozialismus verfolgten Homosexuellen

I did some more reading on the Homosexual Monument, and it's similarity to Holocaust Memorial across the street is no coincidence. Elmgreen and Dragset wanted it to reflect the universal human sameness of all victims of the Nazis while still acknowledging individual uniqueness. At the same time, they also wanted a dynamic monument that would have a life of its own. When one looks in the window, he sees a homosexual pair kissing "endlessly". The video changes out occasionally, and the couple could be either male or female.
It's not a surprise that the memorial has been vandalized, either. However, when I visited it, there were still wreaths at its base, left there during Christopher Street Days--a huge gay pride party in Berlin that took place while I was still in the Rhineland.

Art at the Neue Nationalgalarie

Yesterday's highpoint was a trip to the New National Gallery. The main exhibit is called "Modern Times". In one hall, Walter Ruttmann's film Berlin--Die Sinfonie einer Grossstadt played. I had never heard of the film before, and was mesmerized by it. The clip below is not the one I saw, but it captures the film nonetheless. For 65 minutes one is sucked into the world of Berlin in 1927.



Equally exciting was the presence of many pieces from the Expressionist group: Blaue Reiter, including works by Wassiliy Kandinsky (Peetie is in the process of writing about Gabriela Muenter, Kandinsky's one-time lover). Even more exciting for me was a hall dedicated to the work of Ludwig Meidner, Otto Dix and George Grosz. At the Neue Nationalgalarie, they possess a pair of his most famous works.
The first is "The Card-Players". In his bricolage, Dix actually integrates genuine playing cards, fabric and tin foil. Even though I've used this image in my Western Civilization course, I had no idea.

Another Dix painting was "Flanders". The level of detail in the painting is startling. I couldn't help but compare the apocalyptic tone of the piece to those of Heironymous Bosch. Was that Dix's intention?

Karlsdorf and Munster

I took a ride out to Karlshorst on the afternoon of the 22nd. It's one of many sites dedicated to the war. Karlshorst is a quiet little borough in the former East, and other than a small market selling fresh fruit and fast food, there's not much else to see. After a long, warm walk, I arrived at the German-Russian Museum Berlin-Karlshorst. It's an unassuming building that once administered a school for German combat engineers. Between 1967 and 1994, however, it was known as the Museum of the Unconditional Surrender of Fascist Germany in the Great Patriotic War-- the Kapitulationsmuseum, for short.
In 1945, on the night of 8-9 May, the remaining representatives of the German military met with Allied field officers to sign the surrender documents ending the war in Europe. This building is as significant to the history of the World War as Appomattox Courthouse is to the American Civil War. For a long time after that, it served as the headquarters of the Soviet Military Administration in Germany.
SOVIET TRIUMPHALISM: 1967-1988
For almost three decades, the museum told a heroic, triumphalist story of the war. This was during the first years of Brezhnev's Secretariat, and the Communists increasingly relied on nationalism and patriotism to maintain unity in the Soviet Union. It was also around this time that the 5-cycle film series Liberation appeared in theaters throughout the Eastern Bloc. (I've posted  a clip of the film as well--it's about 10 minutes long--look for the characterization of the Russian soldiers, a tougher, more fearless, more humane bunch of warriors you'll never see... )



However, since 1989 and especially since 1990, it was clear that the Museum would soon belong to Germany. Incredibly, the Germans and Russians decided early in the process to create a totally bi-national museum. It's a truly collective historical event, and deserved a collective response. All the text is in (only) German and Russian, and I was fortunate that I know enough of the latter language to pick out familiar words in context.
MISSION ESTABLISHED IN THE LENIN SAAL
The old museum's mission was "to encourage a feeling of soviet patriotism and proletarian internationalism" as well as "propagating the soviet way of life, the freedom-loving policies of the Communist Party of the USSR and the soviet government, international education, strengthening of friendship and collective work with the producers of the GDR, and military brotherhood with the forces of the National People's Army of the GDR". In short, the museum served a deeply political purpose. The displays were intended to evoke emotional responses, especially for Russian soldiers who were the intended visitors. "The soviet victory represents the achievements of a fighting morality, that of the spirit of Lenin, which soviet soldiers allowed to shape all their actions." This attitude was represented visually as well. Originally, the first hallway was the "Lenin-Hall" and provided a history of Lenin and socialism, rather than addressing the war itself.
MUSEUM AGAINST WAR
The new museum is, instead, clearly intended as a "museum against war". With an eye firmly set on depicting historical truth as closely as possible, Russian and German curators determined that "neither war nor victory should be heroicized; rather this war would have to be shown in all of its horror". The museum would no longer be a "Ruhmeshalle" or Hall of Honor to the Red Army.
Just how complicated such a process could have been is easy to imagine. Most likely, a long tradition of explicitly articulated pacifist ideals, combined with years of German Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung (grappling with the past) allowed both parties to embrace the idea. When one considers how controversial the Enola Gay exhibit at the Smithsonian was in the mid-90s, or how terrifically controversial Tom Hank's comments about his miniseries, The Pacific have been, the speed with which Germans and Russians arrived at a common vision is impressive.
HIGHLIGHTS
A multimedia set-up. This American college student isn't getting much from it, as none of the kids on the tour spoke German, but whatever. I listened to Himmler's Posener speech from '43 where he acknowledges the extermination of the Jews. I didn't realize that it actually existed in recorded form!

Visually, there was also much to offer. There were some truly unique artifacts, like the straw boots that German soldiers had to wear to survive the winter in Stalingrad, or the chess pieces carved by German prisoners of war. You'll note that the white pieces are farmers (pawns), Red Army soldiers (bishops), and a worker (king) while the black pieces depict bourgeoisie (pawns), factory owners (bishops) and the Czar (king).Finally, there were plenty of artifacts pointing to the horror of war. Childrens' shoes from Treblinka, for example, or these notes from a doctor in the Charite Hospital in Berlin confronted with multiple cases of rape perpetrated by soviet troops.

TANKS, TANKS, AND ONLY TANKS

All of this was in stark contrast to the Tank Museum at Munster. Certainly, the museum curators sought to address some of the larger implications of war. However, there were only a handful of textual commentaries on the walls, with titles such as "Wartime Fates (of individual soldiers/their loved ones) or "Flight and Displacement (Vertreibung)". Also, the war in Russia was correctly identified as a Vernichtungskreig (war of annihilation)--important background to placing the war in context. At the end of the tour, I asked a woman in the gift shop if they had any literature about the museum (Karlshorst had a great text that included a discussion of the creation and purpose of the museum). It was telling that they had a book that did little more than list the vehicles and pair them with a set of mechanical statistics. Ultimately, the museum is a collection of artifacts rather than an attempt to further come to terms with history, and in that sense it stands out as unique during this trip.

Here's a special "see-through" tank used in the East German army to train troops. I must admit, it was pretty cool.

Tiergarten Sites: Monumental, Monolithic, and Modern

On Tuesday morning, I simply jumped into a walking tour. I crossed the Spree at the Moltke Bridge (where the Soviets did the same) and immediately stumbled upon a remnant of the war. The Nazis tried to blow up the bridge, and the entire structure was shot to pieces, but the Soviets got across regardless.

Today, it's possible to see where the bridge was patched up. Moreover, there's an un-reconstructed griffin along the shore on the north bank of the river. A memorial to the violence of the fighting. 

This set the stage for the next few hours. I worked my way south into the Tiergarten, which is largely fenced off right now. I snuck into the first of three Soviet memorial sites that I would visit in the course of the day--these are all characterized by a similar kind of bombast and monumental neo-classicism. 

It was at Soviet Memorial in the Tiergarten that I got a tip from a German to visit the Global Stones Project currently underway nearby. He marked in on a map for me, which was good since the Tiergarten is big. I found Wolfgang polishing one of the stones and even took a brief video of him at work, but then I deleted it by mistake later. 

I then ran across the Homosexuellen Denkmal (memorial to gay and lesbian victims of the Nazis) as I walked back towards the Brandenburg Gate. Like most other holocaust memorials, its basic shape is... well... monolith-esque. This one is interesting because it integrates video as well. Visitors look through the window to see a pair of men kissing. When I was there I saw a steady stream of visitors stopping and looking.

But the lesson of the morning was--Surprise!--that knowing a local language makes all the difference. I struck up conversations with locals who were excited at the prospect of helping me learn more about Berlin's memorials and public art. I tell my students that they need to commit themselves to a year abroad once they attend college. This is the reason why. My German, while certainly rusty, has opened many, many doors for me. 

After three days in the Rhineland, I have finally made it to Berlin. In December, when I wrote my grant proposal, I imagined I would limit my trip to Berlin and Krakow alone. By March, however, I decided that it would make far more sense to invest more of my own money into this trip and stay longer. I attended the Friedrich-Wilhelms University in Bonn during the '91-'92 academic year, and in the summer of '93 I worked at a local movie theater and recieved training as a projectionist. I have fond recollections of working late-night film festivals (Star Trek I - V, Clint Eastwood spaghetti Westerns) and watching Bill Murray in Groundhog Day and Demi Moore's Indecent Proposal with German voiceovers.

I took advantage of the extra time to recover from my jet-lag and catch up with old friends. For the most part, I spent my time eating, watching the World Cup (the German loss to Serbia on Friday left everyone feeling pretty sober) and catching up. University friends I remember for their late-night shenanigans are now busy parents, with children ranging in age from 11 months to 13 years. However, I also found time (especially between the hours of 3:00 - 5:00 am) to read from a pair of books I brought with me. More on those later.

Finally, I visited a newer Museum in Bonn, the Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. (House of German History of the Federal Republic of Germany). We arrived so late in the day that I had to race through 60 years of post-war history in a mere two hours, so I'll have to visit again the next time I'm in Bonn.

Museums and monuments are exciting to me not only because they reflect an exciting combination of aesthetic as well as scholarly interests. They are public expressions of national identity or political will. I find the results of the social process of collective identity formation fascinating. Just as individuals continually process their own personal experiences in order to define themselves, so do nations and institutions rely on symbol and narrative in to best articulate a shared set of values. Only then can politicians and other civic leaders frame policy debates that promise to define the future. In a totalitarian society, leadership defines a collective identity and compels the individual to assume a proper attitude. In contrast, an open society is always in the process of arriving at a more or less consensual collective “story” of the past. Consider what happened recently when Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell attempted to curry favor with his political base by casting an alternate political narrative about the Civil War. 

Naturally, that's why the study of history and literature go hand-in-hand. No people can understand who they are apart from the collected documents that serve as a national or institutional "diary". The Scarlet Letter illustrates the relationship between religious intolerance and individual growth, while Mark Twain provokes individuals and (in Huck Finn) insists that we embrace the moral imperative to reflect on the impact of our actions within an open society.

The Haus der Geschichte reminded me of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum., despite the very different subject matter and the former's more optimistic trajectory of its narrative arc. At the Holocaust Museum in DC, visitors are asked to identify with the victims of Nazi policies (each receives a "passport" including the life story of someone who experienced the Holocaust). Visitors then ride to the top of the building in an elevator. As each visitor passes through the museum, she “reads” a collection of texts and artifacts that describe an increasingly dark journey, beginning with a story of prejudice and political seduction and ending with the near total destruction of a people. It combines powerfully researched historical analysis with artifacts and documents that bring the reality of a distant time to life. 

In Bonn, the Haus der Geschichte invites visitors to experience the rise of a an increasingly democratic and humanist Germany from the rubble of Hitler's Reich. East German history is fully integrated into the story, as are stories as varied as the rise of consumer culture and the student unrest of the late 60s. My favorite artifact was auditory! A piece of music that played over an animated advertisement from the late 50s. I can’t recall the lyrics, but they were accompanied by the music to Elvis' "Teddy Bear". I'll see if I can't find it on You-Tube once I have a proper internet connection.

I visited the museum with a friend and her 6-year old daughter. Maja was excited by many of the displays and anything delivered by video. She took me by the hand to show me a "Rosinen-Bomber" (raisin-bomber) , one of the German pet-names for the C-47 transport planes that flew round-the-clock missions into West Berlin during the '48 crisis. This particular model was, in fact, lovingly crafted out of actual raisins. 

I still have to finish Brecht's Fear and Suffering in the Third Reich prior to turning in tonight. I'll be watching the play tomorrow night. 

New Archival Photos of Berlin in Ruins

Spiegel Online reports on the recent "discovery" of a stash of photos long neglected in an east Berlin publishing house. The book is Berlin nach dem Krieg.

Brecht's Schiffbauerdamm Theater

Yesterday I ordered tickets to two shows at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm--the Berliner Ensemble that Bertolt Brecht made famous--The Berliner Ensemble is to Brecht enthusiasts (can there be such a thing?) what the Globe is to Shakespeare fanatics. I'm going to watch both Furcht und Elend des Dritten Reiches (Fear and Misery of the Third Reich) and Der Kaukasische Kreidekreis (The Caucasian Chalk-Circle).
The Skylight Opera put on a terrific production of Threepenny Opera back in 1998. Complete with a strung-out "goth" narrator. Other shows at the Berliner Esemble this season: Mother Courage and Her Children along with Wedekind's Spring Awakening--a show re-imagined and staged on Broadway in recent years.