Berlin Wanderings

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Friday is excursion day for our program. Todays excursion was to the Kathe Kollowitz Museum in Charlottenberg, which is a museum dedicated to the life and works of the woman whose name it bears. The museum itself was interesting, but rather depressing. Kathe Kollowitz was an artist that basically lived from the late 19th century to the early 20th century, seeing the uniformation of Germany, the rise of the Kaiserreich as well as both world wars. Before the first world war, she had a strong socio-political theme in her artwork, focussing on the plight of factory workers, homeless, and children. One of her two sons died in the First World War, which, understandably, profoundly affected her. Most of her post war work is about the horrors of war and death, especially from the perspective of mothers and their relationship with their sons. Her artistic style is a very minimalist charcoal style with minimal strokes that yet give a remarkably good likeness of her subject material. It fits perfectly with her grim subject matter her art. The one criticism I would have of the art is that she had a very one-dimensional theme especially in her post-war art, which was almost entirely focused on mothers losing their sons to war. The museum was 4 stories tall and the first two were focused on her pre-war art and the third and fourth on her post-war art. So, there were basically two floors of artwork associated with mothers losing their sons - perhaps 40 or 50 pieces of art. War is certainly a terrible thing and among its evils is the destruction that in brings upon families as mothers do lose their sons, however, there are many other evils of war as well that she did not touch upon at all. She did do a very good job with the pictures and themes that she did touch upon. A replica of one of her sculptures is currently featured in the center of the Neue Wache (here in Berlin), which is an old guardhouse that has been converted into a memorial to all who died from Fascism and Totalitarianism (ie, the two world wars and the holocaust). It is a pretty powerful memorial.

I got to the museum about an hour before the two people that I was meeting up with there so I spent the intervening time wandering around Charlottenberg. (For future reference, Berlin is somewhat like New York in the sense taht it used to be a large number of little municipalities that becamed unified into one larger political structure, but which still maintain a significant degree of autonomy. Charlotenberg is one of those sections). Charlottenberg is now one of the busiest and most built up shopping and tourist areas in Berlin and is filled with little shops and fascinating architecture. I took lots of pictures which you can see. It was fascinating for me to wander around this city and marvel at the changes and history that have occured here. A little more than 60 years ago, the U.S. was doing its very best to bomb this city back into the swamp on which it is built. Little is left though now of that destruction, at least in the west other than a few memorials. There are plenty of signs of the bombings still left in the East, in the sense that the GDR was not very big on restoring historic buildings (since most of them were built by "capitalistic imperialst llamma-headed pig dogs") and with the unification, East Berlin has been turned into a giant construction and restoration zone. Anyway, walking around Charlottenberg, it was fascinating to see how much American business and culture has come into this city now. American businesses and stores are all over the place (though fast food places like McDonalds are definitely more of a high-class affair, catering to those who want cool American food.) Apparently the cool thing to do now in Advertising is to mix German and English because just about every other sign or billboard is written at least partly or mostly in English. Many people speak English here, but not that well and I wonder how writing slogans in English helps convince people who don't really know what the slogans mean!

After the museum, Beth, Robet (two other students from the program that I hang out with here), and I decided to get something to eat. We were rather picky though in our tastes and ended up wandering around all over Berlin for about 2 or 3 hours before finding this fascinating Mediterannian Restaurant in East Berlin. It was truly Mediterannian in the sense that it was a mixture of the food and cultures of all the countries that border the Meiteranian. They had French and Italian food and wine, and also Morroccan and Turkish food. The music too was a curious mix of Middle Eastern and Western. The best part for us was that instead of sitting at a restaurant table with restaurant chairs, we sat arounda a low coffee-table with sofas and comfy padded chairs. After walking around so much that was so refreshing! We hung out there for several hours before going out again and meeting up with another group from the program for a little bit. It was a fun and good night out.

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