Reichstag

Now (July 17th) to the Reichtstag, which is I suppose more correctly now called the Bundestag (i.e., something like the Palace of the Republic rather than Palace of the Empire). It too has, of course, a storied history. It has housed imperial parliaments under the Kaisers, then the Weimar democracy. When a fire damaged it in 1933, the Nazis blamed the communists, and then made this the excuse for abolishing what remained of German democracy by that point. The building then came full circle at the end of the second world war, when a Russian soldier, in the famous photo, waved a huge Soviet flag from atop it. It was barely on the western side of the wall during the Cold War, and seems to have been essentially abandoned during that period. But the move to make Berlin capital of the reunited Germany gave the building back its life. The dome of the structure, destroyed in the war, has lately been rebuilt by the English architect Norman Foster, who has built a wonderful glass dome which one can walk through, in ramps that spiral gracefully up to the top. The dome is entirely modern, and while its shape is essentially that of the dome that preceded it, its glass and steel are a complete contrast with the rest of the building. No doubt both the transparent materials and the fact that one can walk right through and up the thing, are meant to send positive messages about the newfound transparency of contemporary German democracy. The views from atop it are rather grand, and I loved it, despite its obvious tourist appeal. Thanks to Nicholas' stroller we were able to take the short line up (for people with stollers or wheelchairs): the dome has proved popular with tourists. But tourists aren't always wrong.

Brandenburg Gate

Our next stop (this is still on July 17, for anyone keeping track) was the Brandenburg Gate, the most famous symbol of Berlin. Like most such symbols, I suppose, it cannot quite live up to its symbolic weight when viewed up close. The area is still under reconstruction, which doesn't help matters: neither the front (eastern) nor back (western) sides were free of some sort of construction, meaning that the gate didn't really appear to lead anywhere in either direction. It is based in part on the entrance to the Acropolis in Athens, the Propylaia, which has a rather better location at the edge of the great rock of the Acropolis. The chariot on top, complete with the militaristic eagle atop the cross, seems more Roman in inspiration. I've read that the chariot atop was supposed to represent Peace and that it is to represent Victory: I'm no expert in its history, but it has obviously been endowed with different symbolic significance during different times in German history. During the Cold War it was incorporated into the Berlin Wall, fittingly & ironically enough, as that wall replaced the gate as the great symbol of Berlin during those years. I understand that there was some controversy about restoring the imperialistic scepter in the hands of the driver of the quadriga when the gate was refurbished after the wall came down.

A display on the eastern side gave a photo of the gate just after the end of World War II on one side (in which Arlette, like many others, wished to pose), and a series of photos depicted the gate before and after the Second World War and the Cold War on the other side. While these photos necessarily emphasized the destruction of the area and the Cold War blight (the wall ran nearby here as well), the first in the series tellingly illustrated destruction meted out by Germans to Coventry cathedral, Rotterdam, and Stalingrad. There are currently a series of exhibitions in Berlin marking the 60th anniversary of the end of the war.

July 17: Potsdamer Platz and the Holocaust Memorial

An odd combination of sites, but they are indeed next to one another, and this sort of juxtaposition between (modern, commercial) present and (controversial and tortured) history is commonplace in Berlin.

The Sony Center in Potsdamer Platz.

We began at Potsdamer Platz, the busiest hub of the prewar city, then essentially abandoned in the Cold War, when the wall ran through it. In the last decade it has been the center of much ambitious commercial reconstruction, most famously and infamously the Sony Center. I found the Sony Center rather fun, though essentially impossible to photograph. The center of the thing is a huge atrium, covered by a sort of dome that is half open and half covered with something that looks like sailcloth. This is surrounded by a number of glass towers, modest by skyscaper standards, and each of a somewhat different size and with different exteriors—different enough to avoid monotony. The combination of this dome and the various glass textures of the buildings was put to good use on the morning we were there, when partly cloudy skies produced a great variety of lighting effects. We ate a pricey but quite tasty lunch at a Café Josty, that lays claim to being a continuation of a prewar hotspot.

From there it was on to the Holocaust Memorial (Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe), just opened (and not to be confused with the Jewish Museum, which we have yet to visit). This consists largely of a series of rectangular concrete "stelae". The concrete slabs used for the stelae are arranged in a grid pattern, but are themselves of varying heights and are placed on a terrace that itself undulates. At the exterior the slabs are bench height and were so used by many a tired tourist. There are also some trees set among them from the side bordering Berlin's great park, the Tiergarten. This not only provides a sort of transition to the park, but softens the first impression of the slabs. But as one works one's way toward the interior of the block or so covered by the monument, the slabs get higher and one finds oneself enveloped by them, with glances left and right down the narrow aisles left by the rectangular grid. I presume one is meant to feel somewhat claustrophobic toward the inner reaches of the monument, with the grid providing a kind of order that is not comforting—rather like the obsessive record-keeping one associates with the Nazi regime, like the tattooed numbers on concentration camp inmates. The slabs are rather banal in themselves, and one's first impression at looking at the outer ones is that they are some sort of container for a mundane bit of urban infrastructure, but they come to hem one in by the middle of the place, and gain some power in numbers. One of the streets bordering the site is named for Hannah Arendt, famous for her observation about the banality of evil. But perhaps my impressions are off kilter: others may take the slabs to represent victims rather than victimizers. That is, after all, what stelae normally do.

[After drafting this I surfed to the website for the memorial, and came eventually to a comment made at the dedication by the architect, Peter Eisenman, that supports this impression of mine.
"We were not trying to be provocative in itself but rather attempting something that would simply convey the ordinariness, the mundanedness, that all of those who suffered experienced. And perhaps it is in this simplicity that the work becomes provocative."
Another speaker noted insightfully (though no doubt he had help!) that while the memorial is open on all sides for visitors to enter, the grid of stelae forces one's visit to be individual, a goad to contemplation. ]

It is difficult to say if the memorial works. Nicholas, a bit troublingly, thought it was great fun, and was not the only visitor (especially the younger ones) to feel that way. But it is certainly noteworthy that the German state has seen fit to allot a large chunk of choice territory in sight of the Brandenburg Gate and Reichstag to this purpose. And just what it would mean for a holocaust memorial to work is difficult to say. We did not make time (on this visit) to go into the small underground information center in the midst of the field of slabs: there was something of a line. Its inclusion was controversial, and its small size (and therefore capacity) therefore part of the design: it is almost entirely hidden beneath the Field of Stelae.

Holocaust Memorial from the Tiergarten.

View from our window

In response to popular demand (okay, in response to Carrie's posting) I here post not quite a picture of our apartment, but one of the view outside our window. It looks better in person, especially when it is not overcast (and it has often been quite pleasant after our initial stint of rain).

More on our grand trip to the Brandenburg Gate et al when I get the time.

July 12: Peacock Island

Tuesday saw us again following my overly ambitious lead, this time to a rather laborious trip to Pfaueninsel ("Peacock island"). Anything with that charming a name should, I suppose, be something of a challenge to reach by public transportation, and after taking the U-bahn (including a Scheinenersatzverkehrbus), and S-Bahn, we managed to get on the wrong bus going the wrong direction, resulting in an hour or so addition to our trip. I had cleverly & typically 'planned' the trip by figuring out the first few legs and assuming that the last one would be easy. I assumed both that "Chausee" meant something more specific than "avenue" or the like (via French: but who would suspsect the Germans to use French?), so we took Blah-blahblah Chausee in the wrong direction instead of the right Chausee in the right direction in the wrong direction.

The island itself is rather charming, and does indeed house peacocks, but we probably enjoyed ourselves most at the café just off the island, waiting for the (right) return bus. After assuring Arlette that we had in fact managed to pick the right mode of transportation in the right direction at least 75% of the time, we then managed a slight screw-up on the way back, and were lucky to stay awake (Janet cooking) through dinner.

So we have had some adventures, in mastering, or at least coming to terms with German bureaucracy, German electronics (cell-phone and regular phone are now more or less on line, though we are rather anxious about our ability to get the wireless hookup to function next week), and public-transport. All (or at least the last, the only one I'm fully able to understand as of yet) work quite well: but nothing is easy.

July 10-12: The Zoo et al

Sunday we did better, making it over to Janet's friend Alexander's place without much in the way of detour, and then returning for a leisurely afternoon spent together with still another of her friends, Dirk, whom we convinced to come over to our place. This made us overly ambitious on Monday and Tuesday (July 11 and 12). On Monday we spent the afternoon at the zoo, where Nicholas is at his most assertive. One habit of his is to ask one of us what such and such an animal, or sign, or piece of garbage, is, only to repeat this, and considerable volume, to the rest of us. Sometimes he decides to identify an animal or other item himself, and maintains his position, again at considerable volume, against all objections. So he is still a bit too frantic for the zoo. But while frantic, he is of course also cute, if loudly so. Here I post a picture of Nicholas and Arlette on a lion.

July 9: Pergamum Museum

On Saturday (July 9) the weather improved, and we did too much. We had a date to have dinner at the house of Mark, a friend of Janet's from her time in Berlin. But on the way, so to speak, I convinced all to make a quick trip to see the Pergamonmuseum on Museuminsel in the heart of Berlin. I knew this would be a sneak-preview as it were of the holdings there, and though that the larger scale stuff housed in this museum (rather than the smaller sized classical holdings in the Altes Museum next door) would be more attractive to Nicholas and the other non-classicists. The museum, with the Pergamum altar, its showpiece, was indeed impressive (you may see the goddess Hekate battling Giants at top right). I had looked forward to the altar, having been to Pergamum (a magnificent site near the coast of Turkey, situated on an amazing hill rising far above the surrounding plain), but I had already seen it in many a illustration—and I was grumpy in principle about the fact that it had been stripped from its original context, as have been so many ancient works of art. The altar is a work of the Hellenistic period, if you're keeping track, and depicts a battle between gods and giants meant to memorialize a victory by the king of Pergamum over the Gauls nearby (these Gauls weren't French, then, but were, like the natives of France, considered barbarians by the Greeks & Romans). The Greeks routinely used myths like this to celebrate historical moments they were proud of: this monument, like the artwork of the Athenian acropolis (one major inspiration for it) characterized the victory over the enemy as a victory for civilization and order over wildness monstrous barbarians.

I was less prepared for, and therefore more impressed by, the Ishtar Gate from Babylon (near Baghdad: photo to left). This gate dates to around the time the Persians (from Iran) conquered the Babylonians (as most of the other inhabitants of the Near East). It was the Greek defeat of the Persian advance that provided the impetus for the most famous buildings and art of the Athenian acropolis. The lions and other beasts from this gate are the sort of eastern art that inspired so much Greek art.



But too much in that line. I said we did too much on Saturday. That's because, having paid the price to see all the museums on Museum island, we decided that we had to try another one, and made a quick jaunt through the Altes National Museum, home to many of Berlin's old master paintings. This was in itself quick enough, but what with the obligatory break for coffee (or was it beer?) afterwards, and a bit of S-bahn confusion, we found ourselves an hour late for dinner at Mark's. Part of the problem was a repair to the S-bahn line, resulting in our need to make use of the Scheinenersatzverkehrbus (Rail-substitute-traffic-bus, or something along those lines): Berlin public transportation is wonderful, but they keep it wonderful by doing lots of repair work (and all of Berlin is still, to some extent, under construction).

July 8: The Bauhaus archiv

On July 8 we did the first museum of our stay, the Bauhaus Archiv, Janet's favorite from her years in Berlin. The special exhibition was a display on color and the Bauhaus, whose stated goal was to show that the notion that all Bauhaus work is in white is mistaken. That mistake arose in part from black and white photography, in part from the fact that the colors used by the Bauhaus were not deemed as novel as other traits of their work. The exhibit showed well enough (even to one distracted by a somewhat less than enchanted/enchanting three year old) that the artists of the Bauhaus were quite interested in the different effects to be achieved through color. But one look at the white exterior of the Bauhaus Archiv itself shows at least one example of colorless architecture. As it happens, next door is the Stiftung Preussischer Kuturbesitz (something like the Foundation for the Prussian Cultural Heritage), an example of what buildings looked like before modernism, complete with numerous classicizing touches. In comparison the Bauhaus building looks very clean modern. Among the more amazing items within, in a way, were desk lamps of the sort mass-produced nowadays--the sort of thing that leads one to momentarily wonder how such a common item could have mistakenly made its way into a museum case. In some areas the Bauhaus was so successful that its innovations have become as standard as the classical styles it made seem obsolete. But of course what seems standard to us now was controversial in its day: the Nazis shut down the Bauhaus as an example of degenerate art.

July 7: Arrival & a first adventure

Photo: Arlette in our new digs.

We spent the first few days getting some of the German bureaucracy out of the way, and finding our way around the neighborhood. Janet of course did the hard part of the bureaucracy, standing, or rather sitting in line on Wednesday (July 7) as Arlette, Nicholas, and I scouted out Nicholas' school and then took a quick and rainy trip to Kurfürstendam, where we saw the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche (Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church).

The complex is now a series of contradictions. The church was built late in the 19th century, and inside sports mosaics glorifying Prussian militarism. It was gravely damaged during the Second World War and left in its ruined state as a reminder of what war can do. The mosaics inside show the Kaiser being crowned and what-not, combined with Christian imagery idealizing suffering, make for a rather unsettling show. Added to the church in 1959-61 were a chapel and tower in polygonal concrete, which Arlette at first sight declared ugly, with some good reason. But while the concrete exterior of the additions is rather oppressive, and the concrete tower positively distracting (taking away from the impression made by the shattered spires of the church), the interior of the new chapel was filled with a peaceful blue light through the very many blue stained-glass windows. Both structures, then, not only contrast with each other but are in some sense internally inconsistent, though it is the exterior of the old church and the interior of the new one that seem to better serve a religious function. And there is still one more sort of contradiction, that between the profusion of stalls hawking food and souvenirs and the memorials they butt right up against. The tower houses nothing in the way of a memorial (at least currently), only a sort of craft-shop. So commercialization has taken over from imperialism as the opponent to more spiritual values. The whole complex, it seems to me, would be much more moving were the church simply left in ruins, without the new additions—or the stands. But then I've yet to develop much of a taste for modern architecture. Speaking of commercialization, we stumbled through a floor or so of the Europa center on our way back to stay out of the rain. The rain meant I didn't even bother to bring my camera, so you'll have to surf to find pictures.