...in Berlin, that is. Although there is a week left in the seminar, our Berlin component has come to an end. As you can see from the series of photos from our final seminar session at the House of Democracy and Human Rights, it's probably a good thing we are moving on. We've gotten a little loopy. In a good way. (By the way, we were conducting "silent" dialogues with various figures, real and imagined, from East-Central Europe; the time September 1989. I was lucky enough to be the GDR dissident mom!) I think all of us have grown very attached [View Full Entry]

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I. 2x2 Does Not Equal 5 If I ever begin to complain about how difficult my life is, remind me of Petra. Petra Morawe entered the room with an unassuming, gentle smile. With her shock of grey curls, her wire rimmed glasses, and her neat suit dress, she had the appearance of a an old-time librarian or teacher. But this woman's appearance belied her rather dramatic story, the one she had come to tell our seminar group. Petra was something of an accidental dissident in the GDR, a single mother of three who had only known life as it was in [View Full Entry]

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When he turns a jaunty green and begins his purposeful walk, he is saying: safe to cross! When he turns red and throws out his arms, he means: stay put! It's sort of difficult not to fall for the adorable Ampelmann, the pedestrian crossing signal character that was promulgated in East Germany. He is so popular, in fact, that he is starting to spread into former West Berlin (where a more generic green/red man predominated as the crossing signal). It used to be you could tell which part of Berlin you were in by the Ampelman's presence or absence, but that's [View Full Entry]

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Would you look? Would I look? Every time I think about the opening of the Stasi files in 1992, I ask myself the question: If I had been a citizen of the GDR, would I have taken the opportunity to see if there was a file on me? And, if so, would I read it? About a week ago, our group had a chance to talk with Wolfgang Templin, one of the major dissidents in East Germany, someone who was of great interest - of course! - to the Stasi. He actually began his talk to us by reading out passages [View Full Entry]

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The Hohenzollerns sure had it good. Till they didn't. All those Friedrichs, Wilhelms, and of course Friedrich Wilhelms, along with their wives and children, left their mark on Berlin and environs, most notably Potsdam. This weekend sort of became, for me, a theme tour of the Hohenzollerns' palaces and pleasure gardens. But intertwined with all that sumptuous Prussian-ness it was hard not to notice the impact of more recent history on these remnants of Germany's imperial past. I began the Hohenzollern Tour on Saturday in the west Berlin neighborhood of Charlottenburg, so named for Schl [View Full Entry]

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"Ja Ja Ja Ja Ja, Nee Nee Nee Nee Nee..." "Ja Ja Ja Ja Ja, Nee Nee Nee Nee Nee..." "Ja Ja Ja Ja Ja, Nee Nee Nee Nee Nee..." What the heck was that crazy, inane repetition of two syllables? Where was it coming from? I looked around the big, white museum space filled with objects I had a hard time classifying as art (two fans, titled "Two Fans"?). It wasn't coming from one of the video exhibits, because those had headsets for private listening pleasure. It wasn't coming from any of the "sculptures" (large pieces foam rubber?). Finally, printed [View Full Entry]

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Often they are hidden by temporary walls covered in historical photographs and educational text. Sometimes they are more visible, shielded only by a makeshift fence. And occasionally they are exposed for all the world to see. I am referring to Berlin's empty lots. I didn't really notice them when I first arrived. Most cities have some open, undeveloped spots, often where a building or two have been torn down. And I imagine that Berlin had many more of them in the period immediately following re-unification. One just has to look at all the construction that went on in the nineties, fil [View Full Entry]

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Yes, I am here studying the peaceful revolutions of 1989. Yes, I also am exploring other aspects of Berlin's turbulent twentieth-century history (a couple World Wars, a pretty hot Cold War, etc.). But all work and no play makes James a dull boy! I am trying to enjoy the simple pleasures of being in Berlin - and trying not to panic that I won't see and do everything I would like to experience before I have to leave in two weeks! So, as a counterbalance to the more somber entry on the Jewish Museum, here are some unabashedly random photos and [View Full Entry]

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The slanted floors, the sharply angled walls and floors, the generally disconcerting space - it was a deja vu moment. I had experienced this at the Jewish Museum in Copenhagen, and now I was confronting it on a much grander scale at the Berlin version. When I looked up the name of the architect, I was not surprised to find that the same guy had designed both structures: Daniel Libeskind. But with the Jewish Museum in Berlin he had taken his fractured vision to a whole new level. Rather than creating a space within an already existing structure, as he had [View Full Entry]

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I wondered why we were meeting at this particular S-Bahn stop, on the far edge of Prenzlauer Berg, in what - at first glance - seemed a fairly non-descript place. The name of the stop, Bornholmer Strasse, rang no bell. But then Bernhard opened our eyes. We met Bernhard, a German historian of about my age, at the beginning of the week as he guided us through the DDR* Museum, explaining life in East Germany and East Berlin both as a historian but also as someone who experienced it first hand. He was fourteen when the momentous events of 1989 upended [View Full Entry]

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