Hanne

Berlin

After hopping off the train a stop late and lugging my 28kg of clothing/ computer/ souvineers through the stinking hot day to my hostel, I was about ready to do a little balck sambo and melt into a pile of ghee. But no. I was strong and soldiered on, training into the city to check out the Jewish museum. The architecture of this place is amazing, I can completely recommend it as a place of interest. And best of all, like most museums in Europe, they have a student ticket price of under 4 Euros. I spent a good two hours there checking out the displays (the kiddie screens with short cartoons explaining various religious objects and rituals were the most captivating and therefore informative, although the big-people displays were also interesting…). Two rooms are worth a special mention. Both three stories high, triangular and with minimum natural lighting, they provided the building with a real soul. I had been told of the second room, where metal faces cover the ground, mouths contorted and eyes wide open. To walk over them and pair the visuals with the harsh clang of each step was quite an experience. It was however the Holocaust Tower, completely empty and with only the smallest slit of a window three stories above, which had the most impact on me. To stand in that space one felt so small and helpless, it was like a giant prison cell that not even a poet could dream themselves out of. Or maybe only a poet could. It is the sort of place that returns to the memory just when you are waking or right when you are on the verge of sleep.

After leaving the museum I went for wander through the city and came across checkpoint Charlie and part of the Berlin Wall. This was a happy coincidence as there were signs all along the wall advertising various sites of historical interest. It was these sites which filled my next few days. Tuesday, for example, was the day I took a tour of Sachsenhausen. Although it was not the first created, this was the model concentration camp for all others. At first I could not decide whether to take a guided tour or use the audio guides available, but having an in-the-flesh guide did pay off as he told us of events that were not necessarily so PC or that the trust preserving the camp would rather forget. One example of this was the display in one of the old buildings. Post WW2 the DDR converted it into a museum glorifying communist resistence to the Nazis, but this exhibition was recently ripped out and replaced by a state-of-the-art ‘corrected’ version that mirrors current trends in how one should view history. Although it was not the case that every prisoner interred at the camp was a communist, oppressed for their beliefs but willing to fight to the last (as the DDR exhibits would have their audience believe), the exhibition would have served as an incredibly interesting glimpse into the psyche of the DDR, precisely by examining what was embellished and/or omitted. Although not historically accurate in the facts it presented, the exhibition would have told so much about the next era in German history. Interested as I am in the DDR, I was gutted that they had not preserved any of the old exhibits as an example of the ideology of communist Germany and how they presented the past.

Our guide also took us through the foundations of the building where many prisoners, thinking they were being brought in for a medical check up, were stood against a wall to be measured and shot in the neck from behind. This was the busiest part of the tour, with about 10 groups being shown through and it was kind of strange, rather like a production line of horrific detail – shock – greuseome anecdote – silence – and move along, please. History on fast-forward with only the most sensational bits left in. This was evened out by the previous part of the tour when we went out the back to the buildings used as a Soviet POW camp post WW2. Returning German POWs were interred there by the Soviet forces as they had been exposed to ‘corrupting Western influences’. This part of history is not written about so much and had barely a mention on the audio guides (hence our group being the only ones in the area) and this was what made it worth having a real life guide.

The next day I went to visit Hohenschöngau, the old Stasi prison, and the guided tour there was the highlight of my trip. Of course the techniques used by Stasi officers (collecting smell samples, using sleep deprivation, planting bugs in both private and public places) are now notorious, but to hear our guide’s story first hand was something else entirely. Our guide was 19 when he was interred in the jail shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall. He told us how the interrogators were matched to the prisoners (each inmate had three) and how he would never forget the face of his third guard. Nasty he could deal with, but this guard seemed so friendly and normal. In the nineties the man was working in Ka De We (Kaufhaus des Westerns, Germany’s largest shopping centre) when a man came in asking what brand of cigars Fidel Castro smoked. That man was the ‘friendly’ guard. Upon being confronted with the incredibly emotive line ‘wir kennen uns’ (literally ‘we know each other’) he denied any connection with his previous profession.

This story sums up well the atmosphere in Berlin where there is still so much left unsaid, just under the surface. Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin wall the same people are still walking the streets, still working in the same lines of work. Security firms are a prime example of this. Many are run by ex-Stasi officers who, well versed as they are in the ways of violence and espionage, have found it very easy to transfer those qualities into careers post unification. Unsurprisingly, the majority of those who worked in the State Security sector are reluctant to identify themselves. As interesting as it would have been to have had ex-guards available to talk about their experiences in the DDR, all tours of Hohenschönhausen were conducted by former inmates simply because no former guards have come forward to volunteer their side. Shame and embarrassment prompts them to keep their faces hidden

While there are still holes in the history and Berlin is still far from cutting itself free of these specters, the city does exude a buzz that is exciting to behold. It is still reinventing itself, leading to a much more vibrant atmosphere than in many older, more established cities. This is particularly visible in the arts scene. A visit to the Modern Art Gallery and the Klaus Staeck retrospective absolutely took my breath away, while the East Side Gallery was also worth a look. The East Side Gallery, which was being renovated, is a visible and constructive reminder of the past. It is covered in murals like a patchwork quilt. Unlike other memorials such as the Topography of Terror exhibition, it celebrates the positive and the artworks, while referring to the past, also point towards the future. After walking along the wall I crossed a bridge to find myself smack bang in the middle of the set of Tom Tykwer’s ‘Run Lola Run’.This was a most uncanny feeling. Although the building sites of the nineties are not nearly as many now, the contrast between old and new remains. An exhibition at Potsdamer Place tracked the development of the surrounding land and one could see clearly the division post WW2 where the area became no man’s land.

Architecture, art and film are all woven into Berlin and the creative energy of the place is tangible. It is a city with such a rich history, where places have taken on so many different meanings over the last 100 years. Wedged between old and new, Berlin is still busy creating its own niche in Europe, a niche that I believe will be well worth a second look in years to come.