Flakturm Adventure

During the war, Hitler had three sets of Flakturm (anti-aircraft towers) constructed in order to ward off allied air attacks. The idea was to pair up a set of 8 high-velocity anti-aircraft guns with a high-tech radar array, and then create “windows” of high explosive that would knock down any plane that flew into them. Any look at a postwar map of the city reveals how ineffective the monster structures actually were. The Berlin Underworld Association looks after the tower in Humbolthain and offers guided tours as well. The tower was the last of three built, and unlike the others, it was not entirely demolished after the war. The French brought down half the structure, but the remaining battlements overlooked an important S-Bahn route, so they're still standing. Rather than get into the technical specifications of the thing, I'll simply include some images from the war.

This is the Berlin Zoo tower at the end of the battle.

Here are soldiers drilling on the roof of the tower.

What is left of the tower is in bad shape. Standing at the entrance you can see that the facade was heavily shot-up by Soviet ground forces as they tried to work their way from the north into the city. By the time Berlin surrendered, there were thousands of civilians hiding in the tower, without access to fresh water or sufficient sanitation. Inside the tower, staircases are collapsed and there are holes dropping down 30 meters or more. On the tour we wore construction helmets and were carefully shepherded through areas that seemed less stable. The tour was first rate. Our guide combined terrific story-telling with clear explanations of the details of the tower's construction, capabilities, and demolition. I think this would be a great tour for our kids, but the tower is closed to the public during the winter months, as it serves as a bat sanctuary. If the bats are disturbed during the winter months, they won't return to hiberation and then they'll die.

 

Today, the face of the tower doubles as a rock-climbing wall.

A Day in Kreuzberg and Neukoelln

On the 27th, Joon (a visiting friend) and I met a local woman in her borough--Neukoelln. Joon and I had the morning to ourselves and he was still recovering from jetlag, so we walked the neighborhood just north of the Landwehr Canal near Görlitzer Park. Like Friedrichshain to the east acoss the Spree, it's a colorful, energetic neighborhood. We drank coffee across from a mosque and then visited the Kreuzberg City Museum.

I loved the exhibits--they were simple, yet very effective. I regret that I brought no camera with me. Kreuzbergers take pride in their migrant heritage. The first wave of migrants were Huguenots fleeing from religious persecution in France during the 18th century, the immediate postwar period saw an influx of Germans from Pomerania and Silesia, following the construction of the Berlin Wall there were Guest-Workers from Turkey and Vietnam as well. The most recent have been asylum-seekers from the war in Bosnia. The woman at the museum who led me around was muslim and wore a head-scarf.

The temporary exhibit concerned working class resistence to the Nazis during the war. Kreuzberg was a highly industrialized working-class district in the city. In 1848 rebelling workers actually smashed steam engines in a Luddite fury. This was an important year in the history of USM because it inspired Peter Engelmann to leave illiberal Germany for a more democratic America.

Kreuzberg was the center of Werner Siemens' (inventor of the Dynamomachine und Starkstromtechnik) business activities from 1847. The borough is also known for its breweries, textiles production, Bechstein pianos, and it's many publishing companies: Mosse, Scherl, and Ullstein (pubisher of All Quiet on the Western Front). During the 1919 Spartacist uprising, the Newspaper quarter was the site of heavy fighting between revolutionaries and the government.

Turks began to arrive in Kreuzberg as Guest-workers after the construction of the Berlin Wall. The first immigrants were young, professionally-oriented, secular women. Things have changed a great deal since then, and now many women wear some kind of headscarf. There is a general trend among young, born-in-the-west muslims towards greater piety (sometimes even Islamicist extremism) as well as ethnic nationalism. That is something that only really began in the 90s, and seems to reflect a widespread development throughout Western Europe. Ian Buruma analyses the causes and consequences of this second-generation “backlash” against assimiliation in his book Murder in Amsterdam, which focuses on the murder of Theo van Gogh in 2005. Only last week, a group of immigrant muslim youths attacked a Jewish dance troupe in Hannover, throwing stones and shouting epithets.

Neukoelln is no longer a manufacturing neighborhood, it is increasingly attracting young artists and other creative types. On Sunday Christina wanted to take us to "48 Hours of Neukoelln"--a gallery walk. Unfortunately, we sat down for a bite of lunch when we first met here, and there were only a few minutes to walk the neighborhood before all the galleries closed and the tattooed masses all sat down to watch Germany defeat England in the World Cup. The Germans set off fireworks whenever they score a goal, so it could get pretty noisy. Also, after this trip, I don't think I'll ever be able to imagine soccer without the constant, numbing buzzing of the massed vuvuzelas. We did what everyone does on a Sunday... lunch, Kaffee und Kuchen, Biergarten.

There's a Specter Haunting Germany...

National Pride. A Lebanese immigrant in Neukoelln is having difficulty keeping his giant German flag safe. Autonomen (left-wing radicals) are presumably to blame.
Nationalism is very complex for post-war Germany.

Adlon Hotel -- a Berlin Institution

I knew nothing about the Adlon until I began reading Philip Kerr's Berlin Noir series. His hero, Kripo (Kriminalpolizei) detective Bernie Gunther, worked there as a house detective. I had to go see it. Here I am enjoying a cool beverage on Pariser Platz. Unfortunately, only hotel guests can go into the Adlon for a look around. Listen to this interview with Kerr on NPR.

Stolpersteine and Geocaching

Two fun activities today. One is geocaching. People hide small boxes of stuff (worthless stuff, as trophies the contents aren't worth much) in locations all over the world. Then they post clues to the locations of their chaches online. Anybody with a GPS device (most of our cell-phones) can search for the cache. Once you find it, you pull a book out of the box and pencil in the date and time. Leave a note. Take an object or leave one. Then move on to the next cache.

In Friedrichshain and Neukoelln we looked for caches. Despite online photographic clues, we simply couldn't find a cache located at the Frankfurter Tor U-Bahn station. We were more successful in Neukoelln. At the site of the ruins of the first gas station in the city we found a cache. Joon made the point that geo-cachers often choose spots of historical or other interest. He pointed out that both sites we checked would introduce a stranger to some of the cooler neighborhoods in Berlin.

We also kept our eyes out for Stolpersteine (without too much success, I fear--I was always looking up). In 1992, Gunter Denning of Cologne came up with concept combining public art memorialization and collective memory. He has placed approximately 7000 "stumble-stones" throughout Germany. He began his project in the Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg boroughs because they had previously been home to significant Jewish populations.

Stones (metal plaques) are laid in the sidewalk at the location of a person's last place of residence prior to deportation. Each stone includes the victim's name, birth-year, date of deporation and fate. Denning had the following to say about his project:

"The memory of this person will be called concretely into our day-to-day lives through the personal memory of this person, at the home where he lived until deportation. Each individual's stone goes on to symbolize the entirety of the victims, because it is impossible to actually place all of the stones."

These are not only Jewish victims, either. Sinti and Roma, political foes, homosexuals, Jehova's Witnesses are other groups included in the project.

Individuals can support the placement of Stolpersteine. Here's the site.

Madame Secretary

Hillery Clinton is in Krakow. Now.

This is the back of her head.

Here are snipers on the roof.

Enough. It is now time to go eat Kielbasa.

...take them bowling...

What's that I see? Neo-Nazi skinheads in Dresden, Germany? They certainly are! In fact, I saw skins on a number of occasions over the past few days--most recently in the main town square in Krakow.

You might think that picking out skinheads would be difficult, since German men of a certain age tend to shave their heads anyway. In fact, the clothing gives them away. While many skins have moved away from camouflage fatigue pants and combat boots, they still like to combine a certain color palette: red, white, and black. This is especially true now that many of them grow their hair out as a form of camouflage. One "lady"-skin I saw had long, goth-black tresses, that she then combined them with a black sweatshirt that said (in English) "Hate You" on the front. On the back was a small shield, with the gothic letters "HY" in it. Skins like to diplay symbols reminisent of tactical symbols used by the Wehrmacht and SS during the Second World War. If you're not familiar with their symbols, you'll just think they're punks, but the "coding" is not at all subtle if you know what you're looking at.

What I later learned was that there are a number of neo-nazi "brands", all with online shops: Thor Steinar, Consdaple, Masterrace Europe, Pit Bull (Frankfurt) and others, offer "nordic flair" for young, fashion-conscious hate-mongers. These hate-mongers are playing with their dogs on a warm summer evening.

This particular "Rudel" of Skinheads (that's my moniker, not theirs) was in high spirits. As they made their way north across the Elbe River, they were happy and joking and confident. They eagerly made eye contact, and I think they revelled in the fact that they would be recongized as toughs. As the sun went down one could find them playing along the beach. I can't help but wonder what they were talking about down there.

Other than its skins, Dresden was a sleepy town. There was a stream of tourists making its way from the Hauptbahnhof to the Frauenkirche and back, but the city didn't seem to offer much else. I scheduled eight hours there--far too much time. I filled it with eating at four different establishments by the time I boarded the train back to Berlin.

As for the architecture, it's a typically fascinating combination of tradition, destruction, and socialist-realism. Photos from 1945 reveal the extent of the destruction that Anglo-American bombers rained down upon the city. A decade later the ruins were cleared out and replaced with empty lots. The Frauenkirche itself remained a shell until the mid-80s, when the SED restored it. visitors can still distinguish the old from the new facade, as the old stones are stained black. The inside of the church was equally impressive, and drew a large crowd of admirers. Finally, I was in many ways more intrigued by the Socialist Culture Palace--the history of communism is still so immediate in my mind, and I find any tangible connection to it fascinating.