Dripping with history: Berlin

Our four days in Berlin are perhaps best summarised by Pia’s comment on the way back from dinner on our final night there. ‘Berlin’, she remarked, ‘is just dripping with history’. Over the course of our stay we managed to touch on many aspects of Berlin and Germany’s past – the period of hereditary rule and the dynastic nation state system (the palace at Charlottenburg) the Weimar Republic (our visit to the German parliament, the Reichstag) the rise of Nazi Germany (the topography of terrors), the coming of the Cold War (Checkpoint Charlie), life in East Germany (the DDR Museum) and of course German reunification, of which the Reichstag with its new dome and the renovated Pariser Platz are perhaps the best examples. But we also saw the way in which the city and indeed the country is trying to launch itself into the future, as far away as possible from the Nazi spectre.   And of course we sampled some wonderful German cuisine, and beer. The reinheitsgebrot (Germany’s purity law which stipulates that every beer must have the key ingredients of water, oats and barley) still weaves its amber magic. The last time Priscilla and I visited here was in 1998 – less than ten years after the Berlin wall fell, and the city at that time represented a massive building site. It still does today, though the remarkably futuristic Potsdamer Platz is now complete. 

 

So many European cities allow the visitor to move almost at ease between the past and the present – but in Berlin there is an extra layer to this journey – found in its determination to apologise for its more recent past and specifically the period of National Socialism (or Nazi) rule from 1933-45. It is little wonder that there is a an ongoing vibrant debate amongst commentators there about the ‘two Germanys’ – the one which wants to look ahead to a prosperous Germany leading the EU (which it is now – a former German chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, opined on the day we flew in to Berlin that he had learnt that ‘the only way for Germany to lead Europe was to do so in a way that resembled hedgehogs making love – ie do it carefully!!)  and the other which cannot help but look at the rubble and ruin the Nazis left across Europe and the mass murder perpetrated by Hitler.

The city, monumentally, can resemble at times one big landscape of atonement. There are literally dozens of areas where there are public displays that explain Germany’s slide from democracy to the excesses of Nazi rule. Museum texts talk about the ‘insane politics’ that led to the beginning of World War Two, or the Nazi’s ‘racial madness’. There is certainly no holding back here. Museum curators in some instances self-consciously point the visitor to the fact that when they come to the period of the war, they are ‘descending into the abyss of German history’. In the Story of Berlin museum, for example, the visitor has to descend about 6 flights of stairs before ending up at that part of the exhibition that deals with the Brown shirts’ (Hitler’s thugs) rape and pillage of German society in the 1930s and the burning of the books.  Revolving doors shaped like Swastikas went nowhere.  Along the Topography of terrors exhibition (which reveals the dungeons and torture chambers of the former SS and Gestapo headquarters) visitors are again forced to walk down into the monument. The exhibition and the archaeological remains of the SS horror chambers scar the earth, like an open wound in Germany’s sense of self.

Our arrival in Berlin meant we came face to face with this history almost at once – as we ascended from the U-Bahn to find our hotel, we came face to face with the Anhalter Bahnhof – once Europe’s largest railway stations, now only a crumbling ruin. All that remains is the façade of the building. Our hotel windows looked out on this reminder of the bombing raids over Berlin during World War Two. 

 

 On our first afternoon we walked up towards the Brandenburg gate, but before getting there visited the relatively new monument to the murdered Jews of Europe. This is the Holocaust memorial for Germany, and has its origins in a citizen’s initiative that was led by prominent journalists and historians at the end of the 1980s. Stretching across a large and undulating area of ground, the monument contains a series of stone pillars (2711, no less), of varying heights, such that when you enter this maze like structure it is easy to become lost or disoriented, to see other visitors (or Pia and Ella in this case) appear and disappear at will. It is a haunting area and a poignant experience. It reminded us a little of the Vietnam monument in Washington in that you actually are forced to walk down into it, but here of course the effect is more confusing – and I guess deliberately so.  

  

 

 

We then walked up to the iconic Brandenburg gate, which sits atop the famous German boulevard, Unter Den Linden. Only the lindens were sadly bare: the weather was freezing during our stay here.  Napoleon and Hitler both marched in triumph through this gate, and Reagan gave a speech here in 1985 in which he called on Gorbachev to ‘tear down this wall’. The architectural restoration in the buildings that flank the gate is remarkable, and the American embassy has been restored to its place of prominence here.  

  

 

Our walk down Unter den Linden then took us towards Checkpoint Charlie, the famous American checkpoint that separated West from East Berlin in the period in which the wall divided the city, the country, and of course the world –  from 1961-1989.  The museum here is a complete shambles, drowning the visitor in walls of text, and clearly in need of a major overhaul. Some of the text was indeed illegible, the relics were poorly presented and spatially it was like being caught in some sort of anchovy tin. Talk about the archetypal tourist trap. Not recommended for children. 

After that we were liberated into the true beauty and splendour of the Gendarmenmarket, which houses the national concert hall and is flanked by two beautiful churches. Here we also visited the famous German chocolatier, Fassbender & Rauch, who had chocolate models of the Reichstag, Brandenburg gate and numerous other Berlin landmarks on display. A true paradise! We stayed around this area for our first meal in Berlin, where Pia and Ella feasted on Nuremberg sausages and mash, while Priscilla enjoyed schnitzel and yours truly gorged himself on pork.  The accompanying beers were wonderful. 

 

 

 

 

 

On our first full day, Tuesday, we started off with a tour of the dome of the Reichstag. Priscilla had organised this around 3 months in advance, and it was well worth it. Here again there is desperation to both reveal the pain of Germany’s past but also to stress, almost with relief, that Hitler ‘never set foot in this building’. The Reichstag is of course the German parliament and whilst the West German government decided to begin its restoration in the 1950s, only after the reunification of Germany in 1990 was the decision taken to move the capital back to Berlin and thus to complete the refurbishment of the building. 

 

 

  

   

 

The dome affords the visitor panoramic views across the city. The guide to the dome says ‘the cupola is open at the top (making it a freezing visit!) and bottom, which makes it appear like a floating spatial shell’. That is spot on we thought. The building was opened in 1894, burnt and badly damaged in February 1933 – (Hitler blamed the communists, but his prints were all over it) and then of course had the Soviet flag flying above it at the end of the Second world war. During the cold war it housed an exhibition on German history and then was reopened as the national parliament in 1999.

  

After this visit we then had a stroll through the Tiergarten, which was blanketed in snow. On our way to the Reichstag tour, we had spotted a German red squirrel, and we found one again during our snow fights in this huge area of parkland. If you look carefully you can spot him in a photo below. We also took in the monument to the Soviet soldiers who are buried here – those who fought for the liberation of Berlin.

 

Pia's new favourite animal - the fox!

 

 

  

 

 

Our next stop that day was the DDR (or, in English, GDR – German Democratic Republic, as East Germany was officially known) Museum: a site dedicated to showing everyday life in East Germany during the period in which the Berlin Wall stood. This was a fantastic museum, great for kids, and it presented the material with a good deal of fairness and objectivity.  Everything was hands on, and started with an opportunity for Pia and Ella to sit in one of the Trabi – East Germany’s answer to the Volkswagen and hence the ubiquitous vehicle on that side of the wall. The museum recreated a typical East German kitchen and living room, complete with news broadcasts, featured a Stasi (the east German secret police) interrogation room and showed the rather more luxurious Volvo limousine used by the political leadership – a point which raised Pia and Ella’s ire about the hypocrisy of the Communists! The museum tries, in essence, to show what ordinary life was like in this period. ‘Was it just about Spree forest pickles, nudist bathing and concrete slab flats? Or full employment and queuing for food?’ It gave us an opportunity, in other words, to see what was happening behind the wall. After this museum we ate a hearty lunch in the museum’s restaurant which serves ‘typical’ East German cuisine under the gaze of an old mural which is adorned with Marx and Engels and which supposedly told the story of Communism’s march to glory.  

 

   

 

This was followed by a walk past Berliner Dom, the magnificent Berlin Cathedral and then a visit to the Hackescher Hoffe, an alluring and inviting series of shopping areas – mini piazzas really -  all connected by passageways. Lots of great shops here. Dinner that night was at a Thai restaurant that was gluten free friendly, and really snazzy. 

 

 

The next day continued the East German theme with a visit to the Stasi museum, a stones throw from Checkpoint Charlie. Incidentally there is almost a case to be made that Berlin overloads the visitor with exhibitions, monuments and other explanatory detail on the history of the Berlin wall. Of course, given the trauma and misery this experience caused, and given that it made the city THE cold war hotspot, this is understandable. In some cases, however, there is clearly a compulsion to cash in on the tourist dollar. Perhaps the most impressive monument to the wall, however, is the metal strip along the ground that records where the wall once passed. 

 

The Stasi museum had the girls a little concerned, but both seemed to extract the essence from the experience, namely that the East German secret police went to incredible lengths to know everything about you. The Stasi saw itself as the ‘shield and sword of the party’ and thus conducted a near 40 year long fight against the so called enemies of the Socialist Unity party of Germany, against those who refused to follow the guidelines of the regime, and against those who did not conform to its idea of a human being. Pia and Ella were particularly taken with the stories of individuals who stood up against the GDR leadership and the Stasi. In most cases, as well as their lives being made a misery, these ‘trouble makers’ were often deported to the West.  The museum is there due to the actions of many courageous men and women, who, after the fall of the wall in 1989, occupied the administrative officers of the Stasi in Berlin and all over the country. This was a reaction to the attempt of the Stasi to destroy the documents it had amassed in 40 years of surveillance and persecution of its own citizens.

From the cold war to the classics: next stop was the Pergamon museum, which has become famous around the world for its imposing reconstructions of archaeological ensembles, including the Pergamon Altar, the Market Gate of Miletus, the Ishtar Gate (with the processional way from Babylon) and the Mshatta Façade.

 An early form of advertising below (for a hairdresser!) carved into the Market Gate of Miletus

 

 

 

 

In the afternoon we visited the Palace at Charlottenburg, which is German’s answer to the Palace at Versailles. Here we saw the opulence and decadence of the Prussian rulers. This was the summer residence of the Hohenzollerns and was vast and truly impressive.  Here we had a taste of rather officious German staff – one of whom rebuked me for taking a leaflet from the wrong place – another demanding a special pass to take photographs (a regulation I had great delight in routinely ignoring). A stroll through the large gardens out the back of the palace, though they were covered in snow, was bracing but nevertheless rewarding. Here are some stunning views of the palace from this walk:

 

  

 

Dinner that night was in a great little (shoe-sized) pizza restaurant called Simela in Savigny Platz, one of Berlin’s most attractive squares. It is the focal point for Berlin’s bohemian community and has become one of the trendiest eating out and entertainment areas. The pizza was great, and gluten-frei (that’s German for gluten free!).

Our final day in Berlin began with a visit to the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial church, which was completely destroyed during a Second World War bombing raid (November 1943) and in later fighting during the fall of Berlin, leaving only the spire – itself hollowed out – standing. Berliners call it the ‘hollow tooth’. It was left as a monument to the horrors of war and also includes a memorial to the damage that the German Luftwaffe inflicted on Coventry.  Alas, every tourist’s nightmare came true here: the whole thing was covered in scaffolding. We did however sit in the chapel next door, which featured an incredible blast of Chartres-blue stained windows, and we also visited the small exhibition within the Memorial church. There were many photos of how the church once dominated this area of Berlin. 

 

 

Luckily we had seen the chocolate version of the church in Fassbender & Rauch on Monday!

After this we strolled down the very chic Kurfurstendamm boulevard and visited the Story of Berlin museum. Another outstanding experience for kids, and it included a visit to a real Cold War nuclear bunker (down another 10 flights of stairs, obviously!) Although never used – not even in a practice run – the girls were given an insight into the uneasy balance between fear and deterrence in those times. This shelter could only hold 3600 people in total, and there were only 26 across West Berlin, meaning that only about 1 per cent of the then population could be protected.  Apparently, it would have been first in, first serve, in the event of a nuclear attack, and the premises could only house people for a  period of 2 weeks (ie until the nuclear fallout had passed). Intriguingly, there were no plans in place for who would be in charge in the event of an attack, but those who had a profession were expected to act in a similar role underground.  The girls were a little spooked by this descent into the cold war gloom, and were relieved to get back into the fresh air. The facility can be hired for weddings and parties/functions, but one would certainly not want to have to bunker down here for any length of time!

 

We then made our way back to Potsdamer Platz and enjoyed a mid-afternoon ice-cream break.

  

 

While the girls went to Legoland I visited an exhibition on the Kennedy’s, which focused on JFK’s ‘Ich Bin ein Berliner’ speech of June 1963, and then onto a special exhibition on the Unter Den Linden about the former German Chancellor Willy Brandt. Here are some photos from the trip to Legoland, which included a miniature version of Berlin made out of Lego.

 

 

The Berlin wall up....

and coming down!

We finished off our final night where we began at the Augustiner am Gendarmenmarkt, enjoying more schnitzel, German sausages, spaetzle and of course, more German beer! A great way to end a great 5 days!