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.