A Lake named Wannsee

Europe » Germany » Brandenburg
October 17th 2007

Published: February 13th 2008

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H and M

Wannsee

The small city of Wannsee on the outer edge of Berlin on the lake its named after.

A Fall Outing to Wannsee and a Discovery into the Past

It's the 17th of October, 2007, a beautiful fall day and Hannah has autumn holidays at her school: perfect conditions for a visit of the small city of Wannsee. Although a good 45 minutes with the S-Bahn (the outside metro trains which tend to connect the Berliner outskirts with the city), Wannsee still belongs to one of Berlin's district, that of Steglitz-Zehlendorf in the Southwest outskirts of Berlin.

With our travel guide and a packed lunch, we got off a stop early at Nikolaisee to visit the "Strandbad Wannsee", the outdoor swimming facility at the Wannsee lake. It's like a outdoor swimming pool just instead of a pool you have a lake and a sand beach. It looked fabulous through the fence, as the facility was unfortunately closed down for the winter, with only the cleaning and fixeruper crew on the site. Following a beautiful forest path along the lake and then along a road with huge mansions and villas we finally end up in Wannsee. We stoped for lunch at the harbour contemplating what it would be like taking one of the ferries across the lake

To Cold to Swim

The outdoor beach swimmingpool on the other side of the Wannsee.

or even around the lake on a cruise.

Later on, we reached the other side of the lake (taking a bus however) and stumbled across a huge lion by the water. It's the Flensburger Lion, a huge zinc statue of the Danish royal symbol, which, funnily enough, was captured by the Prussian (German) army in the 19th century, then dismantled and brought to Berlin, and after the Second World War returned to Danemark in 1945. The one in Wannsee, however, is only a copy of the original, that's why it is still there and not back in Danemark, where the original can be found. Isn't history so amusing.

House of the Wannsee Conference

A few houses over along the "Am Grossen Wannsee" street at the number 56-58, a large metal plaque and a copper ingraving decorate the stuco wall. Beside it a large iron gate with a buzzer on the outside. "House of the Wannsee Conference" the plaque reads and we ring the buzzer. We are immediately let in and go inside the large fancy villa. In this house, on the 20th of January 1942, all the major Nazi and SS leaders met to discuss

New Home?

One of the many villas at lake Wannsee.

what is known as the "Final Solution," the mechanized and coordinated genocide of the Jews of Europe. The house is now a museum and a memorial site dedicated to educating the world about these horrible events.

After a few hours of reading and pondering, we emerged from the darkest chapter of modern European history to a beautiful fall day, which is already coming to its end. We hop on the bus and head home, thinking how weird it is that history seems at time so far, but is still ever present, even if we don't know about it.

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