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Published: August 22nd 2006
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Idyllic Tiergarten
It looks idyllic here, but moments before I learned that this is where Karl Liebknecht, the communist leader, was murdered and thrown in the river! Always more uplifting history to learn. I've done so many things in the last week, it is difficult to really write a blog entry that gives a good update on it all. In addition to finishing my last week of classes, I've basically been checking off of my list all of the sights I had yet to see or really explore in Berlin. I've been to the Hamburger Bahnhoff museum for contemporary art, the Berlin Wall Memorial, the Topography of Terrors, the Information Center at the Holocaust Memorial (the site with the towering grey cement blocks that I described once before some time ago), took a walk with my class through the Tiergarten, Berlin's central park, and gone out to a gallery opening and several times just for beers or whatever with friends here. So, basically I've been busy and trying to squeeze in everything I hadn't gotten to before now.
The Topography of Terrors exhibit is at the site of the former SS headquarters on Prince Albrecht Strasse, which would later be bisected by the Berlin wall and basically become a sort of no man's land, a dead end. During the 1970s, as people became more interested in exposing and remembering the history of national
Building in Friedrichshain
I love this building. I will miss it. socialism and the holocaust, the site was 'rediscovered' and first turned into a center documenting the terror of the SS. I've been wanting to go for a while, having heard that the exhibition was really interesting. And while it was really interesting, it was also a little underwhelming in certain ways. Basically, there is nothing there, except a giant cut in the ground exposing a few feet of the cellar walls, where the SS prison cells were. Then they have a series of boards with information and pictures about the SS, it's operations, growth, personnel, role in the holocaust and nazi persecution
and violence in general, etc. Actually, it was really informative. I was, however, exhausted after the 1 and a half I spent there, in part due to the intense sunshine and in part due to the intensity of the material. What I didn't really feel was any particular sense of the history in the ground on which I stood. Perhaps that is too much to ask, that somehow the history will
make itself known in some kind of a feeling seeping into me from the very earth, but somehow you expect to have more of that kind of
World Cup Critics
I'm glad to say this banner was still up when I finally got around to taking a picture of it this week. I take it as a critique of the surge of german national pride during the World Cup games, but it is open to other interpretations, I suppose. It's a bit unclear, but still interesting as an unusual bit of radical protest during this time in which German flags were being flown even in my leftist borough of Friedrichshain. feeling when you go to this kind of place and I really didn't this time. I think there is definitely something to the idea that too much remembrance of terrible violent history can actually numb one to its reality. I have been to so many sites documenting the horrors of national socialism during my time here, I feel I'm beginning to become inured to the shock these horrors ought to inflict on one encountering them. The thing it does make me feel sometimes is anger at the German people that I have to check, knowing that blaming the holocaust on something inherent in the German national character is really just a way of dissociating myself from the complexities of the past. While I don't want to dissociate the holocaust or national socialism from its very specific history in germany, I also have to remind myself continually to recognize that it was something that happened in a broader context that is no less important to understanding its causes and consequences. Did you know that Jews living as far away as North Africa and Italy were deported to concentration camps in German occupied territories? I suppose I must have learned this at some point, but I hadn't really grasped the incredible geographic breadth with which the Nazis pursued their genocidal agenda, until I was in the Holocaust Memorial information center and saw this giant map showing all of the places from which people were deported to concentration camps. In addition to Jews, of course, there were politcal dissidents, Sinti and Roma, and citizens of occupied territories in Poland and Russia. All this is to say, a lot of people from a lot of different places collaborated with national socialists, whether or not they only did so to save their own skin. Were the Germans themselves merely terrorized and tricked, or were they mostly willing terrorists? The kind of question historians argue over that has me continually wondering how best to grapple with this history.
On a much lighter note, on Sunday night Natalie and I went to Kreuzberg for a drink, and ran into a festival on the bridge between Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain with live bands, and fireworks at midnight. It was really wonderful, there was this french band there wearing
'American western' clothing and playing these wonderful poppy songs in French. At midnight there were fireworks and I was eating a bratwurst from one of the stands. What could really be better? I briefly fell in love with Berlin all over again. See, this place makes you manic! So great and so depressing at turns.
Today is my last day in Germany, tomorrow morning I will head to the airport, and tomorrow night I will sleep again in Seattle. I am really ready, I can't say I really have much sadness or regret to go. I'll miss wonderful chocolate croissants and speaking German and a few of my favorite bars and cafes and a few of the people I've met here. But I'm ready to leave, in part because I'm tired of certain things here, the difficulties of communicating in German no less than the constant threat of stepping in dog poop and the horrible smell of the 'Hund Salon' (yes, that is a dog salon) that occupies the first floor of my apartment building when it rains and the necessity of sitting in a german lecture for more than 4 hours each day. But more so I am ready to get back to my life, get back to my work at home, get back to the easyness of being in one's own place, speaking in one's own language, having one's friends and family easily at hand. So, tschüss Deutschland, it's been fun and I'll see you again! And to all of you at home reading this, thanks so much for reading and for your comments and communications. It has been great to know that I can so easily send out a message and connect with so many people at home all at once and to know that my trials and tribulations are being shared with you all when you read this! Looking forward to being able to connect with everyone individually when I get home. XO, Syd
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