While that could mean “I am a jelly doughnut”, this famous quote from a 1963 John F Kennedy speech in Berlin statement was clearly understood by the Berlin crowd as claiming Berlin citizenship and solidarity with the residents of Berlin, while West Berlin was in the middle of a Soviet Blockade. Berlin has a long history as a city and capital, but the events in Berlin in the 20th century have a disproportionate impact on world history.
I’ve been to many parts of Germany but this was the first time to the former East Germany and Berlin, the capital and heart of Germany. As a missionary in West Germany in 1977-79, the separation of East and West Germany was 32 years old, the Berlin Wall was about 18 years old, and the reunification of Germany seemed like a distant dream. The wall came down ten years after I left. Since then I have wanted to see more of Berlin.
Charlottenburg
On this trip, I stayed in the Charlottenburg neighborhood, a part of western Berlin that was built around 1900. These are stately large row houses standing 5-6 stories tall, set on wide streets with trees lining the sidewalks. Just a couple streets away is Kurfurstendamm, sort of the Champs-Élysées of Berlin.
The houses in the neighborhood were built for the wealthy, with large double front doors at the street which open to inner courtyards. It appears much of this Berlin neighborhood survived the Allied bombing in 1945, and all of these houses have been converted into smaller apartments and some ground-level shops.
I stayed in a small single-bed room which was formerly a corner of a ground-floor reception hall of this original house I could tell because a corner of the original decorative ceiling is now the ceiling of the room. This room is actually taller (~13 feet) than it is wide.
In front of my building, and many buildings on the street, are brass plaques embedded in the stones of the sidewalk. These display the names and dates of people who lived in each of the houses who were murdered in the Holocaust. Three people in my building. A sobering start to the stay, and effective, personal reminder of what happened to many of the people who lived on the peaceful street.
Central Berlin (Berlin Mitte)
Berlin is a large sprawling city, with almost no skyscrapers. The tallest building, by far, in the city is the famous TV tower, built by the East Germans in 1969. It is much taller than it needed to be, as sort of status symbol for East Germany to show the world. It also proved to be a convenient location from which to spy on it’s residents, but more on that later.
Berlin is a vibrant city. While I was there the Berlin marathon took places on a Sunday which was a huge event. I had been downtown on Saturday for the walking tour and since the streets had already been set up for the marathon, youth races took place on Saturday using the marathon finish line just a bit past the Brandenburg gate. The course was filled with spectators watching the races and cheering on the runners.
Earlier in the day a huge protest marched by demanding more housing for the city. Our walking tour guide said that protest marches are a popular form of civic discourse. So interesting to see the police clearing the way for freedom of speech protests in streets where the former East German Government used police and spies to suppress any form of dissent.
The streets are broad, there is some graffiti, but not a lot, there are tourists and residents of many ethnic backgrounds. I saw many kinds of restaurants, Asian, European, even Ethiopian. I also saw many kinds of people in the streets and public transport. Due to it’s past, modern Germany has been fairly permissive of immigration.
Public transportation is woven into the city, with trains, buses, subways, streetcars, elevated trains efficiently moving people around. I actually didn’t venture very far into East Berlin. From what I read, the more dangerous areas of the city are in the city center at night and some neighborhoods in the outskirts of east Berlin where there is still a lot of poverty and xenophobia. There are lingering differences between Germans of the East and West
Berlin is full of history, famous building, top rated universities, museums, a world-class zoo, rivers, small and large parks, restaurants, opera, concert halls and so forth. Waaay to much to see and do in the days I was here, especially since I am kind of museum’d out after traveling for over 4 months. Humboldt university is in the heart of the city. 47 Nobel Laureates are associated with the University. Famous people associated with Humboldt include Albert Einstein, Karl Marx, Max Engels, the Brothers Grimm, Max Plank to name a few.
The dark side of history
Susie and I have visited many places throughout Europe that were profoundly affected by the Nazi years, and communism that was imposed on many countries after the war. Visiting Berlin gave me an opportunity to see and learn more about what happened in the capital of that nightmare. So here we go:
In 1933, Babelplatz is a plaza across the street from the main Humboldt University building. The University library faces the plaza, making the plaza an ideal place to burn selected books from taken out of the library. Roughly 25,000 books were burned by the German Student Union. This was done in order to “remove un-German thinking” from the university library. On the plaque is a quote from German author Heinrich Heine: “
“That was but a prelude;
where they burn books,
they will ultimately burn people as well.”
Yes, they burned Heinrich Heine’s book as well. The group of people in this photo surrounds a window in the ground where an artist has installed empty bookcases that would have held about 25,000 books.
There is a non-descript dirt parking lot in front of non-descript East German era apartments in central Berlin. It is mundane by design. This was the location of Hitler’s bunker, the place where he lived for the last months of his life underground and where he committed suicide at the end of the war. All traces of the bunker were removed or buried. This sign is the only indication, and it was erected only in 2006.
In a prominent location in downtown Berlin, within sight of the Federal Government building, is the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The memorial was completed in 2004.
The Cold War Years
Checkpoint Charlie was the border crossing between the US part of West Berlin, and East Berlin during the years of the Berlin Wall (1961-1989). The checkpoint was dismantled after the wall came down, but was reconstructed for tourist photo ops and to help tell the story. Ironically this view from the east towards the west has a McDonalds on one side and a KFC on the other. Economic forces at work as well. Some parts of the wall still remain, but most of it is gone. Wherever the wall has been removed, there is a double row of paving stones to mark the location
The Stasi
East Germany was ruled by the Communist Party. The West was vilified, and dissent was suppressed. To keep citizens in line the Party created the Stasi, a German abbreviation for State Security. At the peak the Stasi had 90,000 employees and offices throughout East Germany. These were good paying jobs, with exclusive access to nice apartments, shopping and recreation facilities. New employees came only through recommendations from existing employees, often their relatives. In addition, about 180,000 informants provided additional eyes and ears on the street. They were also well rewarded for their help, which was perhaps more an economic choice rather than political leaning, since the East German economy was never in good shape.
Another important tool was control of information. No press freedoms, communist indoctrination in schools and clubs, vilification of the West. A familiar and effective formula.
This reign of paranoia led to intense spying and record keeping about it’s own people. Telephone calls, letters, private conversations, even who you were seen with was all potentially collected, sifted and recorded.
Potsdam
Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin met at a country house in Potsdam, on the outskirts of Germany after Germany’s surrender. They met to divide up Germany into the four administrative districts. The house museum was closed the day I visited, but there were other things to do as well.
The old downtown of Potsdam had been nearly all destroyed from bombing during the war. Much of the area remained as open areas following the war, as Potsdam was located in East Germany and they didn’t have the economic resources to rebuild. Rebuilding started after reunification with West Germany, and continues today. Whole streets have been reconstructed with external architectural detail following the buildings that were there previously. The main street is full of shops, but since it is a reconstruction, it feels a bit like Disneyland, except real people live there and real shop owners run the shops.
There is a reconstruction of an old palace that sits on the main square. That building now houses the Museum Barberini, which just opened in 2017. It is filled with impressionist art. There were so many Monets there that my eyes started glazing over. Here’s a selection of paintings by Van Gogh’s, Sisley, Monet and some others. Way too much to take in.
Sanssouci Palace
The Sanssouci palace was built as the summer home of Fredrick the Great in the mid 18th century. Some call this the Versailles of Germany. Though imposingly long and set on a hill overlooking huge gardens, there are only 10 principle rooms. It was meant as a place to get away from formal duties for Frederick, hence the name SansSouci, French for without worries. No inside tours the day I was there, so I enjoyed walking part of the grounds, which are huge.
On my final day of the trip I took a long walk along the Hovel lake, on the outskirts of Berlin. First I stopped to see the nearby graveyard of the Jews and next to it, the resting place of 3600 British commonwealth soldiers. The Jewish cemetery is still active, so I didn’t stay long. I was the lone visitor to the Commonwealth Cemetery that day. About 80% of those interred there were members of the Airforce, shot down on bombing missions over Eastern Germany. Flying bombers was a dangerous and often short-lived profession. The average age of aviator was 22. Some were as young as 19.
The walk was great, and it looked to be the last really warm day of the waning summer.
Next up, a return to the US, some time at Arcadia, and time with family. This has been a long long trip, staring with Morocco over four months ago. It will be good to slow down for awhile!
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