Arguing About Another Third Reich Remnant

In July, I read Brian Ladd's Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape (1997). Ladd's book successfully combines historical background with contemporary debates concerning the ongoing evolution of the city and it's public spaces. Unlike Karen Till's The New Berlin: Memory, Politics, Place, Ladd's text is highly readable and never gets bogged down in jargon or discipline-specific language. Till, in contrast, has an approach she refers to as "geo-ethnography", wherein she seeks to better understand the intersections of "personal hauntings" and "social hauntologies"; she informs the reader that her text is "unconventional" because she didn't want to "create an artificial narrative coherence defined by an ethnographic present" and that it reflects her "shifting positionalities". Ugh.
These texts share a reoccurring postwar meme: Germans arguing about the historical and moral significance  of a particular geographical site. These arguments often expand into debates about the very essence of German national identity. In America, we see these kinds of arguments less frequently--and most vociferously when development threatens to encroach on former Civil War battlefields. Should we allow a casino to open its doors in Gettysburg? In Berlin there are multiple layers of ruins, each layer as fascinating and fraught with moral significance as the last. For my money, almost no site is as spectacular as that of the Reichstag, with its Italian Renaissance design, bullet-scarred facade, and ultra-modern dome. The fates of other structures/spaces have evoked greater passions, however, such as the now demolished East German Palace of the Republic (to be replaced by a reconstruction of the old Hohenzollern Royal Palace).

In today's New York Times, Nicholas Kulish describes another confrontation over the fate of a Berlin landmark. Kunsthaus Tacheles--a former department store and magnet for artists (and tourists)--faces development. While the Nazis used it to house prisoners of war,  the fate of this site is less about Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung than it is about the city's future identity. Will Berlin maintain it's "edginess", or will development transform it into a more bourgeois city like Hamburg.

Damage to Majdanek

AP reports that a fire burnt down half of one of the barracks buildings at Majdanek last night. Majdanek was one of six Vernichtungslager or "extermination camps" that the Nazis constructed in 1941. At this point, the cause of the fire is still under investigation, with the likely culprit a recent power outage. The most upsetting result of the fire was the loss of approximately 10,000 pairs of shoes belonging to former victims.
Earlier this year, flooding threatened Auschwitz-Birkenau as well. I suppose it's inevitable that these strucutures ultimately succumb to the elements. I wonder how long museums to Auschwitz and other death camps will stick around? Will they have the longevity of sites like the Dome of the Rock or Trajan's Column? Will future generations still want or need them around?

Above is the memorial to the victims of Majdanek. It also houses the ashes of the dead.

Storch Heinar vs Thor Steinar: Battle of the Brands

There's been a new development on the neo-Nazi fashion front. It appears that the Thor Steinar brand ("the H&M of Hate") has thus far failed in its efforts to intimidate the anti-fascist "Storch Heinar" brand from mocking its dead heroes and satirizing its logo. Mediatex GmbH sued Storch Heinar for "disparaging" their own brand, Thor Steinar. A Nuremberg court suggested that Mediatex drop the suit, but it looks like they plan on pursuing a trial anyway. None of the publicity can possibly hurt Storch Heinar.

Site on Neonazis

Fine, I'm obsessed. Still...

Note the SS-style tactical symbol on the hoodie

This site provides a series of photos that illustrate the changes among young neo-nazis. You'll see the clothing they wear, and that not all of them bother to shave their heads. These two are wearing kaffiyahs--until recently, an accessory associated with the political left. Some right-wing extremists have created cells of "Autonome Nationalisten" or National Anarchists (in the USA). Don't let the name fool you--they're still racist fascists.

New Memorial in Berlin

In commemoration of the Srebrenica massacre (July 11, 1995), Phillip Ruch has constructed a tower of shoes just in front of the Brandenburg Gate. It serves as a warning to the United Nations that it should never again simply stand by as "genocide unfolds". In July, 1995, UN peacekeepers were unable to stop the massacre of 8000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serbian paramilitary forces. Ultimately, he will use the shoes to spell out U.N. in the hills above Srebrenica. Today the shoes are in Berlin, you can see a video after the jump. In a New York Times story, Ratko Mladic's personal diaries from the Balkan Wars are in the hands of prosecuting attorneys in the Hague. At this point, the sources don't provide much information about Srebrenica, but they do serve to provide additional evidence undermining Serb claims that the Bosnian Serbs acted alone.

Endstation--Deutsches Currywurst Museum

Currywurst is more than just a sausage: it's one of life's experiences--in Germany, at least, where you can buy one practically anywhere at any time of day. A currywurst doesn't cost much and doesn't take long to eat. Just long enough, in fact, for a chat with other currywurst connoisseurs. Currywurst may be everywhere, but it is always special. This urban snack has cult status and econmic importance. Its place in German culure is eulogized in songs, films and literature. Our exhibition looks at this culinary institution from many sides (or should we say ends?)...

So begins the main exhibit at the Deutsches Currywurst Museum in Berlin. This was my final museum, and now I'm back in my hotel by the Tegel airport.

If you go to Berlin (or anywhere in Germany, really) you must eat currywurst. Even if you're not sure you like it the first time, it gets into your soul. I don't feel the same about Doener Kebabs or Turkish Pizza or Jaegerwurst. Currywurst, despite the fact that it's kinda disgusting, is uniquely deee-licious.

The museum itself? Inspired. It touches on all aspects of currywurst kultur. Jokes about currywurst, what the inside of a fast-food cart (Imbiss) looks like when it's properly tricked-out, how "green" currywurst is because it's served in a paper dish that breaks down in the environment. In fact, the only element that was missing was the spiritual one, and I imagine that the curators take it for given that any visitor--anyone who would take time out of a busy schedule and slap down $12--probably already has a spritual relationship to currywurst.

They only sell their t-shirts in sizes L, XL, and XXL.

Some folks think that currywurst is just katsup and curry powder on a brat, but that's just wrong. There are a whole set of ingrediants (and I got the recipe if you want it) that go into the sauce. The origins of this gastranomic triumph have long been disputed. Some argue that it was Hamburg's Lena Bruecker who accidentally "discovered" the sauce in 1947 when she tripped and fell while carrying a mixture of black-market acquired ingrediants.

The museum takes the position, however, that it was Herta Heuwer of Berlin who created the sauce in '49. She refused to surrender her recipe.

A moment of silence please for the Gnädige Frau Herta Heuwer. She has given a great gift to humanity.

Oh... here's a fun little documentary about currywurst. Guten Apetit!

My Own Private Plattenbau

There were certainly many other places I could have stayed here in Berlin, but I chose the Ostel quite deliberately. The entire conceit of the place is that guests will have a taste--however superficial and Ostalgic (East-nostalgiac)--of what it was like to live in a genuine DDR-apartment. Perhaps what I found most surprising was the feeling that the rooms weren't really all that terrible. I realize it would be absurd to pay money to stay in an uncomfortable place, like a medieval historian choosing to stay in a damp, drafty castle, but I expected I would notice some very specific weaknesses. I didn't. Wallpaper patterns (in both the rooms I stayed) are intended to provide depth, so that the rooms don't seem quite so small and flat. The bathroom had plenty of hot water. The most notable design choices had to do with furniture and appliances, which were, presumably, from the 70s or 80s.

Still, even though I was living in spaces outfitted to give me a feel for day-to-day East German "style", I knew that I would have to dig around a bit to learn more about Plattenbauten (panel-construction) apartments.

This is what the Ostel looks like from the outside. They've done a nice job of sprucing it up with a colorfully painted facade.

Plattenbauten buildings might best be described as "pre-fab". One of myvsources asserts that the Dutch created the technique, and the most common type of Platte in Berlin was the WBS 70 (Wohnbauserie 70). Following the war, there was an acute housing shortage in Berlin, and the Soviets had essentially looted all the heavy equipment in their sector. Simply put, there was no way that the GDR could rebuild without sufficient raw materials and enough heavy equipment. Even though the SED called for "National Building" in 1952, and although the next 20 years saw some impressive constructions (for propaganda and prestige purposes), the housing shortage remained an acute "political-social" problem, threatening the legitimacy of the regime.

Then, in the 70s, when the construction of public buildings such as the Fernsehturm or the Haus des Lehrers was completed, the regime initiated a large-scale housing program. There are entire areas of the city that consist almost entirely of Plattenbauten. In areas such as Berlin Mitte, near the wall, builders added appropriate mosaics or facades, in an attempt to retain the historical feel of the neighborhood, but they never really lived up to West German standards.

The bathrooms in these apartments have no proper ventilation. Mine had a series of holes in the base of the door to encourage air circulation. For that reason they were called "Wet-cells". Nonetheless, it appears that East Germans prized their apartments when they finally got them. Like their Trabis, they lavished individual attention on their new personal property. Unfortunately, because each apartment was built to identical specifications, and because all the available furniture was built to identical specifications, they usually looked almost identical. But, like so many things in the GDR, the differences were subtle.

Scholars described the GDR as a Nischengesellschaft or "niche-society". It was necessitated by the constant surviellance and pressure to conform. Individuals would express their differences in safe spaces with close friends and family. These "niches" would be their new, damp apartments, their "dachas" (garden-houses or larger vacation cottages), and their hard-to-come-by Trabant automobiles. Although the SED provided them with youth clubs and art and leisure centers, but the common people avoided them. Instead, them met in small groups at their "dachas". Individually, they would read world literature rather than watch state-controlled television.

So, it took me about 10 days and some reading to really appreciate my own private Plattenbau.