A tour of Mitte with Ulf Heinsohn

This Tuesday we took a walk through cold, foggy Mitte with Ulf Heinsohn, who helped us unpack some of the layers of meaning in the architecture around us. One of our first stops was the Neue Synagoge, or New Synagogue. Built in the 1860s, the building referred to both the history of Judaism and to its connections with Berlin: the style reflects one of the high points of Jewish culture (the Moorish architecture of the medieval period in Spain, where synagogues took on a look borrowed from Islamic architecture), but it uses a local traditional material (brick).

We also stopped at the Rosenstrasse memorial, which honors the wives of Jewish forced laborers who successfully protested their husbands’ deportation. The memorial was designed by the daughter of one of these couples.

At the Marienkirche, one of the oldest churches in Berlin, we learned how the architecture reflects the changes in the church community. The windowless front of the church was built that way in order to function as a fortress in case of invasion during the late medieval period. The cross in front of the church functioned in “trials by ordeal” — if the accused could fit their fingers in all five holes, they were considered innocent!

Our walk in the cold weather definitely earned us a delicious meal. Our group enjoyed a wonderful dinner together that night at Matzbach, one of our favorite German restaurants!