Browsing articles tagged with " cold"
Nov 23, 2011
Naraelle Hohensee
Comments Off on A trip to Wittenberg

A trip to Wittenberg

This Tuesday we took a day trip to the town of Wittenberg, about an hour away by train.

Wittenberg’s most famous resident was, of course, Martin Luther, who lived here in what was an Augustinian monastery and, after the Reformation, a school and his private residence.

The building is now an excellent museum on the history of the Reformation. One of its best features is the many paintings by Lucas Cranach, who was a close friend of Luther’s. Here are Cranach’s portraits of Luther and his wife Katharina, a former nun. Their marriage has become such a legend that it is reenacted every summer by the locals in Wittenberg!

A few of the rooms are wonderfully preserved, as well. Here is one of the rooms that Luther used as an everyday living space.

(John and Eleanor paused for a quick photo under the portal to Luther’s house.)

The other important site in Wittenberg is the Schlosskirche, where Luther famously nailed his 95 theses on the door in 1517. The church has burned down and been rebuilt since then, but it’s still a pretty amazing piece of history!

One thing that has really been brought home to us – especially in these last weeks, as we discuss contemporary German identity – is just how integral Christian, and in the north, especially Protestant, history is to an understanding of what many people believe it means to be German. This is where it all started, after all! And, as the history of the Reformation shows us, changing people’s assumptions can be difficult. As Germany moves into an age where multiculturalism is increasingly a feature of the social landscape, it will be interesting to see how they make sense of the shifts in religious identity, as well.

Nov 17, 2011
Naraelle Hohensee
Comments Off on A tour of three Holocaust memorials with Ryder, Cassie and Michelle

A tour of three Holocaust memorials with Ryder, Cassie and Michelle

Our student-led tour this week took us to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a large memorial in the center of Berlin. Our guides Michelle and Cassie explained the history of the site, and encouraged us to experience it for ourselves. The memorial, designed by Peter Eisenman, consists of a field of stelae meant to engender a highly personal experience for each visitor.

Our tour also included a visit to a lesser-known, though still centrally-located, memorial: the Memorial to the Roma and Sinti Murdered by the Nazis. Because of problems with the materials, it’s still unfinished. Ryder introduced us to the history of these groups, as well as some of the controversies surrounding the building of the memorial.

We also stopped to take in the memorial honoring homosexual victims of the Holocaust, and learned a little about gay history in Berlin and Germany. Together, all three of these memorials represent important gestures by the German government toward honoring the victims of the Nazis and ensuring that such a tragedy does not occur here again. We were especially lucky that our students took the time to point out the two lesser-known memorials that augment the powerful Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.

Nov 17, 2011
Naraelle Hohensee
Comments Off on A tour of Mitte with Ulf Heinsohn

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!

 

Nov 14, 2011
Naraelle Hohensee
Comments Off on A visit to the Reichstag

A visit to the Reichstag

Our activities this week included a tour of the Reichstag (the German parliament building).

Our guide was Ulli Finkenbusch, who works for the Free Democratic Party (FDP). After an introductory discussion about some important political issues facing Germany, we took a tour of the building, beginning with the mezzanine level.

On the lower level of the main parliament building, we viewed an artwork by Christian Bolstanski (left), consisting of metal boxes with the names of all the German Parliament members since 1919. We also saw the remains of the tunnel through which the arsonist who set fire to the Reichstag in 1993 is supposed to have entered building.

We then traversed the underground walkway connecting the Reichstag with the parliament meeting rooms and offices in the Paul-Löbe-Haus.

On our way back through the Reichstag, we glimpsed graffiti left by Soviet soldiers in 1945, which has been preserved as part of the integral history of the building.

Our final stop was on the roof, where Ulli pointed out several of the city sights that are visible from there, and we enjoyed a beautiful sunset!

 

 

Nov 12, 2011
Naraelle Hohensee
Comments Off on Dresden: Florence on the Elbe

Dresden: Florence on the Elbe

This Friday and Saturday our class took a trip to Dresden, a beautiful baroque city on the banks of the Elbe River.

The students explored several of the historic sites in the city, including the Frauenkirche. Once a famous ruin symbolizing the firebombing of Dresden, the church has been recently reconstructed.

Since the students were all responsible for seeing the sights on their own, we don’t have images of their explorations, but you can see Annie’s, Mariah’s, Melissa’s or Robert’s blogs for their own photos.

We also learned about an interesting German holiday in Dresden: St. Martin’s Day. Families walk together around the city holding lanterns. All of the cute little kids and their homemade lanterns were quite a sight!

On Friday night, we enjoyed a delicious group dinner at a local Indian restaurant!

… and Chance and I enjoyed Dresden, too!

 

 

Nov 5, 2011
Naraelle Hohensee
Comments Off on Cheering on Hertha BSC at Olympia Stadium

Cheering on Hertha BSC at Olympia Stadium

This Saturday we headed out to Olympia Stadium to see Berlin’s team Hertha BSC play against Borussia Mönchengladbach. Not only was it fun to cheer on the team, but we got to experience a piece of history! Built under the Nazis, Olympia Stadium was home to the famous 1936 Olympic Games. In 2006, it also hosted the World Cup (the fancy new roof was added then).

Even though our team lost, the students really enjoyed the experience of a true European soccer game – complete with wildly cheering fans. The energy in the stadium was enough to keep us all entertained!

Oct 29, 2011
Naraelle Hohensee
Comments Off on KZ Sachsenhausen: four layers of memory

KZ Sachsenhausen: four layers of memory

Our visit to Buchenwald last weekend left us all with much to think about concerning the troublesome history of the Holocaust and the aftermath of WWII. This past Friday, we visited another concentration camp site, this time much nearer to Berlin. As opposed to Buchenwald, which is somewhat removed from the town of Weimar, Sachsenhausen is set essentially within the town of Oranienburg. The students were shocked to see how close the camp was to the surrounding houses: it reveals much about the attitude of many Germans toward the existence of these sites during the Nazi era.

   

The exhibitions and interpretive materials on the site (which is still in the process of being remodeled) seek to reveal four major eras in the camp’s existence. The first is the building and use of the camp by the Nazis, beginning in 1936. Though many Jews were imprisoned here, it was better known as a camp for political prisoners, especially Communists. It was also a prominent training site for the SS, as well as a “show” camp for Hitler and his officials. Though it wasn’t a death camp, tens of thousands of prisoners died here as a result of starvation, disease, abuse, and torture, as well as medical experiments.

After the war, the Soviets used Sachsenhausen as a “special camp” where they held various German prisoners to await trial. (Above: extra housing outside the camp walls which was used during this time.) Several thousand people died during this stage of the camp’s existence – mostly of starvation, disease and exposure. It’s difficult to know what to do with the memory of these deaths, as many of the prisoners were either Nazis themselves, or had been willing participants in the culture of the regime. Still, the evidence of human suffering here is also staggering.

 

After the Soviets abandoned the camp, the GDR government refurbished it (as they did Buchenwald) as a memorial site. Here at Sachsenhausen, this included a large memorial structure (where soldiers were regularly inducted into the army), as well as a museum that emphasized the suffering of the Communist prisoners held here by the Nazis. For East Germany, the identity of the Communists as victims of the fascist regime was a central part of the national narrative, so sites like these became points for the public expression of collective persecution at the hands of the Nazis – even if very few GDR citizens had actually been Communists prior to 1945. On the other hand, the memory of the Soviet camp was completely suppressed under the East Germans, so that families who had lost loved ones here during the post-war period were unable to speak about their own suffering until after 1989.

With the fall of the wall, the camp became a flashpoint for conflicting narratives and memories: how can both victims of the Nazis and Nazis or collaborators themselves be remembered and mourned on the same site? This is a question that haunts many spaces in Berlin, not only Sachsenhausen. The current design of the site attempts to deal with this through a “decentralized” approach, using the various structures to house extensive exhibitions of archival material. Still, we’re left wondering: how do we decide who has the right to be remembered, and how?

There are many more buildings on the site, but I couldn’t bring myself to photograph them. Sites of terrible suffering and unspeakable crimes, I think they are best left to be pondered in the abstract. If you’re interested, however, you can read more about the site here.

 

Oct 24, 2011
Naraelle Hohensee

A trip to Weimar & Dessau

This weekend we traveled to the beautiful city of Weimar, home of Goethe, Schillar, Liszt, and the birthplace of the Bauhaus! Our first stop on Friday afternoon was the Bauhaus museum – a small but unique little space with treasures from the first years of the school’s existence. Unfortunately the Bauhaus school was forced to leave Weimar after the Nazi party gained power in the state of Thüringen in 1924.

 

This opened a difficult chapter in Weimar’s history, and on Saturday we visited the nearby site of Buchenwald concentration camp.

The most striking thing one finds on entering the camp is the view: the camp is set in the middle of the forest (Buche means “beech” and Wald means “woods”), on a hill that allows a view across the valley. It’s difficult to believe that such horrible things could transpire amidst such natural beauty.

The original barracks are no longer extant – most are now marked with dark loose stones, but one has been rebuilt in its original form. One of the few other buildings still standing on the grounds is the crematorium, which was strangely located adjacent to a little petting zoo built for the children of the SS.

The Goethe Eiche – Goethe’s Oak – was an oak tree left standing in the camp by the SS. The prisoners named it in remembrance of Goethe’s trips to this same forest. It was damaged in an Allied bombing in 1944 and subsequently chopped down.

Buchenwald was also used as a Soviet internment camp after the war. It’s thought that about 7,ooo people died during this time in the camp’s history, and they were buried in unmarked graves in the woods surrounding the site. Because Thüringen became part of East Germany, the deaths were not acknowledged during the Cold War. The fall of the Berlin Wall finally allowed the victims’ families to speak up and publicly remember their relatives.

The Soviets left another highly visible legacy: a huge memorial to the camp’s liberation, on a hill overlooking Weimar. Buchenwald’s many layers of tragic history gave us much to consider …

 

The class was free to spend the rest of the day exploring the town. Chance and I took a stroll through the park and admired the “Roman House,” the amazing landscape and the first Bauhaus demonstration house, the Haus am Horn.

 

Today we left Weimar and headed back to Berlin, with a stop in Dessau to visit the most famous site of the Bauhaus, their school building, designed by Walter Gropius and built in 1925-6. We got a fantastic tour from a very knowledgeable and enthusiastic guide, and I think our students might almost be convinced that Modernism isn’t all horrible … (those of us who study architecture are already sold).

We couldn’t have asked for a more lovely day to see this truly seminal piece of architecture. This week we dive into the study of the specter that haunts both the history of the Bauhaus and Buchenwald: the Nazis and their influence on Berlin and Germany.

 

Oct 8, 2011
Naraelle Hohensee
Comments Off on A day on the Pfaueninsel

A day on the Pfaueninsel

On Friday we took a trip about an hour outside of Berlin to a magical place called the Pfaueninsel – Peacock Island – for a class retreat. Our goal wasn’t to engage with official historical narratives so much as to relax and be together in a beautiful natural setting!

After riding the S-Bahn to Wannsee, we got to ride on a classic double-decker bus that took us through the woods to the entrance to the island.

Our first stop on the island was Schloss Pfaueninsel, erected for King Friedrich Wilhelm II and his mistress Wilhelmine Enke in the 1790s. Built from wood, it’s supposed to look like a white ruin on the island of Capri!

Of course, the first thing everyone looked for on the island were the eponymous peacocks – and the students found, and were chased aggressively by – a whole flock of them!

 

The island contains no end of sublime vistas and interesting architectural follies. It was formerly one of the many pleasure grounds of the Prussian royalty, replete with ridiculous attempts at the picturesque. For instance:

 

A “dairy” in the form of ruined Gothic church, where the king and his mistress could first play at milking the cows before going upstairs to drink milkshakes in an ornately decorated salon!

The island has some quirky modern works, too …

… and there are allusions to buildings that are no longer there, as well. A palm house designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel once stood on this site, but it burned down in the late 19th century. A pleasant little palm garden pays homage to the absent building.

  

Though it was sunny, the weather was quite cold and windy. By lunchtime, we were thankful to sit down in the cozy Wirtshaus zur Pfaueninsel and enjoy some delicious home-style German food. Schnitzel, wild boar, Klopse (meatballs), Flammkuchen and pumpkin soup were all on the menu, accompanied, of course, by generous helpings of potatoes!

As we headed home, I couldn’t help thinking about the royals who had once frequented the island. What were their lives like? How would they have experienced the space? We’ll be finding out more about how they lived this coming week, when we visit Park Sanssouci, home to several royal Prussian palaces.

photo courtesy of Ryna Chin