If you wish to see a German Altstadt (historic center) that escaped the fire and the bombs of the Second World War, you will need to go to a smaller city than Munich and Nuremberg. For this I took a day trip to Bamberg, a city about 60 kilometers north of Nuremberg, an hour away by train. The city of 75,000 souls is wrapped around the winding river Regnitz. Like Rome the city is built upon seven hills, each one topped with a church. Thus it is a city of sweeping views and picturesque quays by the riverside.
The historic center of Bamberg has been a designated UNESCO World Heritage site since 1993, not only for its excellent preservation, but also for its historical importance. The ecclesiastical architecture and the town’s layout proved influential throughout the rest of Germany (or at least that is what the UNESCO website says); and Bamberg also played an important part in the German Enlightenment, being where the philosopher G.F. Hegel and the writer E.T.A. Hoffman spent many years. For my part, I arrived in Bamberg completely ignorant of its history and I have improved very little since then. I just wanted to take some nice photos.
The most iconic image of Bamberg is the Altes Rathaus, or the old town hall. It is built on a little island in the middle of the river, with part of the structure hanging over the water. A bridge goes through the building and out the other side, connecting the island with both sides of the land, making it look like a man holding hands with two partners. Since it proved too small for the intricate bureaucracy of the current age, the building is no longer used as a town hall, but now houses the Museum of the City of Bamberg. No doubt the town hall erected to replace this one has no charming façade or bright colors, since we have grown out of such quaint customs.
On a nearby bridge you can see Igor Mitoraj’s sculpture, Centurion, an attractive fragment of a sharp Roman visage. From here Bamberg’s “Little Venice” comes into view, a colorful row of fisherman’s houses along the riverside. They don’t have gondolas but they do have ducks. I walked a short circuit along the south side of the river, returning on the north. At this time the coffee from this morning had hit my bladder, which is one of the traveler’s most persistent distractions. Luckily I found a public restroom along the river’s northern edge. Yet like seemingly all the restrooms in Central Europe it cost 50 cents to use, which I think is rather steep for a bodily function—though in fairness, the bathroom was quite clean.
Now it was time to ascend one of Bamberg’s famous hills, for I wanted to see the city’s cathedral. After the Altes Rathaus, this is Bamberg’s most recognizable structure, with the cathedral’s four spires topping a hill like an iron crown. It is a late Romanesque edifice that reminded me somewhat of Toulouse’s Basilica of Saint-Sernin; the cathedral’s massive form lacks that ebullient pointiness of later gothic structures, instead preserving a sort of grand dignity with its symmetrical mass. The cathedral is noteworthy for being one of the few places outside of Italy where a pope is buried—in this case, Pope Clement II (1005-47). A more attractive grave is reserved for Heinrich II, Holy Roman Emperor from 1014 to 1024. The sarcophagi, which shows scenes from the emperor’s life, was carved several hundred years after his death by the German Renaissance sculptor Tilman Riemenschneider. Standing watch nearby is the famous Bamberger Reiter, an equine sculpture portraying a dashing man of uncertain identity.
By now I was hungry, so I walked to some food stands I had seen earlier in the Grüner Markt square. There I indulged in a modern classic of German cuisine, Currywurst: a pork sausage drenched in ketchup spiced with curry. It may sound strange but tastes exactly how you would expect—though for my part the curry flavor is always too mild. In any case, it is filling, sweet, and salty, and does not leave me feeling particularly well. To complete the experience I had a Bavarian Weißbier, which literally means “white beer” but is really wheat beer. It is a rather sweet and light brew, with hardly any bitterness (since few hops are used) or sourness (since more wheat than malt is used). I much prefer them to pilsners. Having topped all this off with another coffee, you can imagine that I was soon paying for the bathrooms once again.
Having got my fill of grease, alcohol, and caffeine, I went off once again to see Bamberg. As I walked aimlessly on, I happened upon a building with a commemorative plaque on the side, which announced that Hegel stayed here while writing his famous Phänomenologie des Geistes, which I had painfully read the year before. I reached out my hand and touched the building with all the reverence due to Teutonic obscurity. From there I went to see the Hoffman house, which has since been converted into a museum about the polymath’s life. I went inside but everything on the walls was written in German, and I did not feel like fighting a battle.
Next I went to the top of another hill, to see the Michaelsberg Abbey. This is no longer an abbey, but a retirement home; but the abbey church is still open—at least, it normally is. When I arrived the building was covered in a thick mass of scaffolding; the church is undergoing substantial repairs and has been closed since 2016. But the abbey is surrounded by attractive gardens; and the patio still offers a wonderful view of Bamberg. On the day I went there were several gliders floating around in the air, their long white wings difficult to see against the clouds. I imagine it would be peaceful to be in one of those, sailing around the sky.
After walking along some more, enjoying the tree-lines streets that wind up and down the hills, examining the charming stone and wood-framed buildings that make the town feel so idyllically rustic, I came upon the Alte Hofhaltung and the Neue Residenz. The former is a lovely building with a steep roof and timber balconies that acted as a sort of palace for the bishops until the seventeenth century, when they moved to the Neue Residenz, a bigger, grander, but somewhat lifeless neoclassical structure nearby. Drunk with the scenery, I continued walking up the hill away from the river, until I came upon the Jacobskirche. This church, dedicated to St. James, was located outside of the now-demolished city walls, and acted as an important stop on the Camino de Santiago, the famous pilgrimage that terminates in Spain. I was surprised and delighted to see signs of the Camino in a distant land, and I enjoyed the peacefulness of the church’s Romanesque interior.
From there it isn’t far to leave the city altogether, entering some of the lush forests that surround Bamberg. On my offline map—I was using the application maps.me to get around—I found a lookout point in a grassy field. Though much of the city center was hidden from view, I could see the whole surrounding valley, with wind turbines on a distant hillside, and the town’s industrial sector off to my left, with freight trains rumbling by. Bavaria is an astonishingly lovely place—at least in summer. The town is surrounded by an extensive system of trails, something which the residents themselves—the Germans are an outdoorsy people—amply take advantage of.
Now the hour of my return train to Nuremberg was approaching. So I walked back into town and back towards the train station. On my way I stopped at the Obere Pfarrekirche, or Upper Parish Church, also called the Church of Our Lady. This is the only purely gothic church in the city; and its altar and ceiling frescos are lovely to behold. Sadly, I missed the opportunity to visit one of Bamberg’s many breweries. In the finest Bavarian tradition, the city has its own local brews and is spotted with beer cellars. Truly, Bamberg is a garden of delights, bucolic and picturesque, and I wish I could have spent more time there.
If there is one city more strongly associated with National Socialism than Munich, it is Nuremberg. For it was here that the Nazis had their infamous rallies, and also here that the Nazi leaders were tried and convicted after the war. But even without these epochal events, the city would be worth visiting, for it has the same charming combination of an attractive city center and a Bavarian beer culture that makes Munich so popular. And as the second-biggest city in Bavaria, after Munich itself, Nuremberg has quite a lot to see.
When I arrived in Nuremberg I was in a sour mood. I was coming to the city from Prague (a place for another post), and had very thoughtfully planned the trip by buying a bus ticket beforehand. But I failed to take into account that the metro runs more slowly on Sundays; and so my trip took ten fatal minutes more than planned, and I arrived at the station just as the bus was pulling away. Thus I had to buy a ticket for the next bus, which cost twice as much as the one I already had and which lost me two precious hours in Nuremberg. Admittedly this is not very important; but I hate wasting money and I felt like a fool for not giving myself more time to get to the bus.
But my ill temper was soon alleviated as I walked around the center of Nuremberg. This was my first trip with my new camera, a Canon Rebel T6—all my photography before having been with my phone—so I eagerly marched through the city, snapping photos like a maniac of anything and everything that caught my eye. And this was quite a lot of things, since the old center of Nuremberg is a handsome place.
Like Munich, Berlin, and so many German cities, Nuremberg’s original old center was sadly bombed out of existence during the Second World War. The ability to aim bombs back then was rudimentary at best; and in any case I do not think the Allied bombers were apt to be very careful, since one of their goals was to demoralize the population. I do not know whether or not it would have significantly impeded the war effort to have tried to avoid destroying these historic cities, but still I find it sad that so much great architecture went up in flames and was reduced to rubble. War and art are perpetual enemies. Lucky for us, however, the people of Nuremberg reconstructed their historic city after the war; and if not perfectly replicated, the result is still very fine.
Nuremberg has historically been a walled city; and the old center still stands behind high walls, lookout towers, and an old moat that has been converted into a park. Nuremberg’s central square is the Hauptmarkt, which in December is home of a Christmas market, and all year long has stalls selling fruits, vegetables, sweets, preserves, and other delicacies. The square is presided over by the noble Frauenkirche (“Church of Our Lady”), a brick gothic structure whose stepping roof leads up to a central clock, under which the Holy Roman Emperor sits enthroned in a golden robe, surrounded by counselors. The church is rather unusual in having a balcony above its front portal. This was originally because the Holy Roman Emperors wanted to use the church for ceremonial functions. Nowadays it is used to give the opening speech of the Christkindlesmarkt.
In the center of the Hauptmarkt is the Schöner Brunnen (“beautiful fountain”), whose tall, golden, gothic spire juts into the air, decorated with statues representing the liberal arts, the church fathers, and other political and religious figures important to the Holy Roman Empire. The fountain is aptly named.
Right next to this central square is the river Pegnitz, which runs right through the center of the city, and whose calm surface is never free of a couple loafing ducks. From the city’s well-preserved Fleishbrücke (literally, “meat bridge”)—a lovely Renaissance bridge that escaped the bombs—you can see the Heilig-Geist-Spital (Holy Ghost Hospital), a pretty building that extends out into the river, supported by two arches. Built in 1399, it long served its medical function, in addition to being a kind of old folks’ home and, from 1424 to 1796, the depository of the imperial jewels. Originally there was a church attached to the building, but the bombs destroyed it in 1945 and it wasn’t rebuilt. But there is a nice restaurant there nowadays, apparently.
The most magnificent church in Nuremberg is, without doubt, the Lorenzkirche, or St. Lorenz Church. This is a Lutheran church which was another casualty of the world war, not destroyed but badly damaged. But it has been restored magnificently. The imposing gothic façade gives way to an equally impressive interior, whose vaulting, statues, and stained glass form a harmoniously somber whole. Standing on the other side of the old town is the almost equally majestic Sebalduskirche, which has the same curiously hunchbacked profile as the Lorenzkirche. This distinctive shape resulted, I believe, from converting an older cruciform church into a larger gothic building, raising the side aisles and adding an ambulatory in the back. In any case, it is another damaged and well-restored structure, which preserves the original shrine of St. Sebaldus, Nuremberg’s patron saint. (I was under the impression that Lutherans don’t have shrines to saints, but apparently I was wrong.)
Presiding over the northern edge of the old city, perched like an enormous eagle on a hill that overlooks the town, is the Imperial Castle of Nuremberg (Kaiserburg Nürnberg). This castle was extensively used by the Holy Roman Emperors, making Nuremberg a sort of unofficial capital of the empire. (This association with the Holy Roman Empire, which Hitler retroactively named the “First Reich,” is one reason why he chose to have his rallies here.) Like everything else, the castle was badly damaged during the war, but has been repaired beautifully; its brown buildings and rust-colored roofs fit in perfectly with the city’s aesthetic.
Walking towards the castle, you may come upon the attractive Tiergärtnerplatz, a plaza surrounded by pretty buildings and, in good weather, full of beer drinkers sitting on the pavement. Nearby is the historic Albrecht Dürer Haus, where the famous painter lived from 1509 until his death. It is a typical municipal dwelling, with a sandstone bottom and a timber-framed top, and houses a museum dedicated to the artist. If you continue from this square up the hill into the castle, you will be rewarded with an excellent view of the city, spread out before you like a dinner table.
Feeling ravenous at this point, I went off to find dinner. For this I went to Som Tam Siam Food, a Thai restaurant in the north of the city that I found online. You may think it’s silly to eat Thai food on a trip to Germany, but it was delicious and cheap, and I didn’t regret a thing. To be fair, the next day I tried the culinary specialty of Nuremberg, which are its bratwurst—greasy, juicy, meaty, delicious sausage. I also treated myself to a German pretzel, which are buttery and rich, much better than the pretzels that are sold on the streets of New York. But I have to admit the Thai food was my favorite; I went back the next day.
It is worth taking a stroll from the city center to one of Nuremberg’s cemeteries, the Johannisfriedhof. In my travels I have discovered that there is a great variety in cemetery design. In Spain, France, Ireland, the United States, and Germany, they all have a distinctive look. The Johannisfriedhof is a lovely open space filled with stone sarcophagi, filled with flowers, ferns, and trees. Like many cemeteries, it is a solemn and silent place, mostly empty, and full of benches to sit and enjoy the peaceful atmosphere. Its most famous inhabitant is Nuremberg’s most famous son, Albrecht Dürer, widely regarded as the greatest of German artists, in a league with the best Renaissance painters for his brilliance. I sadly missed the opportunity to see his iconic Self-Portait at 28, which is in Munich’s Alte Pinakothek, yet another of my traveler’s regrets. The artist’s grave is modest and plain, blending in with those surrounding him. His best friend, Willibald Pirckheimer, of whom Dürer made many portraits, is also buried in this cemetery.
My last stop in the city center was the Germanisches Nationalmuseum. It was founded during the eighteenth-century upsurge in cultural interest, and has since grown into a massive institution—Germany’s largest museum of cultural history. I visited on my last day in Nuremberg, when I only had a few hours to explore before going to the airport. This was not nearly enough time to properly see everything—or anything—but how much time is enough will depend, of course, on the visitor’s tastes.
The museum building itself is a sort of artifact, having been converted from an old monastery, like the Musée des Augustines in Toulouse. The lovely old cloisters and church are preserved and stocked with statues, most notably by the local gothic sculptor Adam Kraft. From there the museum seems to expand in every direction. There is a sizable collection of prehistoric and ancient artifacts, including Roman military equipment. One large hall is dedicated to fashion—and walking past so many oddly-dressed mannequins is a little creepy. Directly below is the museum’s impressive exhibition of antique instruments, showing viol de gambas, ornate pianos, obsolete reed instruments, and much more.
In five minutes you can go from the pious passion of gothic painting to the stylish precision of scientific instruments. Among these, the most famous is Martin Behaim’s Erdapfel (“earth apple”), the earliest surviving globe. The map is difficult to read now, discolored and faded with age; but it is obvious that the Americas are not included, since it was made in 1490-92, before Christopher Columbus returned from his voyage in 1493. (This, by the way, is yet another proof that people back then already knew the earth was round.) Leaving no stone unturned, the museum also has a substantial collection of paintings from the Renaissance, Baroque, and Enlightenment periods. This includes Dürer’s imaginary portrait of Charlemagne, a famous miniature portrait of Martin Luther, and several works by Rembrandt. But the museum is impressive for the range and depth of its collections rather than outstanding specimens, though it has its fair number of these too. The place is worth as much time as you care to spend in it.
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As everybody knows, Nuremberg’s reputation as a seat of imperial power and the home of the German Renaissance’s most famous representative, Albrecht Dürer, was considerably darkened in the twentieth century. Nowadays it is nearly impossible for most outsiders to think of Nuremberg without immediately thinking of the Nazis. Far from trying to cover up this association, the people of Nuremberg have admirably opened two excellent exhibitions about this dark era, the first at the former rally grounds, the second at the courthouse where the Nazi leaders were put on trial. Because both are on site, they are situated a little far from the center; but they are well worth visiting.
Photo by Stefan Wagner; licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 de; taken from Wikimedia Commons
The documentation center at the rally grounds has been built into its largest preserved structure, the Congress Hall. This is a semicircular arena, loosely based on the Coliseum, that could hold 50,000 party members. The documentation center’s metallic exterior seems to spear through the older stone building, creating a visual pun on the name of Albert Speer, the chief Nazi architect. Opened in 2001, the center is designed to explain the rise of Hitler’s party and the part that the Nuremberg rallies played in that story. The ticket automatically comes with an audioguide, which is good, since all of the text in the museum is in German so you have little choice but to listen. The exhibitions are organized by chronology and theme, taking the visitor through the early days of National Socialism, the Beer Hall Putsch and the writing of Mein Kampf, and on to their rise to power—including much else along the way: their ideology and rituals, their organization and methods of control, their use of propaganda and pageantry, and so on. Though there are plenty of photos, the main substance of the exhibit consists in this self-guided tour, making the experience of visit somewhat like listening to an audiobook—though a very good one.
Since I had recently read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, a lot of the information was not new to me. The explanations of the actual rituals were, however, new and fascinating. As in my visit to Berlin’sTopography of Terror, what most struck me about the Nazi party was the degree to which its organization, rituals, and ethos of manliness were reminiscent of the Boy Scouts. By this I do not intend to insult boy scouts; rather, mean that, in its rituals and architecture, these rallies were like nightmare versions of boyish fantasies. Propaganda films show grown men roughhousing, partaking in good clean fun, exercising with their mates, laughing and singing songs together, and demonstrating their manly martial prowess in mock battles. The melodramatic gravity of the rituals reminds me of a children’s game, aping the movements and motions of real solemnity while missing their substance. The architecture consists of shallow imitations of classical structures or medieval fortresses; and you get the impression that, like so many boys, they were imagining themselves in an ancient time, in an epoch of emperors and knights and Crusades.
But clearly the rallies were effective. Indeed, during their tenure in power the Nazis proved themselves to be geniuses of propaganda. The rallies’ tight choreography and grand orchestration showcased the dazzling efficiency of the German army. Their massive marches and endless parades reinforced the image of German might. The mixture of military and religious rituals created an effective blend of awe and aggression. The free use of symbols from the past—the ancient Romans, the church, the Holy Roman Empire—impressed on the German people the idea that they were following in the footsteps of illustrious ancestors and fulfilling their destiny. The total coordination of myth, pageantry, rhetoric, and spectacle created a hermetically sealed whole, a cultural space where beauty, truth, and goodness were the party line, and the attendee just a passionate part of a glorious movement. The ability to inspire had never been so abused.
These were the lessons I learned from my visit to the documentation center and a short walk around the remaining buildings. It is a sobering experience.
Somewhat more uplifting is a visit to the Nuremberg Trial courtroom. The room is in the monumental Palace of Justice, Nuremberg’s court building on the other side of town from the Documentation Center. Nuremberg was chosen as the site of the trials partly for the city’s association with Nazism, and also because the Palace of Justice has a sizable adjoining prison. After entering through a side door of the building, paying the entrance fee, and ascending some stairs, the visitor is confronted with Courtroom 600, where the trial actually took place. My first impression was that it was much smaller than I expected, indeed hardly bigger than a civil courtroom I had seen in New York. Admittedly the courtroom is now significantly smaller than it was during the trial, since the back wall was at that time removed to allow for a double-decker gallery of onlookers and reporters.
Even so, it was a small stage on which to create history. For into this modest room there presided judges from the four allied powers (one main and one alternative for each, making eight); a bank of interpreters simultaneously translated between the four official languages (Russian, French, German, and English); prosecutors from every Allied power; defense attorneys for all the 24 accused; the accused themselves; a witness stand; guards, clerks, and amanuenses; and then the press, with cameras and notepads. It must have been very crowded. Standing in that room, I felt that strange mixture of disappointment and awe that historical places create—in this case, disappointment that it is an ordinary courtroom, awe that such normal surroundings could have been host to such a world-changing event. But history does not always leave an obvious mark; and the courtroom—which is still occasionally used—looks clean and polished.
Up another flight of stairs is the main exhibition, which has only been open since 2010. As in the rally grounds, here the visit consists of an audioguide and lots of panels. Really, the amount of information on display is overwhelming; to listen to all of it, one would need two hours at least. But it is good information, giving some idea of the leadup and consequences of the trial, but mainly focusing on the trial itself—its legal bases, its personalities, its progress. The audioguide takes an uncompromising pro-trial stance, which is somewhat surprising, given that they were often seen within Germany as an example of “victor’s justice.” For it hardly seems like a recipe for fairness that the victors to put the leaders of an enemy country on trial. And anyone must admit that the victor’s hands were hardly clean. The most extreme case are the Soviets, who had their own mass killings, invasions, and wars of aggression; but none of the Allies were beyond reproach: many French collaborated, the English appeasement strategy aided Germany’s rise, and America’s bombing of Dresden is nefarious.
Even granting all this, I still think that the Nuremberg Trials were a step forward in the bumbling progress of our species. The victorious powers could simply have shot the Nazis without due process, or have submitted them to a shallow show-trial. It is rather remarkable that we didn’t. As Robert H. Jackson said in his opening speech: “That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason.” The trial set new precedents for international law—defining war crimes and crimes against humanity—which served as a model for similar trials ever since, such as those in the wake of the Rwandan massacre or the Balkan Wars. And the trials were instrumental in uncovering the horrible truth of the Nazi atrocities and the full extent of their culpability, since the prosecutors were determined to convict the defendants using their own documents.
If the Nuremberg trials were a victory for Reason, that the city most associated with Nazism could be home to two thorough and honest exhibitions about the history of their crimes is yet another.
Bavaria is a special place. Though this southern German state is full of traditions that are not shared with the rest of Germany, the image of Bavaria has, ironically enough, come to symbolize all of German culture. Giant goblets of beer, yodelling and schuhplattler dancing, jaunty brass bands and lederhosen—all this is mainly found in Bavaria. This phenomenon mirrors the situation in Spain, which is known for flamenco and bullfighting, two traditions most popular in its distinctive southern province, Andalusia, and largely absent from its north. Many of America’s stereotypes come from the south, too, such as our fried food and cowboy culture. I suppose a country is doomed to be identified by its most outlandish customs.
Though the image of Bavaria is often ridiculed—somewhat unfairly, since its silliest aspects are now mostly for the tourists—it has proven very seductive. Millions flock to Munich ever year for its annual Oktoberfest, to be served liters of beer by blonde waitresses in tight-fitting Dirndl dresses. And many millions more celebrate this extravaganza of beer and sausage in replicated festivals all across the world. Beer culture more generally owes much to Bavaria, as microbrewers set up Biergarten style establishments and serve artisanal baked potatoes. So the Bavarians have at least done some things right.
I myself am drawn to this idyllic image of jolly inebriation, which has led me to visit the region twice: First to Munich, and then to Nuremberg and Bamberg.
Munich
I was here, finally here, in the Englischer Garten of Munich.
One of my favorite stories is Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, which opens with the novelist Gustave von Aschenbach, strained and fatigued from his writing, taking a stroll in the English Gardens to revive his spirits. And here I was, standing in the same place where that imaginary man strode, melancholy and weary from his struggle to create beauty. More than likely, Thomas Mann himself stood here, too, as he lived in Munich for forty years.
Yet I was as far as it was possible to be from those literary heroes, imaginary or real. I was carrying a bright orange backpack, dressed in a grey hoodie, feeling sleep-deprived, achy, and lightheaded from hunger. Reality often falls short of fiction—and even fact. I had some time to kill before I could check into my Airbnb, and so decided to walk here, in the gardens of my fantasy.
The English Gardens take their name from the style of landscape architecture common in eighteenth-century England, wherein whole landscapes were reshaped to create pleasing compositions. The Munich park was designed by Sir Benjamin Thompson, one of those remarkable Eighteenth century Renaissance men; he was a physicist, inventor, and an official in the Bavarian military, in addition to a prolific designer of everything from parks to battleships. You know you have led an eventful life when designing a world-famous park is only a minor episode.
As I walked through the park, feeling heavy and sweaty, I passed by a man in a wetsuit carrying a surfboard, who obviously stuck out among the tourists clad in shorts, sandals, and sunglasses. I did not know what to make of this. Then, five minutes later, an American asked me if I knew where the surfers are. Surfers in a park? It turns out that, yes, there is surfing in the Englischer Garten, at a point in the artificial river where it narrows, creating a perpetual wave, known as the Eisbach Wave.
Extreme sport aside, the most popular activities in the English Gardens are strolling and sunbathing. To my surprise, it is even legal to sunbathe nude in the Englischer Garten, specifically in the Schönfeldwiese (lit. “beautiful field meadow”), as I saw for myself while walking past. This was the second time in my life that I had come upon naked sunbathers, the first being in the Tiergarten in Berlin; and both times I was equally shocked. Public nudity in the center of a municipal park is something unheard of in the United States and in Spain. The Germans seem far more accepting of the human body—in all its hairy, flabby, and sunburned varieties—which I suppose is a good thing, though it does spoil the view a little.
Unsolicited flesh notwithstanding, the English Gardens are a delightful place to walk around. As much as I love Madrid, its dry climate makes even its parks seem sandy and bare. A boy from New York cannot help missing dark loamy soil, lush verdure, deep greens, and thick foliage, which Munich has in abundance—at least in summer. Walking paths wind under towering linden trees, which open up to reveal beautiful views, such as the distant Munich skyline or the glasslike surface of the Kleinhesseloher Lake. A massive Biergarten, the second-largest in the city, sits at the center of the park; and as I walked by I admired the giant pieces of roast pork being greedily devoured by the clients. Now here is some flesh I can appreciate.
Feeling hungry myself, I saw down to eat the lunch I had brought with me from Madrid: a salami sandwich. Life is less romantic when you’re on a budget.
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Munich is both the capital and the largest city of Bavaria. And with a population of about 1.5 million, it is only behind Berlin and Hamburg within Germany for size. Though now one of the quintessentially Germany cities, many of Munich’s most prosperous years occured when the city was not a part of Germany. The region’s Catholic majority has always put it somewhat at odds with the Protestant north of Germany, making it a stronghold for the Counter-Reformation rather than Luther’s Reformation. After suffering Swedish and Habsburg domination, Bavaria emerged once again as an independent kingdom in 1805, with Munich as its capital. And even after Bismark unified the German states, in 1871, Bavaria retained its kingdom and special privileges. It was only the defeat of Germany in World War I that put an end to the rule of the Wittelsbach dynasty.
In the aftermath of the Great War, during the unstable Weimar Republic, Munich became the base of the rising Nazi movement. It was in this city where Hitler attempted his infamous Beer Hall Putsch of 1923—so-called because it began with the storming the Bürgerbräukeller, a beer cellar—in which the Nazis attempted to take control of Bavaria by force. The putsch was a fiasco, poorly planned and quickly put down, and it resulted in Hitler being sent to jail—though he was given an extremely light sentence by sympathetic judges. The experience taught Hitler to seek power through official channels rather than by a coup, which he did successfully ten years later. Once in power, Hitler turned the ridiculous putsch into a national myth, treating the fallen Nazi roughnecks as martyrs. History is invented by the victors. Munich played another infamous role during the leadup to World War II, being the place where Neville Chamberlain, in 1938, officially agreed to cede parts of Czechoslovakia (without consulting the Czechoslovaks) to Nazi Germany, in an attempt to appease Germany.
One of my regrets from my Munich visit was not visiting the Documentation Center, which presents this ugly history to the public. The center opened quite recently, on April 30th of 2015, on the 70th anniversary of the city’s capture by the Allies; and it looks excellent.
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After wandering around the English Gardens for a few hours, it was time to check into my Airbnb. I was staying with a German family in the suburbs of the city. They were nothing but kind and helpful, and I had an excellent stay. But I was amused at how many rules there were in the house—when to take a shower, where to leave your shoes, what do you can on the Wifi (I had to sign a contract for the internet). The bathroom was like a museum, covered in little laminated signs that gave directions from everything from the shower to the toilet. It all struck me as very “German.” But I did not have time to be indulging in stereotypes. I had a city to explore.
Perhaps the most iconic spot in Munich is neither a palace nor a church, neither a museum nor a monument, but a brewery and beer hall: the Staatliches Hofbräuhaus. This was my first stop. As its name indicates (“Public Court Brewery”), the beer hall is state-owned and traces its origin to Bavarian nobility—specifically, to Wilhelm V, Duke of Bavaria, all the way back in 1589. Owning your own brewery is convenient, since you can brew to your taste and use legislation to create a profitable monopoly, which is exactly what the Dukes of Bavaria did. Even before the Hofbräuhaus was opened the Bavarians instituted their famous purity laws, restricting the ingredients that could be used in beer to three: water, barley, and hops. They did not know about yeast back then, so they didn’t include it; but obviously without yeast beer wouldn’t have any alcohol.
The brewery is enormous and still very successful, despite losing its lordly masters. From the outside it doesn’t look like much; but walking through the door, one finds an enormous series of rooms, filled with wooden benches and tables, with waiters running right and left and families and friends lifting enormous mugs to their mouths. In English these are mistakenly called “steins,” which properly only refers to stone mugs, and that only in English. (“Stein” means “stone” in German and doesn’t refer to mugs.) In German it is called a Maßkrug, or simply a Maß. It contains a full liter of beer, as your wrist and then stomach and then bladder will testify to.
Although I felt uncomfortable since I was traveling alone, I decided to walk in and try the famous Germanic liquid. As I made my way to the back room to find a seat, I passed the house band, an ensemble of brass instruments playing jaunty Bavarian music with polka rhythms. It suites the atmosphere. I found a seat at a bench with an older couple—it’s common to share tables. Service was surprisingly prompt, and soon I was faced with my own liter of beer. Gingerly, I sipped it, and then had a gulp: it was good but not exceptional. Feeling somewhat awkward and out of place, I did the responsible thing and downed the beer as quickly as possible in order to leave. Fortified and dizzy, I was ready to explore Munich.
The city center of Munich, like nearly all major German cities, was largely blown to smithereens during the Second World War by British and American bombs. Its reconstruction, however, was both carefully complete and faithful to the destroyed city, following the old medieval city streets. As a result Munich maintains the look and feel of a pristinely historic city. This is especially true of the Marienplatz, Munich’s central square, which is easily one of the most attractive plazas I have seen in Europe. It takes its name from the Virgin Mary, who stands on a column in the center of the square, as a shimmering golden statue. Presiding over this square is the Neues Rathaus, or New Town Hall, built in the 1870s because the old one was too small. Constructed in a glorious neo-gothic style, it is easily among the finest town-halls I have seen in Europe, only rivalled by the ones in Brussels and Vienna—which, not coincidentally, served as its inspiration.
It is a short walk from this square to the Asamkirche, the most beautiful church in the city. It takes its name from the brothers who built it as their private chapel: Egid Quirin Asam, a sculptor, and Cosmas Damian Asam, a painter. The church is wedged between their apartments; indeed Egid could look through his window at the altar. Built by themselves for their own pleasure and salvation, and with their own resources, the two brother artists had considerable creative freedom. The result was a masterpiece of design. The church is gorgeous—sumptuously decorated, harmoniously composed. Pictures do not do justice to the feeling of sitting inside the church, getting deeply absorbed in the Baroque decoration, enjoying the play of color and form that covers every surface.
The oldest church in the city is the Peterskirche, or St. Peter’s Church. Its fairly unassuming exterior gives way to a harmonious interior, with whitewashed walls and gilded statues, pleasingly pure and sweet. After being rebuffed from the church once—they were having mass—I returned to find that there was a free organ concert going on. This was the first trip in which I kept a diary, so I will include an excerpt of what I wrote as I sat there and listened to the performance:
The organ is overpowering when at full blast. Is this what it would have been like to listen to Bach? … I think I heard a tritone. Blasphemy! The organ has such a wide variety of timbres. Subdued, muted, to ringing, reedy, piercing, to clear, flutelike, to rumbling, to screeching.
The piece was the “Salve Regina” by Olivier Latry, a fairly unknown work that, nevertheless, I found to be powerfully enchanting and even otherworldly.
Munich’s Catholic cathedral is the Frauenkirche, and its two towers, topped with distinctive domes, are visible from far and wide because of the city’s regulation restricting height limits. Like the Peterskirche, the cathedral has whitewashed walls and is even more plainly decorated. The most striking object on display is the marvelous cenotaph of Louis IV, Holy Roman Emperor from 1328 to 1347, which is defended by statues of soldiers and knights. Many other members of the Wittelsbach dynasty are buried here, too—including Ludwig III, the last king of Bavaria—though their graves are not as eye-catching.
Germany, in general, is not terribly expensive. Indeed it is only slightly pricier, on average, than easygoing Spain. But Munich is an exception to this; it is a wealthy city, with a high standard of life, and so visitors must pay their tribute to the Bavarian gods. One testament to the city’s affluence are the cars on the street. Now, I am not particularly fond of cars; I don’t even like driving; so you know that the roads must have been striking for me to take notice. There were high-quality cars—mostly of German make, though not exclusively—everywhere I turned. Stranger still, 90% of these cars were either white, grey, or black—very few were an actual color. When I first noticed this, I waved it away as mere coincidence; but the more I looked, the more I became convinced that Münchners have a marked preference for grayscale locomotion.
It does make sense that Munich would have an eye-catching automobile population, considering that it is the home of one of Germany’s iconic car brands, BMW. There is even a BMW museum in Munich, near the glass tower that houses the company’s headquarters. Again, not being particularly interested in cars, I didn’t go. But you are welcome to.
Munich in general struck me—according to my diary—as a very “European city,” at times reminding me of Pisa, at times of Toulouse, at times of Avila. Old city centers all come to resemble one another after a while. But that does not mean they become any less attractive; and Munich is quite lovely to stroll around, with its medieval layout providing enough variation, and its rows of buildings tall and tasteful, with old and new styles coexisting peacefully. I saw quite a few bachelor and bachelorette parties on the streets—wearing matching hats and shirts, with the bride- or groom-to-be in a silly costume—whose presence inevitably means that you are in a major tourist center. Yet the city has a life of its own, not succumbing completely to tourist bric a brac, but maintaining a strong identity in spite of its cosmopolitan orientation.
One spot stands out for special mention as a walking area, and that is the Königplatz. It is an open green space surrounded by fine neoclassical buildings, very convincing imitations of Greco-Roman structures. Originally built by Ludwig I to house his Greco-Roman statues, this attractive group of classical structures in a big open space proved ideally suited to Hitler’s purposes, which is why he used the Königplatz to hold mass rallies, and even added two more neoclassical buildings to house the remains of the Beer Hall Putsch “martyrs.” The American army tastefully blew these up in 1947. Nearby is the Lenbachhaus, Munich’s most famous art gallery, which has an excellent collection of Der Blaue Reiter (“The Blue Rider”), Munich’s influential expressionist group of artists formed in 1911.
Munich’s role as the capital of the kingdom of Bavaria explains why the city has three palaces (of which I visited two, missing the Schleissheim). The Schloss Nymphenburg is situated somewhat outside the city, but can be gotten to easily with the tram. It was used as a summer residence by the Bavarian royals; and, indeed, the current head of House Wittelsbach, Franz, sometimes lives in this castle—though nowadays he has no power, ceremonial or otherwise. Currently 84 years old, he survived imprisonment in two Nazi concentration camps (the Wittelsbachs were anti-Nazi), and is technically a claimant to the throne of the United Kingdom, though he prefers not to talk about that.
From the outside the palace is ample though not imposing, sweeping across a wide area though not rising to any considerable height. Since I am normally not fond of palaces—all showiness and no substance—I skipped the interior and went straight to the gardens, which are vast and charming. The garden was first of Italian design, then French, and finally English. The Italian style emphasizes symmetry and order; the French style is similarly orderly, but expanded to a monumental scale and filled with ornate fountains. The English style, by contrast, is Romantic: striving to keep some of the ruggedness of nature. This last modification was planned by Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell, who also did much of the work on Munich’s English Gardens. The man was clearly brilliant, since the Nymphenburg gardens are just as enjoyable to walk around, with its long central canal flanked by forest, through which paths wend their way. It is a successful combination of planned and spontaneous design.
A significantly larger palace can be found right in the center of Munich itself: the Munich Residence. Like nearly everything in this city, the palace was badly damaged during World War II, but has been reconstructed—for the most part faithfully, though at times in simplified form. This might account for the strange sterility I sensed when I visited, feeling that the place seemed unused. Added to this, the audioguide was mainly descriptive—explaining a room’s form and function—without providing any historical context. So I toured the palace without knowing who used it, or when. But in its heyday, under the Wittelsbachs, the palace certainly was used, as even the reconstructed version proves.
Right upon entry I came upon a marvelous fountain made of shells, wonderfully bizarre and ornate. Also memorable was the hall of ancestors, with rococo decorations surroundings portraits of all the Wittelsbach heads, tracing the family back all the way back to Charlemagne himself. (Claiming to be descended from important people is an easy way to seem special.) Even grander is the Renaissance Antiquarium, whose ceiling is decorated with allegories of the seven virtues, surrounded by grotesque decorations inspired by the discoveries at Pompeii. This room was created for the very important purpose of storing and displaying classical busts, and it performs that function marvelously. I also remember a beautiful little chapel, with a blue gilded roof, and a floor and walls of the finest marble. There is also a famous theater, apparently, which I somehow missed. As for the rest, I will let my diary speak:
The royal apartments themselves, with the antechambers, dressing rooms, throne room, bed room, and so on, were exquisite, and yet produced the now-familiar feeling of disgust with so much wealth.
This is not to say that the palace is not worth visiting. To the contrary, I enjoyed the visit far more than I expected. You even get to see some of the royal jewels and treasury, and some of the ceramics produced for the royal family. The seashell fountain alone is worth the price of admission.
Although I didn’t visit it, I would be negligent if I did not mention the Neuschwanstein Castle. An almost painfully picturesque palace, sitting atop a hill and looking straight out of a children’s book, the Neuschwanstein Castle is about two hours by car from Munich and a very popular day trip.
The story of the castle’s creation is wonderful. Rather than serving any military or governmental function, the castle was the pet project of Ludwig II, King of Bavaria, who was overly fond of Wagner’s operas, and so sought to create a building that embodied the mythical world of Wagner’s heroes and vikings. Unfortunately for him, he did not have the money to see his project to completion, and so used the very convenient recourse of getting heavily into debt. This naturally upset his ministers—who also would have preferred to see him govern rather than indulge in architectural fantasies—who ultimately had the king declared insane and unfit to govern, and then arrested. Shortly after being apprehended, the deposed king took a walk with his psychologist; minutes later the two of them were found dead, floating in shallow water. It is still unclear what happened. He is buried in Munich, in St. Michael’s Church. When it is not horrifying, German history can be quite whimsical.
This is a continuation on my first post about life in Berlin, focusing on the darker side of the city’s history.
Historical Memory
Memory is not passive—either in a person or in a country. We choose what we remember; we can shape how we remember it; and our memories, in turn, shape how we act. History is messy, the truth is neither plain nor simple, and in human affairs there is no such thing as an apolitical fact. Opposing groups emphasize different episodes of history, interpret (or misinterpret) those episodes incompatibly, and sweep aside inconvenient episodes that do not fit their narratives. These narratives are not just background; they provide groups with their identity, giving them a historical trajectory and a goal to strive for. Thus it is not just for the dead, but the living, that we must attend to how history is remembered.
Nowhere is this need more apparent than in Berlin; nowhere can we see more clearly what power historical memory can wield. It is said that knowledge is power, but in history we had better say narrative is power. For the past is past, and not around to refute politicians who twist it to their advantage. The historical past is, to a large extent, a creation of the present; and it is recreated every time a book is written, a speech is delivered, or an article is published in the newspaper. The past that the Nazis created was of a mythic Germany, of a virtuous and heroic people, unduly hampered by foreign elements and racial impurities. The past that the Soviets conjured was of a dark night of bourgeois repression only recently lifted by the liberating proletariat army. As we all know, these narratives gave rise to atrocities—atrocities which, if the narratives had triumphed, we would remember as victories—and thus we are now faced with the task of remembering differently.
For this reason, a trip to Berlin is both horrifying and heartening—horrifying because of the crimes committed there, heartening because those crimes are not being ignored or swept aside. I have mentioned elsewhere that you can visit Madrid and never guess that, less than a hundred years ago, there was a horrendous civil war that ended with mass executions. The same cannot be said of Berlin. Indeed I think Berlin is a model of how historical atrocities should be framed and memorialized. The city has every reason to be proud.
Monuments of Death
The first of these somber monuments I visited was the rather cheerfully named Checkpoint Charlie. The name is really just Checkpoint C (Charlie is the NATO phonetic marker for “C”). Checkpoint Charlie is the most famous border crossing between East and West Germany.
As you may know, defection from East to West was high during the postwar years, particularly among the young and well-educated (not population most countries want to lose). To prevent this, the border between East Germany and West Germany was sealed off, and strict regulations put in place about leaving the country. But for many years the border crossings in Berlin remained much easier to get through (this was because the city was jointly controlled by the four occupying powers), making Berlin a kind of gateway to freedom for many hoping to flee the Soviet Union. All this ended in 1961 with the erection of the Berlin Wall. By that time, East Germany had lost 20% of its population.
In truth the checkpoint isn’t much to look at. It’s a small, white guardhouse with some sandbags sitting out front. There were two men in uniform carrying American flags. I was unsure whether they were actual American soldiers or enterprising men in costume accepting money to pose with tourists. In any case, the most memorable image of Checkpoint Charlie is the sign that says “YOU ARE LEAVING THE AMERICAN SECTOR” in four languages—English, French, Russian, and German. On the other side of the sign, for those entering the American Sector, we are kindly reminded to “OBEY TRAFFIC RULES.”
The official Checkpoint Charlie Museum is nearby. I didn’t go, since I heard mixed reviews. I don’t have anything more to add about this famous landmark, other than that it was strange to be standing in that otherwise entirely ordinary road, and imagine tanks rolling in, diplomats being escorted by soldiers, and the fate of the world hanging on the de-escalation of tensions surrounding this border crossing. In politics, small flames can set off very large explosions. Seen with un-political eyes, Checkpoint Charlie is a shack on a road. Seen with historical eyes, it is one of the axes of world history.
From Checkpoint Charlie it is a five-minute walk to my next monument, the Topographie des Terrors. This is a fairly new exhibit—opened only in 2010—built on the ruins of the old Gestapo headquarters, where their prisoners were tortured and killed. As befitting its name, The Topography of Terrors is an open-air museum dedicated to the history of Nazi atrocities. This history is arranged as a timeline, with plentiful pictures and information panels giving examples and details of the National Socialist regime.
Most of this information will not be new to anyone with a basic knowledge of the Holocaust or the Nazi movement—although familiarity hardly dulls the sickening horror of it all. The museum is more valuable for its ability to convey the atmosphere of the time, especially with the numerous Nazi propaganda posters on display. Nothing sums up an ideology with the stark simplicity of a propaganda poster. We see a hardworking German Aryan worker struggling to work, while weighted down by the lazy inferior races; we see bald-faced incitements to hatred against Jews; we see rallies for the workers at home to fight as hard as the soldiers in the field; and then there are the usual posters warning citizens to black out their lights during air raids and to watch out for spies.
Scattered among the posters are profiles of the fallen. One profile which struck me was of a man with epilepsy, Otto Mathewes, who was put into a sanatorium by his family, sterilized by the Nazis, and ultimately sent to a death camp to be killed. I knew that the Nazis targeted those they deemed racially impure—Jews and Roma—as well as homosexuals; but I did not know that the Nazis would put to death somebody with epilepsy—a treatable disease, or at the very least one that could be managed. For me, as for many, the most perplexing thing about the Nazi movement is how an entire population could be goaded into cooperating with their murderous policies. Most populations, it seems, can be persuaded to go to war, which involves killing outsiders. Yet the Nazis didn’t only wage war, but killed citizens of their own country. Why wasn’t there widespread resistance? Hannah Arendt’s phrase about the “banality of evil” comes to mind; but I suppose this question is not one to be answered with a phrase.
Among the propaganda posters, I found a chart showing the different paths for Nazi youths to follow to become full-fledged Nazi adults—for women, from Jungmädel (young girls) to Mütter und Hausfrauen (mothers and housewives), for military boys from the Hitler youth to the military. Looking at that chart, I feel a mixture of disgust and amusement. Such a regimented society, with caste-like roles and ranks for everyone, is repressive in the extreme. And yet, for all its nefarious intent, this organization strikes me as hopelessly juvenile. Indeed it is even campy, as if the whole country is to be organized like the Boy Scouts. Considering this chart, it is easy to see why many Germans did not consider Hitler a serious threat before he rose to power. His mind was packed full of this stuff—juvenile, campy plans designed to appeal to a boyish desire for ritual, hierarchy, and order. The line between the notions of an oaf and the ideas of an autarch is disturbingly fine—perhaps ultimately just access to power.
The exhibition also includes a model for Welthauptstadt Germania, “World Capital Germania,” the proposed city to be constructed over Berlin after Germany won the war. This plan, drawn up by Albert Speer, is discussed by Robert Hughes in his documentary The Shock of the New as an example of the architecture of power. Everything about the design is meant to provoke awe. The scale is enormous; the proposed dome of the Volkshalle would easily dwarf St. Peter’s and the Pantheon. Again, we see here the big imaginations of little minds. It is the same mixture of a juvenile yearning for order and a boyish admiration of strength that we see in the chart.
Coincidentally, the Topography of Terror is located right next to the longest extant stretch of the outer Berlin Wall. It is little more than a wreck now, so full of holes you can see right through it. That ruin completes the picture of atrocities, giving the visitor a glimpse of what came after the Nazis were defeated.
It is a short walk from the Topography of Terror to the Holocaust Memorial, more properly called the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Designed by the American architect Peter Eisenman, it opened in 2005, and is situated near the Brandenburger Tor. The memorial is strikingly abstract. There is no information to be found, no names of victims, no sculptures or symbols, nothing that can provide the visitor context. Instead, the visitor finds a field of concrete slabs, 711 of them, ranging in height from 8 inches to over 15 feet. These slabs are arranged in rows and columns, slightly askew, and the monoliths grow as the visitor enters into the monument.
I admit that my first impression was one of disappointment. There just isn’t much to look at—just identical grey blocks, stretching out like a miniature city. Is the meaningless abstraction of contemporary art really appropriate for commemorating the Holocaust? But I revised my opinion as soon as I walked into the memorial. The blocks slowly grow until they encompass you and limit your line of sight to four narrow passageways. I felt uncomfortable, even unnerved. It is easy to get separated from friends, and difficult to find them once lost. There is no telling who you will see if you turn a corner. Muffled voices come from all directions. I am not prone to this, but I felt a kind of crushing claustrophobia in the monument, a sense of being hopelessly lost and in danger, and I hurried to get out.
As many have noted, the memorial lends itself to many interpretations. The concrete slabs are shaped like coffins, and the rows of blocks strike many as a graveyard. The gradual increase in the slabs’ height as you walk into the memorial, rising until all lines of vision are cut off, is symbolic of the gradual limiting of the Jews’ options as the Nazis stripped them of rights, property, liberty, and life. The mechanical regularity of the slabs suggests the inhuman efficiency of the Nazi killing machine. But more important than these interpretations is the feeling evoked by the monument, the uncomfortable, suffocating feeling of being trapped. It is a cold and comfortless place, although kids are often found playing hide-and-seek within. Indeed the monument invites use as a playground, and it is easy to imagine people skipping from block to block and dashing through the columns. And perhaps this, too, forms an essential part of the monument, showing us that children can turn even bleak concrete into innocent fun.
The monument does not impress everyone; it has been controversial from the beginning. Richard Brody wrote a piece in The New Yorker criticizing the memorial for being too vague and for not including the names of the victims. (As he notes, the names on display in an information center under the slabs, along with other documents about the atrocity. But this information is not well marked, and both Brody and myself missed it.) More recently there was a social media story about Shahak Shapira, who took pictures of tourists taking selfies in the memorial, and juxtaposed them with images of the holocaust—terming it the ‘yolocaust’. I admit that it doesn’t surprise me that people take selfies at the memorial. Nowadays, people will take a selfie with the murderer who just broke into their house, and spend their final moments counting likes.
For my part, I thought it was a moving and effective work of art, even though I was skeptical at first. While I can see why some criticize the lack of names or context, I think the silence of the memorial is what gives it such emotional power; it is a silence that invites us to contemplate the absence of all those men, women, and children, those who were taken and can never return.
Berlin’s other famous memorial is not within easy walking distance. The Berlin Wall Memorial (Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer) is located to the north, next to another surviving section of the wall. It was opened to the public in 1998, within a decade of the reunification. It is much more “traditional” than the Holocaust Memorial, with explicit messages, historical recreations, and information about the victims. Nearby is the Chapel of Reconciliation, an oval-shaped church made of thin strips of wood—you can see through the walls from the inside—built over the foundations of an older church demolished to make way for the wall. A statue of a man and woman in a desperate embrace reminds us how many families were split by that barrier.
The main attraction of the memorial is a section of the wall reconstructed to look as it would have when it was dividing the city in two. This recreation is bounded by two high steel walls, preventing visitors at ground level from looking inside. The viewer needs to climb a tower across the street, right next to the memorial building, and look down from above. From there you can see that the Berlin Wall was really two walls, an exterior and an interior, both of the same drab gray appearance. It is steel-reinforced concrete, too tall to climb easily, too strong to ram with any normal car. Between the two walls is what was called the “death strip,” an empty area full of gravel raked smooth, with a small road running through the center so that army vehicles could quickly move to different sections. This strip was deadly because any potential escapees would be totally exposed there, easily visible to those in the guard tower nearby. There is no cover from searchlights or from firearms. Street lights kept it constantly illuminated. Caught there, you would be a sitting duck.
Although it was a beautiful sunny evening, and although it is surrounded by green parks and bushy trees, the wall section struck me as inhuman, dreary, and squalid. It is the picture of homicidal efficiency—a barrier designed with intelligence and foresight to accomplish immoral ends. The same question occurs to me here as occurred to me at the Topography of Terror: How could people—presumably normal, neighborly people—be persuaded to build something like this? The sheer absurdity of building a wall to keep people in rather than out, to stop an exodus of people fleeing from their own country, must have struck everyone involved. And yet the wall was built, construction crews dragged the concrete into place, soldiers manned the watchtowers, and government officials devoted time and energy to its maintenance and improvement.
Inside the memorial center are old letters, recorded interviews, and information panels about those whose lives were affected by the wall. There are stories of people fleeing, being caught in the attempt, and getting shot down by guards. One famous escape story is of Wolfgang Engels, who stole an armored personnel carrier and rammed it through the wall, getting shot in the process but making it out alive. East German Soldiers at the wall were instructed to shoot anyone attempting to cross, even women and children. Nevertheless, about 5,000 people successfully escaped; well over 100 were killed in the attempt. Some of the escapees dug tunnels, some even flew balloons—indeed, the last casualty of the wall, Winfried Freudenberg, died in 1989 when he fell from his homemade balloon. Guards on the Western side could not help anyone on the death strip, or they risked being fired on by the East German guards. This led, most famously, to the death of Peter Fechter, who was shot in the death strip and left to bleed to death, as hundreds looked on from both sides.
The last place I visited was the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial, an old Soviet and then Stasi prison. This is situated far away from the other major sites, in the east of the city. But it is well worth the trip. The only way to visit the prison is on a guided tour. My tour guide, a young woman, was excellent—extremely knowledgeable and compelling. According to her, some of the guides are actually former inmates in the prison. In any case, I can say that it was one of the best guided tours of my life. My visit was both informative and moving, and I hope you get a chance to go.
As I said, the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen is a prison formerly used by the Soviets and the Stasi. Before that, it was used by the Nazis as a communal kitchen. When the Soviets conquered Berlin, the building was used hold prisoners—accused Nazi collaborators. The building was not designed for this. The Soviets put their prisoners in the food cellars in the basement—big subterranean rooms with no windows. Conditions for prisoners were atrocious. The cells were unheated and terribly cold in the winter. The Soviets did not distribute clothing to the prisoners, so if they were unlucky enough to be thrown in without a coat, they had no recourse but to freeze. The cells had no bathroom, only a single chamber pot—without even a lid, so the place constantly reeked—that was seldom emptied. Soldiers had no showers, and no medical attention. If memory serves, the guide said they were fed once a day, and poorly. Death from starvation, cold, and sickness were common. Beatings and other forms of torture were used to extract confessions. Conditions were so inhumane that many attempted suicide; but since there was nothing in the cell, no sharp objects or chords, even this was difficult.
Conditions improved somewhat when, in 1951, the Stasi took over. Instead of using the old food cellars, they built an actual prison building. The cells were above ground, with windows, and had a toilet, a sink, and a mirror. The guards didn’t carry guns, for fear that the prisoners might steal one. In the hallway outside the cells, running along the wall, is a chord that, if tugged, sets off an alarm. Prisoners were not allowed to speak to each other, or even exchange glances, outside the cells. According to the guide, the Stasi used psychological forms of torture more often than beatings. Interrogators would try to gain the prisoner’s confidence, to use a mixture of threats and friendliness to get what they were after. Sometimes more stringent forms of torture was used, like sleep deprivation. In any case, prisoners had to sleep with their arms outside the blanket; and guards would come several times a night to shine a light inside the cell, checking that their arms were in view. The only outside recreation they were allowed was in what was called the ‘tiger cage,’ a small enclosure with high walls and a caged roof.
Incredibly, the prison was completely unknown to the public while it was in use, even though it is a large compound in the capital. This is partly why it remains standing in such pristine condition. Almost nobody knew about it; so after the fall of the Berlin Wall, angry demonstrators didn’t come pouring in the gates. Part of the tour included the unmarked van used to pick up prisoners without detection. According to the guide, after the wall fell, former prisoners sometimes bumped into their erstwhile interrogators. In one anecdote she recounted, the interrogator refused to apologize; but in another, the interrogator said he was sorry for what happened.
I have recounted the tour as best as I remember it; but this brief summary does not capture the feeling of standing in those dark cells, seeing the interrogation rooms—eerily office-like—and thinking of all the people who suffered and died here while their loved ones waited in total ignorance of their whereabouts. The whole environment was designed to be dehumanizing, to make life as uncomfortable and as fearful as possible for the inmates.
This completes my short experiences with the somber memorials of Berlin. There is not much more to be said. I left Berlin with a keen awareness of the terrors that took place within recent memory, and with a deep respect for the citizens’ commitment to remembering these terrors. These monuments are built to commemorate crimes, crimes that reveal the lowest depths of our nature. That these monuments were built—in the very heart of the country where these crimes took place—shows us the heights we can rise to.
Here goes another travel post delayed by a year. Now, however, I don’t feel quite so bad, since I learned that the famous travel writer, Patrick Leigh Fermor, wrote his account of his youthful travels over 40 years after the trip itself. So maybe I’m not such a nincompoop after all. (For part 2 of this post, about the ugly history of Berlin, click here.)
Germany in Mind
Germany: The very word looms over my whole conception of the world.
Like so many of my bewildered generation, when I was in high school I spent a lot of time watching television. The problem, then as now, was that nothing was on. In desperation my brother and I often turned to the History Channel. If we were unlucky, Modern Marvels would be on—a show about the history of automobile manufacturing, or how screws evolved from nails, or something similarly dry. (This was before the History Channel became the Conspiracy Theory Channel, and had no programs about ancient aliens.)
The good stuff were the World War II documentaries. Grainy footage of soldiers marching across barren landscapes, the whistling of bombs released from bombers, stupendous explosions and the bright streaks of tracer bullets fired from fighter planes—all these scenes of battle, so captivating to young boys, were mixed up with footage of one man: Hitler. Every documentary was sure to feature that stiff, stern, mustachioed man yelling shrilly, punctuating his pronouncements with jerky gestures.
It is an injustice to the German language that so many people are exposed to it through the oratory of that execrable man. Naturally, the language in that tyrant’s mouth is violent, aggressive, ugly, shrieking, garbled—as were his thoughts. But the abuse of one man ought not to cast aspersions on a whole language. Spoken well, German can be gentle, sweet, and tender.
I fell under its spell from my very first exposure. In the sixth grade we had a language survey, covering bits of Italian, Spanish, French, and German, to see which language we wanted to study. At the end of the term we were asked to rank our favorites. For me there was no question. It had to be German. The language was strangely akin to English, and yet so different in spirit: purer, stronger, more elemental. I put German as my first choice; and because I was required to list a second and third choice, I absently put down Italian and French. This decision came to haunt me later, for it was soon revealed that there wasn’t a German teacher. I took Italian as my main language—which exposed me to lots of excellent food, but which held no appeal to my immature mind.
These vague childhood impressions were soon supplemented by more definite knowledge. In a college literature class I was exposed to Thomas Mann, who soon became my first literary passion, a model of erudition and eloquence that simply dazzled me. Shortly after that, by a complete coincidence, somebody in my a capella group mentioned that he was teaching himself German using tapes; and when I showed an interest, he offered to lend them to me. I snatched at the opportunity; and from the first tape, the long-dormant passion for German was reawakened.
Once again I found myself enamored of the language—the magnificent German tongue, which combines rustic roughness with intensity of thought, earthiness with cerebral density, not to mention seriousness with silliness. (Click here to experience the silliness.) The next semester I enrolled in a German class, even though it had little to do with my major. For my twenty-first birthday I went to a German restaurant in New York City, Hallo Berlin, and ate sausages and sauerkraut and drank Weißbier, and felt absolutely stuffed and happy; and my fondness for the country has continued unabated ever since.
And all this still leaves out the dozens of the figures from Germany’s history—musicians, poets, philosophers, and scientists—who have puzzled my mind and saturated my spirits. From Bach to Beethoven, from Goethe to Nietzsche, from Kant to Heidegger, from Einstein to Weber, the Deutscher Geist has dominated my intellectual and my artistic interests. The horny grammar and spiky consonants of the German language, the labyrinthine fugues of Bach and the devious arguments of Kant, spiced with sour mustard and cooled with foamy beer—all this had combined, since I was in university, to form an impression of the Germans as somehow special. I wanted—no, I needed—to go see Germany for myself. And I finally did, however briefly, with my trip to Berlin.
First Impressions of Berlin
You might say that all this expectation could only lead to disappointment. This is half true. Nothing could possibly match the absurd image of Germany I had built up over the years: a city dominated by high-tech robots giving every citizen hours of leisure, a society of engineers who philosophize in their free time, every one of them relaxing in a beer hall downing Schnapps and singing Lieders in group harmony—it’s absurd, I know, but I really couldn’t imagine Germany being any other way.
The aspect that Berlin first presented to me was rather ordinary. I took a bus from the airport to the city center (Berlin is very well-connected) and I remember looking out the window and seeing: a city. That’s it—not a space-age colony, not a rustic paradise—a city, comparable to Madrid or Rome. But there was no doubt that I was in Germany. The people on the bus couldn’t be anything but German.
It is always a shock coming from Spain to Northern Europe. By and large, Spaniards are shorter, with slightly darker skin, and blacker hair. The Germans are the opposite in every respect: pale, tall, and blonde. (I’m speaking in generalities of course.) Even at a glance, there is no mistaking a bus-full of Spaniards for a bus-full of Germans.
There is also a striking difference in dress. Spanish people—despite their generally open attitude towards public displays of affection (Americans are often shocked by the kissing that goes on in metros and restaurants)—on the whole dress somewhat conservatively. Clothes tend not to be very revealing, either on men or women. (I have reason to believe, however, that this is slowly changing.) If you wear shorts and sandals before June, you will be stared at. What’s more, Spanish people tend to dress more formally than Americans; you can see women wearing elegant dresses on any day in the week—even among friends—and Spanish offices are seas of suits and ties.
Germany, from what I could see in Berlin, is quite different. Indeed I’d say the German attitude towards fashion is far closer to ours in the United States: tank-tops, belly shirts, short-shorts, flip-flops, and every other type of skimpy clothing under the sun is embraced. But there is one major respect in which the Germans differ from Americans: they are not puritans.
Not a Puritan
You see, compared to Europeans, Americans are prudes when it comes to the body. Flip open a German magazine—not a pornographic one, but any old magazine—and you can see exposed breasts. Advertisements in Berlin feature, not only scantily clad women, but also the exposed male body—hairy, bulging, and thick (see the two examples above). This feature of their culture was revealed to me, in the most literal sense, when I was strolling through the Tiergarten (the central park of Berlin), and found myself suddenly surrounded by naked men lounging on the grass in broad daylight. Part of me was scandalized (think of the children!), but another part was very amused.
Now, I honestly have no idea why Spaniards dress more conservatively but kiss in public, why Germans dress skimpily and sun themselves naked in parks, and why Americans dress skimpily but avoid both kissing in public and public nudity. But I imagine the explanation has a lot to do with religious history.
The city of Berlin apparently has a reputation among Germans. I spoke to a couple of German students a few months before my trip, who told me that Berlin was the poorest region of the country. The city was dubbed “poor but sexy” by its own mayor. According to what I can find, Berlin is heavily in debt and is subsidized by the rest of the country, with the worst education in the country and an abnormally high crime rate. My Airbnb host explained that the city attracted a lot of artists and bohemian types because it’s bad economy made it a cheap place to live. The whole city gives off a hipstery vibe, with lots of street art, outdoor markets, and nifty stores; and like many aspiring artists, the city of Berlin is financially supported by its family.
Berlin Street Art
Aside from its grungy aspect, Berlin is notable for its layout. The city has no discernable center. All the major monuments seem scattered about at random. The city stretches out in every direction without any obvious plan or natural boundary. I believe this lack of apparent center or scheme is due to two major factors: that the city was pummeled into rubble during the Second World War, and that it was rebuilt while it was divided into different zones, each controlled by different countries. (Yet I have just read in Stefan Zweig’s autobiography that Berlin lacked a center even before the First World War, so I can’t say.) The longstanding division between East and West has left a permanent mark on the city.
I said above that my elevated expectations of Berlin could only lead to disappointment. But this was only half true. For everything Berlin lacked in space-age technology and opera-singing metaphysicians, the city made up for with unexpected charm. I felt immediately comfortable in Berlin, in a way that I rarely feel in foreign cities. Everyone I spoke to was friendly; the city felt safe and even cozy, like one giant neighborhood. Hipsters drank beer in the streets and friends bounced a balls in the park. There was a sense of intimacy, of familiarity, which I could not explain but which I nevertheless felt. (I have a friend who tells me he hated every minute of being in Berlin, so clearly this feeling is not universal.) Aside from this feeling of general contentment, I also found that Berlin is full of fascinating history; and this is what I’m here to tell you about.
A Note on Food, Immigration, & Transport
You may be interested to learn that, outside of Turkey itself, Berlin is the city with the highest population of Turks.
This, indeed, was the immigration ‘problem’ German people worried about before the Syrian Refugee Crisis: that there were so many immigrants coming from Turkey, and many of them were not integrating as fast as most people desired. They weren’t learning German and mixing in German society, but living in Turkish neighborhoods speaking Turkish. This was regarded as an alarming development.
Parenthetically, this is an interesting illustration of the different attitudes towards immigration in the United States and continental Europe. For all the xenophobia that has raged in the United States—and now more than in any decade of recent memory—Americans, at least in cities with high immigrant populations, are far more comfortable, on average, with immigrants keeping their language, dress, diet, and so on, than are Europeans. The controversy in France over the burkini, for example, simply could never happen in the United States. We have more than enough islamophobes, thank you very much, but lawmakers wouldn’t even contemplate passing legislation about acceptable forms of swimwear.
Note that this is not because Americans generally have a more positive opinion of Islam than French people do. To the contrary, I think the reverse is probably the case. But in America we do not have such a strong sense of “Culture”—traditional ways of dressing, eating, dating, speaking, and so on, that pervade every aspect of daily life—as exists in, say, France or Germany. Rather, in keeping with our traditional individualism, Americans conceive of choices in dress, diet, love, and speech as based on individual preference rather than having much to do with tradition. There are traditional sectors of American society, of course; but they are traditional by free choice. And no single tradition (except perhaps vague notions of “freedom” and “democracy”) would be accepted by any large fraction of the population.
Now, I should clarify that I am not denying that there is no such thing as American Culture; nor that the French and Germans are not individualistic; all I’m saying is that Americans don’t like to think of ourselves as living in accordance with any culture except the one we choose through our own free will. And if somebody wants to mess with that decision, they can go read the Constitution!
I am getting off track here. Well, the point is that Berlin has a lot of Turkish people. As a result, Turkish food has become wildly popular, and justly so. I once listened to two German students describe in raptures all their favorite kebab spots. The best kebab spot in any city is, apparently, a source of hot dispute among the locals.
If I can join in on this argument, I’d like to advocate for Mustafa’s Kebab. It is not even a restaurant, but a food stand selling different types of kebab. Trust me: go there and order one. All the ingredients are fresh: the crispy cucumbers and carrots, the refreshing feta cheese, the perfectly grilled meat—it is marvelous, simultaneously delicious and surprisingly wholesome, not to mention affordable, which is why there is always a long line. I ate there the first day and then went back the next.
Apart from this heavenly experience, the other famous dish in Berlin is the Currywurst. This is just sausage and fries with a creamy curry sauce. The combination of sausage and curry did not strike me as particularly promising, but I trust the Germans, and I had the meal twice. Both times I thought that, indeed, curry on sausage was odd; but I like curry, and I like sausage, and fries are always welcome. I enjoy it; but it is a greasy, heavy meal, not ideal for physical activity of any kind.
Speaking of avoiding physical activity, I should add a note about public transportation. Unlike in either New York or Madrid, the transport system in Berlin uses the honor code. You are trusted to buy a ticket and to verify it before every trip. But there is no barrier, gate, or turnstile preventing you from getting on. Bus drivers don’t check; the metro and the tram are hop-on, hop-off. It took me three trips on the transport system to figure out that, yes, I was expected to pay (I watched a few dutiful Germans verify their transport cards before boarding).
This prompted me to look up if it was common to avoid paying, since I had already taken three free trips by accident and nobody had noticed. This brought me to this fascinating article. Apparently there is a relatively small but dedicated band of Berliners who daringly ride the metro without a ticket. This is known in German as schwarzfahren (literally, “black going”—what a wonderful language!). But there are risks. Plainclothes officers, known as Kontrolleurs, ride metros and trams all day, randomly checking if people have a valid ticket. If you are caught without a ticket you can get fined for 40€ as a first-time offense. Granted, there is a chance of escaping the car once you see the agents begin checking, but this is far from assured. I took eleven or twelve trips while I was there and never witnessed any check. But for those intrepid souls looking to fight the man and seek perilous thrills by schwarzfahren, be warned.
Monuments of Life
I made one major mistake when visiting Berlin: I didn’t book a tour of the Reichstag building ahead of time. The Reichstag building (the word Reichstag, which means parliament, literally means “kingdom day”) is the current parliament building. It was originally constructed back in the 1890s, when Germany was an Empire, to house the Imperial Diet; it then burned down in mysterious circumstances in 1933, giving the ascendant Nazi party a convenient excuse to start jailing political enemies. After that, the building lay unrepaired and unused during the Nazi era and the Cold War; and it wasn’t until the reunification in 1990 that the building was finally refurbished and put back into use by the current parliament, the Bundestag (Bundestag literally means “federation day”).
Whatever the building’s history, I couldn’t visit it, since you need to book your tour in advance. (Follow this link.) I went up and asked if there were any free spots available, but there weren’t any until Tuesday, the day after I was going to leave. From the outside the building is impressive: a grand palatial edifice in neoclassical style. As I’ve mentioned in my post about Rome, Roman architecture has been adopted worldwide as the architecture of power; and nowhere is this on greater display than in Berlin. The front pediment of the Reichstag building features a Parthenon-esque frieze of Grecian gods surrounds the German coat of arms, an eagle derived from Roman military standards. Under all this is written Dem Deutschen Volk (literally, “The German People,” but the use of the dative “Dem” implies “To the German People”). Apparently, Kaiser Wilhelm II found the democratic ring of these words distasteful. Considering that he was the last Kaiser, I suppose the joke is on him.
The Reichstag building stands near the equally famous Brandenburg Gate (Brandenburger Tor). This is another example of Roman-inspired architecture, modeled after the triumphal arches in that ancient city. Its construction was ordered by the Prussian King Frederick William II, to celebrate the defeat of the Batavian Revolution; and like any worthwhile piece of political propaganda, it commemorates a victory that never happened: the revolution was only momentarily delayed, and eventually succeeded.
The gate originally replaced an older, fortified gate in the city walls. (At this point in history, the walls had become obsolete anyway.) Much later, during the Cold War, the Brandenburg Gate came to serve a far more nefarious purpose: to keep the citizens of East Germany in rather than to keep invaders out.
The Brandenburger Tor stands on the erstwhile border of East and West Berlin; formerly, the Berlin Wall encircled the gate in a sinister embrace. During this time, the dual symbolism of a gate, as a barrier or a portal, as a something can divide or connect, gave the monument a special meaning. Reagan gave his famous plea to “tear down this wall” standing before the Brandenburger Tor; and now, after the breakup of the Soviet Union, the gate is an enduring symbol of European unity.
Atop the Brandenburg Gate is a quadriga, a statue of Victory being drawn in a chariot by four horses. This statue has its own political history. After Napoleon defeated Prussia in the Battle of Jena (which Hegel famously overheard while completing his opus, The Phenomenology of Spirit), the French marched into the city through the gate, and then Napoleon took the quadriga back with him to Paris. (Rather petty, I think.) The quadriga was returned to Berlin after Napoleon’s eventual defeat. Then, during the Second World War, the gate was smashed up in the fighting, and the original quadriga was almost entirely destroyed; only one horse’s head survived, now on display somewhere in a museum.
Proceeding through the Brandenburg Gate, you reach the Tiergarten (literally “animal garden,” since the park originated as a private hunting grounds for the king), which is the central park of Berlin. The park is huge: at 210 hectares, it is one of the biggest parks in Germany. It is also absolutely enchanting. The paths wind lazily through the park, under overhanging trees, across green fields, past perfectly reflective lakes and the occasional statue or monument, with bikers riding by and friends playing catch (and older German men sunning their naked bodies)—it’s all lovely (except for the nudists). Somehow the Tiergarten combines the unplanned beauty of a nature reserve with the comfort and charm of English gardens; the park is at once wild and tamed. Without a doubt, it is the finest park I have visited in Europe.
(I do admit, however, that the sight of people practicing sports and exercising often puts me in a foul mood. I have never liked sports or exercise; and the thought that people would defile a beautiful park like this with activity aimed only at physical fitness or pleasure, fills me with despair. Parks should be for quiet contemplation and for reading—for improving the mind and achieving tranquility—not for bulking up the body and for inducing meaningless excitement! I know I’m being silly here, but it’s hard to contemplate the meaning of existence with the constant sound of people kicking a soccer ball and yelling at each other. This is not a criticism of the Tiergarten, but of humanity.)
In the center of the Tiergarten is yet another notable Roman-inspired construction: the Berlin Victory Column. Like all victory columns, this one takes its inspiration from Trajan’s Column in Rome. The Berlin Victory Column was commissioned during the 1860s to commemorate Prussia’s victory over Denmark; and when Prussia went on to defeat Austria and France, the commissioners decided to top the column with a shining bronze statue of Victory for good measure. The Berlin Victory Column is truly a tower; the combined height of the statue and the pillar is 67 meters, or 220 feet. (For comparison, the Statue of Liberty, base included, is 93 meters.) It was moved to its current location by the Nazis, in anticipation of their plan to turn Germany into Welthauptstadt Germania (World Capital Germania—more on this in my next post). You can climb the more than 200 stairs to the top if you pay a fee. I wasn’t tempted.
Although this qualifies as a monument to death rather than life, I should mention here the Soviet War Memorial that sits in the Tiergarten. It is a monument to the 80,000 Soviet soldiers who died during the Battle of Berlin, during the Second World War. As luck would have it, the monument was constructed in what later became West Germany; as a result, during the Cold War honor guards from East Germany came every day to stand watch; and civilians from East Germany were prevented by the Berlin Wall from visiting the monument that commemorates their “liberation.” History’s can be rather droll. The monument is yet another example of Roman-inspired architecture, taking the form of a gently curving Stoa. Two howitzer artillery pieces and two T-34 tanks flank the monument, and a striding statue of a soldier—unmistakably Soviet in his heroic pose—caps off the display. It is hard to know what to feel about all this. While I was there, a German man began yelling at a couple of teenagers and threatening to call the police; this only added to my confusion.
From this memorial it is a 25 minute walk to our next site: Museum Island. This is a complex of five state-owned museums on an island in the Spree river.
The most famous and most visited of these is the Pergamon Museum. This museum was opened in 1930 to display some of the large-scale archaeological discoveries recently made by German researchers. I have a habit of running into lengthy, ecstatic descriptions when I write about museums, as displayed in my post about the British Museum, so I will attempt to limit myself to a brief comment.
The Pergamon Museum is named after its most famous exhibit: the Pergamon Altar, a beautifully preserved temple from the Ancient Greek city of Pergamon. Unfortunately, the exhibit was closed in 2014 for remodeling, and won’t be open against until 2019 or 2020; so I did not get to see it.
Ishtar Gate detail
I did, however, get to see the Ishtar Gate, which might be even more beautiful. This is a gate constructed in the walls of Babylon during the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar II, in the sixth century BCE. Its function is as decorative as defensive. Made of bricks glazed with lapis lazuli, the gate must have shone like cobalt in the sun; and its azul surface is covered in exquisite bas-reliefs of dragons and bulls. As it stands, the gate in the museum is not entirely original: some bricks were created using the original technique to complete the structure. In any case, I think the Ishtar Gate is easily among the most beautiful works of art from the ancient world: I was stunned when I saw pictures of it in Art History class, and stunned when I saw it in Berlin.
Ishtar Gate
Beside the Pergamon Altar and the Ishtar Gate, the museum has two more monumental exhibitions: the Market Gate of Miletus and the Mshatta Facade.
Market Gate of Miletus
The Market Gate of Miletus was built by the Romans in the second century and destroyed by an earthquake a few hundred years later. In 1900 the insatiably curious German archaeologists found the destroyed gate, excavated it, and transported the pieces to Berlin. Its reconstruction involved the use of many new materials, which was controversial; then World War II inflicted further damage on the old ruin, requiring further reconstruction. For something with such a violent past, so often rebuilt, the gate is convincingly ancient and absolutely impressive. It is a two-store facade with rows of columns, rather like the backdrop of the amphitheater I saw in Mérida, Spain.
Mshatta Façade
The Mshatta façade is perhaps even more impressive. It is a section from a wall of an Ummayad Palace, excavated in present-day Jordan, built in the eighth century. The wall is exquisitely decorated with fine animal and vegetable motifs carved into the surface. This monument, like seemingly everything in this city, was also damaged in World War II. The Mshatta façade is the largest, though perhaps not the most beautiful, exhibition in the museum’s section on Islamic art. There were decorated Korans, luxurious rugs, sections of columns, roofs, and walls covered in wonderful geometrical arabesques. No culture in history, I suspect, has developed the art of ornamentation to such a pitch of perfection as in Muslim culture: every surface, every nook and cranny, every piece of furniture and written word, is executed with care and taste.
It is possible to buy a combined pass for all the museums on Museum Island—the Pergamon Museum, the Bode Museum, the Old National Gallery, the New Museum, and the Old Museum—but I had neither the time nor the money for that. After the Pergamon Museum, I could realistically only visit one more, and I chose the Old National Gallery. But this was a hard choice to make. The Neues Museum has the iconic bust of Nefertiti, still gorgeous and regal after three millennia. The Altes Museum looked even better, with an impressive and extensive collection of Greco-Roman statues—not to mention the lovely neoclassical building itself. But after the Pergamon Museum—and after seeing the British Museum a few weeks earlier—I’d had enough of the ancient world.
Alte Nationalgalerie
The building of the Alte Nationalgalerie yet another stately neoclassical construction; and the visitor, upon ascending the front steps, is greeted by equally stately neoclassical sculptures and busts of famous Germans. The pure white marble and technical finish of these sculptures immediately struck me as cold and academic, as does most art that imitates a dead culture.
Hegel
The paintings inside—which mostly consist of portraits, landscapes, and still lifes from the 18th to the 19th centuries—ranged from the forgettable to the truly excellent. Of particular interest, for me, were the portraits of Hegel (stern old metaphysician), the brothers Grimm (as skeletal as their stories), and Alexander von Humboldt (a dashing dandy).
The finest paintings on display were those by Caspar David Friedrich, whose portraits of humanity dwarfed and mocked by nature—silhouetted figures under glowing suns, buffeted by tides and rain, or lonely men solemnly contemplating a vast expanse or the desiccated ruins of some dead culture—capture and express the same sentiment as Shelley does in “Ozymandias”: the overwhelming awareness of human finitude. Other than these works, however, I mostly enjoyed the few impressionist and post-impressionist works on offer.
The Abbey in the Oakwood, by Caspar David Friedrich
The courtyard outside the Nationalgalerie is one of the most peaceful and pleasant spots I found in Berlin. The river flows nearby, with barges carrying tourists drifting past, and on the far bank are still more tourists basking in the sun. From here it is a very quick walk to Berlin Cathedral. This stands at the end of an equally picturesque plaza, full of Germans and foreigners lounging in the grass and kids playing with the central fountain.
At a glance you can tell that Berlin Cathedral is not particularly old. The central dome and the four smaller domes which surround it are all made of copper, I believe, and have the same pale green color as the Statue of Liberty. The statues of saints and angels surrounding the front portal are tinted this same algae-green. This creates an odd effect when combined with the fine neo-Renaissance building, like parts of an old ship welded onto a resplendent bank; but for all that, the cathedral is an impressive sight.
Originally built in the early 1900s, as a kind of Protestant version of St. Peter’s, it was damaged and partially destroyed, like everything, during the Second World War. Situated in East Germany, it was unsure whether the government—officially hostile to religion—would reconstruct the cathedral. Eventually they did, but the cathedral’s most famous and beautiful wing, the Denkmalkirche was destroyed, as a symbol of the Hohenzollern dynasty. Political pettiness has always been with is.
It is worth the fee to visit the Berlin Cathedral. The interior is finely decorated and cheerfully bright. Of particular interest to me—since I had just finished reading a book about the Reformation—were the sculptures of Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and Melanchthon standing high up above the main altar. The visitor can, if she so wishes, climb all the way up to the dome of the cathedral to see Berlin. I enjoyed the climb; but I must say that the view—ugly apartment buildings and construction sites—did not make me feel inclined to wax poetic or to fall into raptures about the beauties of the city.
Isn’t it glorious?
In any case, you can also visit the crypt in the basement, where several members of the Hohenzollern dynasty are buried. Compared with, say, the royal crypt in Spain’s El Escorial, this one struck me as simple and subdued. Some of the coffins are quite plain and unremarkable. A few are elaborately carved, gilded, and decorated. As in the El Escorial, there are quite a few coffins for young children and infants. Before the age of vaccines and modern medicine, even the most powerful of the world couldn’t keep their children safe. But this brings me to the second part of this post: death.
Lotz in Translation 