As you continue down the long, slightly-askew hallway, there are a few notes explaining the difficulties and challenges for Germany's Jews who were forced to emigrate between 1933 and 1939, having been stripped of their legal rights, their social status and their personal wealth, as they went to all four corners of the globe. At the end of the hall is a door that leads to an outside space called the Garden of Exile, which Libeskind has filled with 49 concrete columns arranged in seven straight lines, but on a square that is at a slight slope, all to induce a slight sense of queasiness as you walk through it, reflecting the experience of being strangers in a strange land.
Finally, the Axis of Continuity is an empty hall that leads to a stair case that takes you up to a separate exhibit, one not at all based in architecture, but a series of stations (each one representing a letter in the Hebrew alphabet) showing aspects of Jewish life in Germany today, from school children talking to their classmates about what it is to be Jewish to a rap about Jewish empowerment to the workings of a local Chabad to the security needs of Jewish organizations here, the exhibit leaves you with an appreciation for the vibrancy of Jewish life in Germany today, albeit one very different from that before 1933.
The museum is unlike any history-type museum you have seen before, and it is likely not everyone's cup of tea, but Keri and I found it informative and worth the time.
The Rausch Chocolate House. After lunch and another walk through Checkpoint Charlie, we made our way to the Rausch Schokoladenhaus, a three-floor chocolate palace in the Gendarmenmarkt. The ground floor is a massive chocolate shop, the second floor is focused on Rausch's chocolate operations in central and south America and the top floor is a chocolate cafe, including a bar with a conveyor belt of chocolate items similar to those used in some sushi restaurants. There are also a number of chocolate models of Berlin landmarks including the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag. After several laps around the main floor, we all had some difficult decisions to make, but, as Owen likes to say, we persevered and came out with just enough chocolate to see us through the rest of our time here.
Terror Museum. Lauren was feeling a bit ill late in the day, so Keri, Owen and I decided to stay close to the flat, returning to the Topographie des Terrors, housed on the former site of the joint SS and Gestapo headquarters. The main exhibition in this museum deals with those organizations, and what they did between 1933 and 1945. The museum explores a couple different themes -- the complicity of "regular" law enforcement, the ritual of public humiliation, broad public support for the Nazis and the challenges in holding accountable most of those who helped perpetrate the Holocaust.Of course Germany had a state law enforcement system before 1933, so it is reasonable to ask what the police, prosecutors and judges in that system did after the Nazis came to power -- whether they stood up for the rule of law, or adapted their functions to reflect the priorities of the new regime. As you would imagine, it was mostly the latter. This photo of a regular police officer and an SS officer in the March 1933 Reichstag election captures well that trend. It is played out in far greater detail in the numerous descriptions of people who had spent careers working to protect the public in Weimar Germany, all to easily succumbing to new directives to arrest and imprison political enemies, to strip the civil rights and liberties of Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals, and to foster the public shaming of women -- often by shaving their heads in public squares and having them carry signs attesting to their misdeeds, e.g., romantic relationships with non-Germans.
All of this is a reminder how powerful are the social ties that bind communities, and how those ties can push people into doing things they do or should know to be immoral, and comfort them after they have done them. It is indeed difficult to stand up for what is right. It is all the more difficult when your friends, your family, your work colleagues, all support or at least maintain silence in the face of that which you know to be wrong. And it is damn near impossible when you are putting yourself at risk to do so. In light of that, these two photos really jumped out at me -- one of Klara Shabbel, a member of the Berlin resistance targeted by the SS. She coveys this sense of conviction through an "I don't give a shit" look that is inspiring.
And this second photo of a single man, in the sea of a large group of Hamburg shipyard workers, who are present for the 1936 launching of the German Navy training ship Horst Vessel. The photo is taken during the singing of the national anthem, with everyone gathered giving the Nazi salute. Everyone that is, save one man, thought to be August Landmesser, who stands with his arms folded and a disgusted look on his face. Who knows what he was truly thinking in the moment, but the symbolism of one person, refusing to go along with crowd, speaks volumes, and forces all of us to ask how we would act -- or do act -- when we are confronted by moral injustices.
Dinner and Gelato. Continuing our pattern of avoiding the local cuisine, Keri, Owen and I finished the day at Osteria Caruso, just off the Potsdamer Platz. The portions were generous, the staff kind, and the food -- gluten-free spaghetti for Keri, grilled calamari for me, spaghetti bolognese for Owen -- delicious. When discussing the Terror Museum between bites of spaghetti, Owen expressed hope that future generations would take to heart some of the lessons of the Holocaust, that knowing what people are capable of doing and what it took them to get there should serve to prevent us from going down the same road again. There's always hope. If not hope, there is at least gelato, so we made our third visit to Caffe e Gelato, a gelato shop in a mall across the street from our flat. We found it through TripAdvisor, and our guide confirmed it was one of the best in the city. Our taste buds concur. Highly, highly recommended if you are near Potsdmer Platz.
Berlin Wall Memorial. As the Friday weather was lovely, we started the day with a long walk to the Berlin Wall Memorial, the only site where there are two sections of wall still standing, along with the marked up sections in between, giving you a sense of the no-man's land that existed between East and West after the Communists set up a series of security measures in the late 1960's. Seeing the distance -- and the obstacles -- certainly explains why so few people attempted escapes in the last 20 years of the wall. Keri notes that the Germans really go out of their way to honor the martyrdom of the 140 people who died while attempting to escape. She's not wrong. There is something odd about it. In no way to diminish the impact of the wall, and the lives lost, but, in the shadow of the Holocaust, that five Germans died every year the wall stood because not enough of their fellow Germans would stand up to the Russian bear, well, it's hard to get too worked up over it.
New Synagogue. We then walked down to the Neue Synagogue on Oranienburger Street. The synagogue is a beautiful, massive structure built by Germany's largest Jewish community in 1866. It's Byzantine-like style stands out in Berlin, and it's large dome can be seen many blocks away. They don't allow visitors to see the inside of the synagogue, which fits over 3,000 people, but they have a museum that focuses on the history of the building, the congregation and Jewish life in Berlin. Lauren found the last part most useful, given the contrast to the non-fact based approach of the Jewish Museum, and she is right that this museum does a good job of helping you understand just how large the Jewish population was in Berlin -- 160,000 in 1925, or 4% of the city at that time -- and the degree to which Jews had integrated into German life.
The museum, of course, deals with the de-integration, as well, and has some powerful first-person video narratives of Jewish Berliners and their own stories of separation and survival. On the second floor there is also a series of books, the Gendenkbuch, that include an alphabetical list of German Jews who were killed by the Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945. Keri found several names of her great-grandfather's siblings.
German History Museum. After lunch, we walked down alongside Museum Island to the massive and extremely well-done Deutsches Historisches Museum. Like most museums here, all of the signs and placards are in German and English. We began with the temporary exhibits on Democracy 2019. We think we have political issues in the United States -- and we do -- but they really pale in comparison to what is happening in Europe. Germany, as the largest and most important country in the European Union, is entering uncharted waters domestically and within the EU, as right-wing parties have made significant gains in the last two years and threaten to tear apart the union. One floor of this exhibit explores some basic questions about Democracy -- i.e., is a democracy a government that follows the will of the majority or does it ensure the protection of civil rights and civil liberties for its people? The second floor of the exhibit provides an extensive history of the Weimar Republic, its unique challenges, its successes, and its ultimate and sudden collapse.The permanent exhibits are an incredibly rich and detailed history of the German speaking peoples from the Middle Ages to the collapse of the wall. We got through only about half of it in two hours, and I felt like I was going pretty quickly. For this former history major, it was like being back in my freshman Western Civilization class. We may be back for a second day, as I kind of what to know what happens after 1871. No spoilers, please.
Pergamon Museum and Nefertiti. The reason we had to cut short our visit was to get over to Museum Island and see the splendors of the Pergamon Museum and the bust of Nefertiti, which is housed in the Neues Museum. Our guide, Gabe, told us the best way to avoid the lines at both places was to get there at the beginning or end of the day. Given our preference to let the kids sleep in, we knew just before closing time was our best shot. So, we hustled over to the Pergamon, made it quickly to the specific rooms Gabe had written down for us, and then we went next door to see the old Egyptian queen. The rushed nature of our walk through was reminiscent of Clark Griswold's tour of the Grand Canyon.
I don't know much about the history of any of these items, except that the Germans' taking and possession of Nefertiti (no photos allowed) was and is a matter of some disagreement with the Egyptians. In any event, I will include the photos of the rooms from the Pergamon where the Germans basically took apart and rebuilt entire city gates or edifices. The photos only give you a hint of how impressive they are in person. The large blue gate is the Babylonian Ishtar Gate, from the 6th Century BCE, or about 20 years after the Babylonians conquered the Kingdom of Judah and forced the Jews from the land of biblical Israel. The second photo is the Market Gate of Miletus, a second-century structure from a Greek city on Asia Minor. There are some other rooms worth seeing, but these were the two most awe-inspiring, both as a matter of scale and age. Well worth the time if you are in Berlin.One day left in Berlin . . .
Outstanding descriptions of what had to be difficult museum tours, Tim. We'll take you as our tour guide and day, and because of many shared genes, maybe you'll give us a discount.
ReplyDeleteThere are far better guides than me. I am much better on the consumer side of this transaction.
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