Berlin: Art, Architecture and Symbolism

I have spent the past few days in Berlin, a city of war and revolution. What I wasn't expecting Berlin was the best history course I have ever taken! I took a great free guided tour with a young woman who whirlwinded us around the city, pointing out all of the historical important sights, as well as a few of the funny ones! I didn't realize how much history Berlin holds until our "quick" history lesson to bring us up to date with the beginnings of WWII. Ten minutes we were getting the rundown on Paritsa Platz and were on with our day.

I saw so much that I could bore you with all the details and lose you in all the history, but I was really intrigued by three places.

One of my favorite places was the Reichstag: the government house. The history of this building is the roots to much of Berlin and Germany. The house of Parliament was here prior to the beginning of Hitler's reign; the night it was burned down, he acquired power. It was here that it became a place for German "government" but Hitler was doing all of his dictating from somewhere else. It was rebuilt after the fire but during the attacks on Berlin during WWII the dome was damaged and not rebuilt. It stood on the West side of the wall for years, home to the non-Communist government and when the Wall came down it became the symbol for how things were to be run: the dome was rebuilt and opened to all people. From the dome you look down to Parliament, on to the decision makers, above them. In perspective, the law makers look up to a mirrored form showing the people watching them, time 100 from the mirrors, reminding them who has the power and who they are representing. Pretty powerful stuff!

Another one of my favorite places was the Memorial to Murdered Jews of Europe. This remarkable piece of art takes up hundreds of square feet with stone pillars of all heights. In perfect rows they are open for interpretation; none was given by the artist. Some say they are to represent the massive amounts of graves the Holocaust created, but many argue that it is symbolic in different ways. Possibly a 3D bar graph of the rise and fall of anti semitism, others say it is there to create just one particle of the uncomfort that Jews felt before they were murdered. You get to walk through the pillars and it is haunting; you don't know who is near you, around the corner, or where you are going. Very thought provoking, but even more so it where the memorial is. Just around the corner is the former site of Hitler's bunker. With only a simple sign explaining the logistics of the actual bunker, nothing else was put there. It is in the car park for apartments; oddly enough, these apartments have menorahs and the star of David in some of the windows!

The most interesting place I thought was the Bebelplatz sight of the Book Burning. On May 10 1933 Humbolt University's library, just across the street, was emptied of all "controversial" books; books, journals, and reports written by Jews, about Gypsies, or anything else that Hitler didn't like. Although this wasn't the largest book burning, it has become the most famous because Hitler was there. I think that the memorial is very powerful: a room in the ground with 4 walls of empty bookshelves. There is no door; we can replace books but we can not go back in time and replace the quote by poet Heinrich Heine (in German translated to) "where books are burned, in the end people will burn." His quote is from 1820!

With all that said, I went to all the famous sights of Berlin:
~Brandenburg Tor...and the plaza
~Rathhaus Berlin...and the Christmas market
~Berliner Dom
~Berlin Wall...and the Topographies of Terror Memorial
~Check Point Charlie...over rated but there for visitors
~Reichstag...great views from the dom
~TV Tower...a modern built icon but a bit silly
~Schloss Charlottenburg...old Prussian palace

My photos will have little bits of history about all the places I visited and random things that I saw! That's all for now!