Berlin Divided: Part I

Last Thursday everyone took the now traditional trip to Berlin, the restored capital of reunited Germany. Like Cold War Berlin, this trip blog will be divided in two so it's appropriate to begin with a partial group photo at the Brandenburg Gate. Beginning from the left (again appropriate as the view is from former East Berlin) are Claire, Jaime, Heath Keller (MSU's Director of Marketing and Online Programs), Matt, Nathan, Karen, Megan, Eric and program assistant Lydia Röder, an Ostie born in the former German Democratic Republic (DDR).

The train trip about six hours and we arrived at the Zoologischer Garten station about 15:30 (3:30pm). Thanks to program assistant Niki Ehrmann, bargain hunter and negotiator extraordinaire, out round-trip trickets cost just 54 Euro each instead of the published special rate of 85 Euro. At the station we killed time playing hacky sack while Herr Director Ernest and Lydia bought combination subway-local train-bus passes for our four-day stay.


Passes in hand, we took the U-9 tube to Guntzelstrasse and the Pension/Hostel Finck--friendly, inexpensive and in a nice neighborhood.

The first evening was free and many adventures were had, best told by those who had them (hint, hint). One of the more interesting was that of Nathan, Jeff, and others who went with Heath and visited the Reichstag that evening and, having missed the tourist rush, were able to enter its glassed dome without having to wait for hours (as is usual).

After they came down they bumped into German TV news crews there to cover an announcement of an agreement on a grand coalition by Angela Merkel and Gerhard Schroeder. As we know now, it didn't happen, but I understand Heath and some of the students were seen in the background on mational German news! So cool!

Early next morning we took the U-9 back to Zoologischer Station to meet our tour guide from Original Berlin Walks. It was chilly and a light mist softed jagged "broken tooth" of Gedachtniskirche across from the station. Originally built in the 1890s as the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, it was mostly destroyed during WWII (as was four-fifths of Berlin). After the war, a new church was built incorporating the surviving partially ruined tower.

Our guide, Sarah, an animated New York expatriate with an MA in German studies, told lively (if not always accurate) stories about Berlin and German history. One of the first stops was the Berlin Cathedral built as the court cathedral of the Hohenzollern, Prussia's royal family. Kaiser Wilhelm II raised a storm of protest when he tore down the previous catherdral to build what he intended to be a protestant version of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome complete with a great dome in style of the Italian High Renaissance style. It too was heavily damaged in WWII and rebuilt over 20 years from 1975–93.
In the distance Sarah pointed out the misty distance the needle of the Fernsehturm television tower. Upon completion in 1969, it was the highest tower in the world (203 meters). Intended as proof of the Communist DDR's technological prowess, it had to be completed by a team of Swedish architects when the East Germans were unable to finish it.

We crossed the Spree River to Museumsinsel, designated a UNESCO World Heritage Centre because of the five world-class museums located there - Altes Museum, Neues Museum, Alte Nationalgalerie, recently reopened after reconstruction, Pergamonmuseum (with the famous Zeus Altar from Pergamon) and Bode Museum.

In addition to giving a thumbnail sketch of the museums and their holdings, Sarah told use about the origin of the namer Berlin. "It doesn't have anything to do with bears!" she said emphatically. "That's what Berliners say but it's not so. Berlin is old Slavic for swamp." Berlin is certainly a city of water, cut by multiple branches of the Spree River and dotted with dozens of sees (small lakes) and ponds.

A tourboat passed by (one of many plying the Spree) and I made a joke about Berlin being the Venice of Prussia. It fell flat then and I expect little more from it here--but I'm not gonna let that stop me. ;~)

Most of Berlin's older public buildings bear the scars of war--9mm, 20mm, 50mm, bomb and shrapnel damage incurred during allied bombing and in the fierce fighting of the battle of Berlin, the last major action of the war in Europe, as you can see 0n the columns behind Sarah.

Just opposite museuminsel is the Palast der Republik, the former DDR parliament built on the site of what had been the Kaisers’ palace.

In 1950, the DDR tore down the half destroyed structure, built the Palast der Republik in its place, and renamed the square Marx-Engels-Platz. After reunification, the square's old name Schlossplatz was restored and Schroeder's government decided to reconstruct the imperial palace at a cost of 400 million Euro. Although the money has yet to be found, the Palast der Republic is scheduled for demolition this year. The plan has deeply divided Berliners; half feel the Palast is historically important and should therefore be saved and half do not. What of the DDR's history should be preserved?

This is an ongoing problem of reunification that must be continually negotiated. What if anything is worth keeping from the old Communist regime? Though it was deeply flawed, Osties who lived most of their lives as East Germans have memories and associations they feel are worth preserving. One was the DDR traffic light with its fat green and red men that signal walk and don't walk. Plans of the BRD (Federal German Republic) to switch to Western sytle pedestrian lights, with their stark stick figures, were defeated. The Osties kept their tradition--one of the more whimsical examples of what is known as Ostalgia.

Some Red Remnants are intentional, left by the BDR as statements of civic instruction. One is the mural painted on the exterior wall of Eric Honecker’s Labor Ministry depicting the joy of life in the DDR in classic Socialist Realism style. Originally the building, identified by Sarah as an example of the Nazi regime’s “intimidation architecture,” was Goering's Air Transport Ministry. Today it houses the BRD Finance Ministry. In the courtyard facing the DDR mural is a hugely enlarged photo of protester killed by the regime in its brutal suppression of the anti-communist uprisings of in June 1953 following Stalin’s death that March.

No doubt German reunification is a tangle of contradictions. I asked Lydia if she had been a Young Pioneer. “No, but” she said (whistfully?) “I still have my blue school scarf, just like those children.” Later she told me Sarah’s telling of the Leipzig Monday demonstrations that led to the collapse of the DDR almost made her cry remembering the joy.

It's not an exaggeration to say that the Berlin Wall and Ostalgia have emerged as an engine of growth in the tourist sector of the German economy. The Checkpoint Charlie Museum is one of the most popular in the city and the area around it is essentually a Cold War Theme Park only lacking twirl-and-puke rides to be complete. Venders sell what purports to be authentic DDRuniform parts, hats, pins, insignia, and on and on.

Sarah endorsed one of these entrepreneurs, Herr Frank, selling Berlin Wall fragments packaged with a photo of his own of the fall and a piece of DDR memorabilia, only 5 Euros each. It seemed to me he looked familiar and when I saw a photo of a much younger Frank hammering at the wall, I knew. I had seen that shot used in a world civ text book. I was hooked. I bought four sets. I think most of us bought something. It was a good day for Herr Frank.

The Brandenburg Gate, where Cold Warriors confronted one another for half of the last century has become a place of street performers.

Pariser Platz has also been restored as embassy row where the French and British Embassies are, and where the American soon will be, as soon as the intersection of Unter den Linden and Stresemann Strasse can be shifted to accommodate US security requirements at a cost to US taxpayers of 2 billion dollars—and that’s just to move the roads. The embassy will also have two underground stories and a long tunnel leading to a single secure entrance in a nearby park.

Nearby on Unter den Linden is the Embassy of the former Soviet Union, now the Russian Federation. But somethings change slowly. According to Sarah, the statue of Lenin was only removed from the front entrance in 1994 to avoid sending a wrong signal during President Clinton's 1994 visit. Lenin's not gone; he's merely been moved to the rear, which may say something about the Russian state today. But look closely and you'll see signs of Russian Ostalgia.

Our walking tour also took us to Humbolt University, whose graduates include the Brothers Grimm and Karl Marx, and where Albert Einstein briefly taugh physics before he, and many other professor, Jews and Gentiles alike, left enmass in response to one of the most infamous pre-war acts of the Nazi regime--the book burnings of 10 March 1933.

Sarah pointed to a bronze plaque at the site of the bonfire with a quote from Heinrich Heine. "Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings," she read, translating: Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen. "Heine wrote these words in 1821. It's almost as though he saw into the future."

Nearby was the Holocaust Memorial, a field of 2,700 sarcophagus-like slabs of varying heights, designed by American architect Peter Eisenman laid out on a large piece of land between the Brandenburg Gate and Potsdamer Platz. There is no plaque identifying the site as a memorial to the Holocaust. There is a plaque, however--a long list of rules for conduct; no sunbathing on the slabs; no skateboarding and so on, all in German of course.

Sarah remarked with amusement and some irritation that vistors who don't speak German often leave flowers at the plaque of instructions, thinking it to be a trubute to the Jewish vicitms.

Berlin is unique among the world's capital cities because its division by the Wall with its "kill zones" left large areas of undeveloped land after its fall. Open spaces summoning development have made Berlin a playground for modern architects.

Only a stone's throw from the Holocaust Memorial it the site of Hitler's bunker where he, Eva Braun, and his dead-ender followers committed suicide while the battle for Berlin, defended by boys and old men, raged above them. There is nothing to identify the spot--a parking lot in front of luxury apartments built for the DDR elite. As Orwell famously said, while all were equal, some were more equal than others.

While Sarah’s presentation was generally very good (especially on the Cold War period and after), she fundamentally misrepresented Hitler’s rise to power. I asked her about it in private as we walked, not wanting to undercut her tour presentation. But now I will correct her for the record.

Her assertion that Hitler “seized power” as a result of the economic crisis of hyperinflation is not only wrong, it’s a dangerous (and common) misperception. The peak of hyperinflation (when it took one trillion Deutsch Marks buy one US dollar and Germans burned money to heat their houses because it was cheaper than coal) came in November 1923, the month Hitler staged his unsuccessful Beerhall Putsch in Munich.

Hitler came to power during the Great Depression (a period of global economic deflation and massive unemployment) BY ELECTIONS in which the Nazis won a plurality—taking 37% of the vote. This would have forced him to form a Gross Coalition—a situation not unlike that facing Schroeder and Merkel. Not wanting to govern with partners, Hitler called another election for 5 March.

Just days before the election the Nazis (probably) set the Reichstag ablaze to provoke a crisis and when the election was held they got 44%. This allowed Hitler to avoid a coalition and to convince the aged President Paul von Hindenburg to declare a state of siege under Article 48 of the constitution, which suspended civil liberties. One month later, the Reichstag passed a law allowing Hitler to rule by decree. Together, these became the legal basis for Hitler's dictatorship.

We must never forget--democracy is the only form of government that can commit suicide.