Ed's Berlin Travelog

In 2004, Edward spent three months in Berlin, as part of his study in the Comparative History of Ideas program at the University of Washington. Here are the posts and comments from that time.

24 September
Draft individual project idea

I want to look at how the architecture of certain Berlin sites was developed in parallel with bureaucratic policies. I will explore how bureaucracy was used to rationalize policy, and to manipulate and segregate the population in three or four specific times and places. First, a look at an institution such as a hospital or military post established in the late 1700's to early 1800's. Second, a look at the role bureaucracy played in the Nazi era, specifically with regards to the role of the Topographie des Terror. Third, a look at the Stasi and an associated site. A possible fourth exploration is the role bureaucratic institutions continue to play in Berlin.
Posted by edward at 15:06:00

27 September
Heute fahre ich nach Berlin.

Heute fahre ich nach Berlin.
From 27 Sep 04 (many of you received this in an email already.)

Friends and Family,

I'm just a few hours away from boarding SAS flight 938 and going to Berlin where I will be living for the next 3 months. I hope to see many of you when I return just before Christmas. I'd love to hear from you while I'm away. You can email me at galore@u.washington.edu, or write to the following address:

Edward Galore
WEN: 24.01.02.10
Oberfeldstr. 111
12683 Berlin
Germany

Address letters to me EXACTLY as it's written above. Presumably you must specify Germany in the address or it will likely be directed to one of the ½ dozen or so Berlins in the U.S.
I'm going to Berlin through a program at the Univ. of Washington's Comparative History of Ideas program...

The group will be led by Prof. Teows. Everyone I've met who has studied under or worked with him can't speak highly enough of him, including my other professors. What will I be studying? In short, I will be studying the history and culture of Berlin. The long answer is a bunch of academic mumbo-jumbo, and I'll spare you.

I hope to write regularly on a web site where anyone who's interested can read about my experience in Germany. Nowadays they call this blogging, but I personally consider the name, if not the concept, idiotic. What irritates me about this whole blogging thing (aside from the fact that it sounds moronic) is that many of us were publishing our writing online years before the advent of the web, let alone 'blogs', and we didn't blather about paradigm shifts, and an entirely 'new medium'. You know what we called it? 'Writing'.

Rest assured, I will dedicate my first few entries to ranting about the inanity of blogging. But, let's be honest, unless we're related by blood or marriage, and sometimes not even then, do you really want to read about my travel experiences? I don't know about you, but I just don't find reading about someone else's travels all that interesting. First of all, unless someone's travel story involves potential or actual death or dismemberment, who cares? Secondly, when I have a few moments to spare away from the daily grind, the last thing I want to read about is just how much fun some lucky s.o.b. is having, galloping around Europe experiencing the time of their life. I really don't want to know what a shame it is that I'll never 'truly appreciate the Majesty of the Brandenburg gate unless you see it first hand, or the splendor of Prague at night. . .' No thank you!

So, I will understand if you choose to ignore my writing, when and if I ever get around to publishing it on the web. But I'd love to hear from you while I'm gone.

Love,

Edward Galore
galore@u.washington.edu

Posted by edward at 03:10:00

13 October
Culture shock, bureaucracy, and assault by minors

Culture Shock

After months of deliberation and discussion with my wife Janet, I decided to spend Autumn quarter studying in Berlin. I have been here before and just loved the city. It’s about the same size and scope as Chicago, but even with the language barrier, it feels more accessible. It’s more dynamic too. Though, the city plan of Chicago makes more sense to me than Berlin. I generally knew where I was in Chicago, even if I didn’t know where I was going. I rarely got confused as to which way was North. Somehow in Berlin, even with the help of a compass (which does interesting things on the electric train) I still don’t feel well oriented after having been here for two weeks. Nevertheless, I am very happy to be here in Berlin.

Although technically “here” is somewhere east of Berlin. Someone had the good sense to house us in a sleepy village... called Biesdorf in what was formerly East Germany. It’s as if someone came to study in Seattle, and wound up housed in Federal Way. Like Federal Way, Biesdorf is considerably removed from any form of culture, so there’s nothing to interfere with the experience of living in the middle of nowhere. It’s not so bad, the miles of abandoned rail facilities, garbage, and decrepit buildings I get to see on my 50 minute commute into Berlin each day makes it all worth it.

I live in a dorm that looks and feels as if it were built during the communist period in East Germany, although I could be mistaken. There are some dormitories in the U.S. that look like they could have been erected in some communist bloc country, so who knows? What’s important is that I’m in Germany, living in a dormitory filled with non-German, non-native English speakers. So, not only am I not in Berlin, I’m not interacting with any Germans. I understand that there are some 20 odd classmates of mine from Seattle living in the same institution, but it’s awfully hard to tell since I rarely have occasion to interact with any of them outside of class as many of us, though in the same dormitory complex, are at least 1000 yards away from each other.

In a way, Biesdorf is both better and worse than Federal Way. It is worse because while Federal Way is marred by promiscuous displays of consumerism, at least you can buy something at a store after 8pm. It’s better than Federal Way because the landscape, though rather flat and bleak to begin with, is generally cleaner, and there isn’t a garish McDonalds’ or 7-11 sign to be seen. ...

So, if I ignore the sterility of this culturally dead part of Germany, the lack of human interaction, and the screaming nightmares, Biesdorf really isn’t so bad. Yes, I said screaming nightmares. I guess I can’t really blame Biesdorf for my nightmares, however. It has been many a moon since I spent any extended period of time alone, and I now remember why: I have terrible nightmares. The only thing worse than waking from a nightmare, is waking up from a nightmare alone in a strange, and sterile environment. On the plus side, my German must be improving, because while I was being attacked by something—or someone, skinheads maybe, it’s best not to remember these things—I began screaming for help in English, and then in my nightmare I realized that perhaps nobody could understand me (or why else wouldn’t they be helping) and I began to yell “helf mir!” It must have worked, because I woke up shortly thereafter.

Bureaucracy

When I registered for my UW classes last Spring, it took me about 20 minutes of on-line research to find the right classes for me, and about 10 minutes to sign-up for financial aid, register for classes, pay the extra fees for the gym facilities, bus pass, etc. Everything. It only took 30 minutes and I could do it from my computer at home. It’s nothing like that in Germany.

For starters, it is not easy to find Internet access. There are spots here and there throughout Berlin, and even in Biesdorf, but they are not cheap, and generally not convenient. You can find wifi but not an actual computer (great for those days when I leave my wireless computer in my room). Or, you can find an internet connected computer, but no wifi, making me feel stupid for lugging the damn laptop around with me. There is an “internet café” in the dorm. 3 computers, and 5 ethernet hubs for the hundreds of students who live here, all cramped into one 10x15 room in the basement. However, you can’t just use the “café” you first must get a password from some guy. Who? Don’t know, I should just ask people until I find him. Then, I must find some other guy and locate a key to the lab. Just so I can sit in a cramped room waiting for an Ethernet port to open up with a ½ dozen other losers. Ethernet in the rooms is a distant fantasy that perhaps the next generation will enjoy.

Just getting a phone for our dorm rooms is tough, bordering on impossible. It costs 60€ to set up. This set up requires uniformed Deutsch Telecom technicians to sit in a van and play cards while they make you wait another day. The process could take weeks, basic service costs 20 or so euros per month, and local calls (i.e. to an inet provider) are not free after you’ve used some rather small number of minutes.

Of course, even if we had internet access, it wouldn’t do any good, because none of the offices with which we must interact is on the internet.

Second, although we had already taken residence in our dorm rooms, 20 of us had to march to another ancillary institution approx. 30 minutes away from Biesdorf (and no closer to Berlin) to sign our leases which required a considerable amount of application forms declaring that yes, we were students and not jut living in the dorms for kicks (I’m sure people are just clamoring to live in these prison like facilities), that we could support ourselves, and then we had to pay a deposit. Cash only!

Next, we had to register with the police. Even in the post 9/11 age it seems unlikely that I will ever have to register with the police in the states. Again, there were forms, and documents to validate, etc. It involved another trip to a neighboring town, and another ½ day basically flushed down the toilet.

Our dorms are situated next to the local Polizei. I find it interesting that the military and the police here wear the same color uniform (green) and occupy a fortress like building. It appears that the police are highly centralized because Biesdorf is a tiny community, yet this facility is humongous, suggesting that it serves many communities. No local sheriff for Biesdorf.

Then we had to register at Humboldt University proper, which required another ½ day and more waiting, and forms to file. Thank god our TA (Kristene) was there to assist us. If it wasn’t for her, I’m sure I would either still be filing forms, or would be rotting in a detention facility that looks almost exactly the same as the institution I currently inhabit except I don’t have to climb razor wire to get out of here (though sometimes it feels that way).

The multiple levels of bureaucracy I’ve encountered here have inspired me, however. For my class project I intend to show how bureaucracy has been used in Germany, specifically Prussian bureaucracy, to manipulate its population. I want to explore how two sites in particular, the Topographie des Terror (Gestapo HQ) and the Stasi HQ (East German secret police) bent the neutral tool of bureaucracy towards ultimate evil. Or something like that. More on this later.

Attack by minors

Two days ago, as I and my two new friends from Seattle, Heather and Madeline, made our way back to the train station after spending an hour at an overpriced internet café (2€ per hour for access, and 2€ for a cup of tea) in Mitte, we were approached by three harmless looking boys of about 10-12 years of age. They said hi in English, one asked me my name and I told him my name. Heather and Madeline had a similar interaction, but as Heather turned to leave, one of the boys shot Heather in the head with some sort of pop-gun. It was startling to hear, and it no doubt smarted a bit. Remember, we’re perfect strangers to these boys. We walked a little further and then turned around to confront the boys. Although it sounds foolish now, I had hoped to admonish the boys for shooting a pop-gun at a stranger on the street. I have witnessed how Germans go to lengths to set examples for their “Kinder”. For example, they won’t jay walk in front of children (although smoking in front of them, or even with them, appears to be o.k.) Anyway, it seemed like a good idea at the time to be stern with the boys. The children seemed shocked that we could come back to them, and in their surprise they were easily “disarmed”.

I’m not sure what I wanted to do exactly, I had hoped to give them a stern talking to (something I’m not really suited to do. Mad I can do, stern talking to I can’t.) Of course, my German sucks, Heather’s isn’t much better, and Madeline chose another language to fulfill her language requirement at University. I guess I though that in lieu of a lecture in German, we would just confiscate their “weapons”, which were just cardboard tube things with some sort of rubber plungers for firing mechanisms. We did manage to say, “Call your parents or call the police, but otherwise you’re not getting these back.” Or something to that effect. Something was lost in translation, but we think the boys would have fared better with the police than their parents should either be summoned. We got the impression both then and later that these boys didn’t come from the most supportive (or extant) of families.

Anyway, we took the stupid things away from the boy and walked to the S-Bahn station. Well, they followed us and began to pummel our backs with their fists, shout insults at us, and try to wrestle the pop-guns from our hands. I know I heard “fucking Americans” among the insults, and for some reason that hurt more than the other expletives. They were just 10 years old (or 11 or 12, I don’t know), so much as I would have liked to, I couldn’t really hit back. I wasn’t sure what to do except call the police. It seemed unlikely that we were in any real danger from the boys, but we didn’t know how to resolve the situation. We approached three men and asked for their assistance. The three boys were right on our heels, but there was a temporary lull in the assault while we conversed with the three men--who immediately took sides with the three boys. What a mess! Now I feared for our safety. One man grabbed my wrist and demanded to know how old I was (I told him, feeling a little foolish), and we tried to explain our intentions (admonishment, etc., see above). Something must have gotten through because although this man also considered us “fucking Americans”, he let go of my hand and walked away. (I’d like to think it was my “tough look” that made him back down, but probably not).

So we’re off and walking again, the three boys right behind us hurling insults and harmless blows. I did worry that their punches might be damaging the nearly new digital music player I had stashed in my backpack which was exposed to their little fists.

Eventually, we approached a couple of women and asked for their assistance. Actually, I asked if they knew the number for the police. (Mental note: if you want to get someone’s attention, ask them if they know the number for the Polizei). I guess it’s “110”here, with a different number for the fire department, and in this bureaucratic nation you can rest assured the police will watch your house burn down rather than “interfere” in someone else’s business. In any event, they were reasonable. Unfortunately by this point, the boys had captured a cherished Irish cap of mine and were holding it hostage. So, the best the women could do for us was to broker an arms-for-hat deal.

The boys got away with everything. They “shot” a foreigner in the head, then assaulted them for 1/2 hour, and in the end got their pop-guns back. In the process, they made us look like complete asses—I managed to walk into a two sign posts as I tried to fend off their attacks from behind while negotiating unfamiliar terrain. While Heather and Madeline both managed to avoid the sign posts, for I had clearly indicated the presence of the signs moments earlier, thwarting any collisions on the part of my friends, I think they felt as I did that we just failed in our roles as “America ambassadors”.

There were some interesting social dynamics worth noting. The obvious one, of course, being East Germans vs. Americans. I just told you how I saw things, but the boys (and the three men) undoubtedly saw things differently. They saw three “fucking Americans” who couldn’t take a joke and who acted like bullies. However, a more interesting dynamic, and one I understand less, is the class dynamic at play among the Germans themselves. To me, the three boys looked like perfectly ordinary, little “Aryan” darlings. Cute even. I noticed nothing distinguishing about them. Yet when we turned to the three German men for help in setting things straight with the kids, they acted as if kids “like that” just behave that way, and that we should just deal with it. The two women spoke of the children as if they were members of an untouchable class, bastards born to absent, or incarcerated parents, and who would forever remain on the other side of the railroad tracks. The women spoke as if we should know that “boys like these” were trouble. These women, who were well-dressed, pleasant, pretty, well-educated, and who spoke fluent English, sided with us just as quickly as the three men sided with the boys. What’s going on here?

Well, I think the answer is that there is a fairly rigid, dual-class system in Germany. This is foreign to me. Yes, I know, we have a racial divide in America, and I’ll be the first to say that the gap between the haves and the have-nots deepens every year. Nevertheless, whether I’m interacting with one of my blue collar, down-to-earth friends, or one of my over-educated, white-collar friends, I don’t feel as if I’m either talking down or up. (In fact some of my over-educated friends are also my blue-collar friends.) I don’t sense the same disjoint as I sensed between the working class men and boys, and the two educated-class women we met in Mitte under disturbing circumstances.

Well, that’s enough out of me.

From Biesdorf,
Edward
Posted by edward at 22:12:00

Comments

shawn wrote:
Glad you are having such fun 'mit die Kinder' over there!
I would add to the shock you felt that, perhaps, you didn't expect an 'Aryan' child to talk back to you. To a certain degree, we have learned that those who look like us, act like us. But not so in a foreign land, and so recently on the other side of the wall. I think it's great you had this confrontation. Especially since it was kids, and not real ruffians. A good way to see the differences first hand. You are indeed, in another world.
10/14/04 23:58:04

Lee Ann wrote:
Gosh, I don't know whether to laugh with you or cry. I certainly understand your frustration. You are having quite some life experiences over there... and ones that you will probably remember forever and talk about for the rest of your life. Certainly not the lederhosen, beer drinking Germany that most people experience. But that is one of the reasons that you went to Germany isn't it. You will have great stories to tell. I sure do agree with Shawn... I'm very relieved that these were just kids/kinder. I bet you and the girls were too.

Very interesting how differently the men and the women reacted to your situation... and great observations on your part on all the different interactions. It has always fascinated me with how different we all are, yet share so many similarities. Knowing how you Love kids, I am sure that you had the boys best interest at heart and were thinking of doing a good deed for the boys by teaching them a lesson on good behavior and how to treat others. That is commendable and something that most others would not do. But do be careful okay... we worry about you :*). Remember that old saying... "pick your battles wisely".

As for your nightmares... I sure do wish I could make them go away. Know that you are never truly alone... we are all with you in spirit and try to comfort you in our hearts. I wish you had a sweater or something that smells like Janet and then you could cuddle up with that every night and maybe not feel so alone. Try to imagine yourself in her arms every night as you go to sleep... and remember that Love truely has no bounds... she IS there with you.

The fact that you have to deal with this will make you a stronger person and help you to overcome the nightmares. You are the strongest willed person that I have ever met in my life... you have done amazing and inspiring things... and you will overcome the nightmares too. You will learn how to put the nusance of them behind you.

I hope that you soon get to enjoy some of the more cultural part of Germany that you desire to experience. Experiencing the dingy side of Germany's culture will only make the pleasant side of the culture that much better.

Thank you for getting your journal up so quickly... we Love hearing how you are doing. I hope things get better for you quickly.

All my Love,
Lee Ann
10/15/04 10:44:54

Leon wrote:
Sounds like some of the bureaucratic runaround, police/military presence, and urban landscape you're experiencing could be good role-playing game inspiration!

Interesting story about the kids. It's disheartening how quickly and easily various people slipped into anti-Americanism to frame their reactions. Strange, all around.

Debra wrote:
As I have continue to long for France, when I read your comments about lack of internet access, stores not open past 8pm, technicians playing cards...it brings me back to reality - those are frustrations you experience living in Europe that truly make you understand how easy it is to live in the US. Your dreams seem to reflect feeling vulnerable and almost predicted your episode with the minors. You are going through a transforming experience by immersing yourself in another culture. I sure hope you don't have anymore nasty encounters! sending love from Columbia City...
deb n bruno n margaux
10/28/04 16:45:26

14 October
Pictures and Sounds of Berlin

Yes, it's a humble beginning, but here are some pictures on my web site.

http://students.washington.edu/galore/
Posted by edward at 17:20:00

27 October
Weimar and Buchenwald

Last week our class visited Weimar, the center of German culture before the latter half of the 20th century. For some the spirit of Germany still resides there. It is terribly ironic then, that Buchenwald, a NAZI concentration camp, should be located in a forest on a hill overlooking Weimar.

Weimar itself is a beautiful town. As someone who grew up in Washington, where anything built before 1900 is incredibly old, it was hard for me to really appreciate how old Weimar is. Goethe and Schiller, Nietsche, and many others called Weimar home. Martin Luther even lived there off and on. It was also one of Hitler’s favorite places, and while National Socialism wasn’t born there, it grew up there. Weimar was the first city to elect NAZI’s to government office, and Hitler and his henchmen (what else do you call his “associates” but henchmen?) gave many a pep rally there. Like many places in Germany, Weimar was badly damaged during the war, time took its own toll. So the Weimar one sees today is a reconstruction. There are many authentic elements. It is not, for instance, a Leavenworth.

Leavenworth is a small town in the Cascades in Washington that faced hard economic times when it’s major industry (logging, I think) packed up and left. In the 1970's the town decided that rather than go bankrupt, the town would reinvent itself as a Bavarian village. It’s always Christmas in Leavenworth, and you can stay in replicas of Black Forrest lodges, or eat Wiener Schnitzel and drink Lowenbraus. Nothing about Leavenworth is authentic, but the ruse works and Leavenworth has become the major tourist trap it always wanted to be. If you haven’t visited, it is pleasant weekend get away, and I must say that the last time I stayed there the lodging was better than the hostel in Weimar, where I shared a room with five of my classmates. They’re good kids, though. ...

Still, while Weimar is, of course, a real German city, with a real German history, it has something of the inauthentic about it. For example, I visited Goethe’s garden house which was completely rebuilt in the last 50 years. They say he wrote Faust there (or started it anyway), and it would have been exciting had it really been his house, but precious little of it was “real” in the sense that the walls were composed of the exact same stones which surrounded Goethe back in the day.

There were some very cool things in Weimar. Including an art exhibit at the New Museum that displayed a huge collection of art from the Weimar Republic era (1918 – 1933). I also visited the Bauhaus museum which is almost worth the trip to Weimar on it's own. Both museums presented extremely interesting art that was later classified by the NAZI’s as degenerate. Depicting evil things is degenerate, but doing evil things is o.k. apparently.

Which brings me to Buchenwald. One more time, just for the record, I must ask, what the hell was wrong with the Germans? There, got it out of my system. Even though I believe as a result of my studies, and some common sense, that there is nothing inherently wrong with the Germans, that given the right set of conditions, any people could succumb to such evil. One thing people often fail to appreciate is that Hitler didn’t just say one day in January 1933 (immediately after he became Reichchancellor) that he was going to start the bloodiest war the world has ever known, and kill anyone (mostly Jews) that did not meet his racial/biological standards in order to provide the German people with more Lebensraum (living space). No, it was very, very gradual. First, he had to differentiate the “racially pure” from the “impure”, then isolate them, disenfranchise and impoverish them, deprive them of all rights, and then kill them. The process took ten years before Jews and others were sufficiently marginalized that nobody seemed to mind when the deportations began. The Germans had a mean anti-Semitic streak before Hitler came to power, but arguably France was worse, and England and America weren’t much better. The pictures of Madison Square Gardens filled with brown shirted NAZI’s is frightening in its implications. So why was Germany so special? I could (and have) written a very, very long paper trying to explain why this is so, and yet still I must ask, What the hell was wrong with the Germans?

One of the terrible, ironic things about Buchenwald is the fact that it was situated in the heart of German civilization. The very best and worst of Germany were situated in the same place. This wasn’t accidental. No. The SS wanted a camp in which it could train it’s men, and they wanted it close to Weimar presumably so after a day of beating defenseless people to death, they could spend the evening in town enjoying the important things in life such as good music, literature, great beer (so I hear) and fine food. One particularly disgusting element is that the bastards had the gall to build a small animal zoo 15 yards from the electrified fence of the camp. They brought their kiddies to the zoo. Bears on one side, emaciated Jews on the other.

In the interpretation center at one of the memorials, a visitor wrote shortly after the war that they thought Buchenwald should be completely erased because with the camp dead buried and the sick segregated, there was nothing left to convey the horrors that existed here. Therefore future visitors would come away believing that they had seen the worst that man could offer when in fact they saw only a dim shadow. Thankfully (I guess that’s the right word) they presented a movie which did a pretty good job of conveying some of the horror. It worked for me, I could barely keep from sobbing loudly. After the movie, I had to run away from the group (discretely I hope) to regain my composure. I broke my sunglasses, you see, and there was nothing to hide behind.

A few final words

When I went to the symphony in Rostock I noticed that the crowd was old, I’d say the average age was 55, and many people were in their 70’s and 80’s. It dawned on me that many of these people were of age (barely perhaps) to have been perpetrators or victims. Based on what I know they were mostly perpetrators (or mute accomplices). It was an eerie thought.

One last comment. You’d think that my class consisting of people who study German culture to one extent or another would be a tad more appreciative of German history than the average American. Not so. Today we had a walking tour of Berlin’s Jewish community and we visited an old synagogue. All synagogues in Germany are guarded by German police these days. The larger, historical synagogues in Berlin have round-the-clock police coverage. At the New Synagogue it looks like they have enough men and firepower to handle a combat ready platoon of neo-Nazi skin heads. Before going into this synagogue we had to pass through security that was more thorough than that which I passed before boarding my flight here. I’m thinking, good plan. One of my classmates, on the other hand, said out loud, “This seems a bit much, I mean what do they think people will do?” She seemed terribly inconvenienced about the whole thing. I was flabbergasted. Some might say that Germany’s Nazi past is behind it, let’s pray that it is. Personally, I don’t believe that the Germans have really come to terms with what happened let alone atoned for it. In any event, the German present has plenty of nasty elements to deal with including neo-Nazis that got a lot of fresh recruits when the Germanys reunited. Then there are the Muslim militants would also like to take a shot at one of the synagogues. Anti-Semitism was on the rise in Europe and elsewhere even before 9/11. Now you hear people, through some convoluted logic, blaming the Jews for the WTC disaster. I met one otherwise intelligent German who believed that the Jews, through their control of the White House (I don’t know if anyone knows this, but George W. is Jewish in addition to being a born again Christian) masterminded the disaster. Somehow four Jews with a modicrum of power in the White House is a conspiracy. Even without the perpetuation of such bizarre conspiracy theories, one need only visit a Jewish cemetery where headstones (if extant) reveal the truth in the dates of their dead. Some cemeteries are devoid of headstones altogether as they were borrowed by the Nazi's to be used for other things (tank barricades, for example). Many headstones that were broken or desecrated during the Nazi regime (and after,) remain un-repaired. Would it kill the Germans to pay for the repairs?(1) Apparently. So, yes, I do think that the high-levels of security present at the synagogue are necessary.

More later,
Edward

(1) The Germans are doing things on their own to "make up" for what was done. No doubt. One thing the East Germans did was pay for the reconstruction of the New Synagogue. Considering that many (if not most) Germans believed that the Jews were responsible for the Allied Strategic Bombing campaign that destroyed the synagogue, they thought this was rather generous. Our guide today pointed out, however, that the East German government wanted to be courted by the White House. Since they believed that Jews controlled the White House, they figured that repairing the Synagogue would go over well. Two blocks down headstones are smashed and litter the Jewish cemetary. Graffiti covers the entrance to the cemetary. Why isn't the German government doing more about this? (If you have to ask why the Jews themselves don't do it, you haven't been paying very close attention.)
Posted by edward at 15:03:00

Comments

David O-Brien wrote:
Dear Edward, I read your entry.It was a good update and you write a lot like dad does.! Thanks. As bad as the national socialism of Germany was in its form of communisum it always strikes me as odd that libreals since the 50's have embrassed potions of Stalins communiusm as being palettable. I am simply amazed that some social/communist in this country can rationalize their Marxist beliefs while pointing to Hitler as a bad guy to be avoided and making sure that people that disagree with them politically are labled as being in bed with Hitler. Natzi Germany seems to be a scape goat to rationalize their worldly socialist ideas that spread like gangrene and are not much better. Sounds like a great place to visit, but I would not want to live there. Have a grerat time, Love Ya David
11/01/04 17:30:10

01 November
The Gym in Biesdorf

Instead of using the lousy computer facility at the dormitory, I would frequent this Internet Café which was actually closer to me than the lab in the same building in which I lived (that’s how big of an institution I lived in, and that was just one of two buildings) and a lot more convenient. Well worth the €2.00 per hour (or thereabouts). Especially since the owners / staff at this small Internet café (more internet than café) seemed to understand the notion of customer service. Customer Service has no translation in German because it doesn’t really exist. ... This isn’t always bad, you don’t have to swat the sales clerks like flies as you would at Nordstrom’s, but sometimes you do need help, and when you’re working with computers, it’s inevitable. Anyway, I was in there one day looking for a place to workout. Not all that easy. First of all, it takes me a long time to comprehend that a Google search result written in German is worth exploring, more time to decipher the page, and still more time to determine if a facility is anywhere near me. Well, this East German computer guy, a combination you’d least expect to be helpful, went out of his way to locate a gym for me. And it was close. Another aspect of Berlin that takes getting used to is that there are very few vantage points as the terrain is quite flat, and with notable exceptions, no buildings exceed six stories. Furthermore, no street proceeds in a straight line for more than a few blocks. Therefore, one’s line of sight is usually no more than 100 or 200 meters. This problem is compounded by the lack of commercial signs. Anyway, without this guy’s help, I would have never known that there was a gym 6 blocks away from me.

One of the starkest reminders that I was in East Germany was this dead end street in Biesdorf on the way to the gym. It was dark, weeds grew through cracks in the middle of the road. One either side of the street were neglected fields on which were situated two of the saddest looking tenements you’d ever want to see. After dark, but still early evening, there was but a handful of lighted apartments in either building. Razor wire sat atop chain link fences that guarded nothing but a thicket. These were just two of many such tenements in the Biesdorf area.

Anyway, I did make it to the gym, and managed to work out there several times before moving to Prenzlauerberg in downtown Berlin. It was large, and as well appointed or better than most large clubs in the states. Think East German weight lifters. Think about that Russian guy Rockie fought in that one Rockie sequel. Think about that enormous Russian deadlifting over 3 tons twenty-five odd years ago. Think huge, Aryan men. O.k., now think a little bigger, but with scary, shaved heads, and you get an idea of the place. Actually, the skin heads weren’t in there all the time, and they never bothered me or anyone else that I saw, but then again, there weren’t any non-Aryan types in there. Aside from that, it was a great gym. But about as far away from Seattle Fitness (where I work part-time) as you can get.
Posted by edward at 15:25:00

03 November
thought for the day (voting day)

"Nazi leader Hermann Goering, interviewed by Gustave Gilbert during the Easter recess of the Nuremberg trials, 1946 April 18, quoted...
... in Gilbert's book 'Nuremberg Diary.'

Goering: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece.

Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.

Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.

Goering: Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
Posted by janet at 15:26:00

Comments

Kris wrote:
that is a terrifying quote from the goering interview....sounds familiar doesn't it
11/23/04 23:01:04

Leon wrote:
Wow. I had read this before, but not in several years. It really hits home now.
12/17/04 05:32:00

06 November
Berlin at Last! / Be careful what you wish for.

So, before I ever enter the new apartment with my things for the first time, I am greeted by this over excited dog, Libre. I simultaneously meet one of my new roommates who was at the door to prevent the dog from running down the stairs and outside (which would be a merciful event for all involved, but alas, it is not to be). Judith (I am almost certain that is her name) is from a town south of Stuttgart and has been living here only five days herself. Marcello, the principle tenant is from Italy, as is Patrizia who barely vacated the room before I arrived. Three other Italians are also here, though I’m not sure when or whether they will be leaving. One or more of them owns Libre and will be taking her with them when they leave. The apartment looks and feels like an artist commune. The walls in the entry way are painted with murals, and an eccentric, and not unpleasant chaos rules the apartment.

There is an antechamber in my room which has been used as a dark room. Developer chemicals and camera equipment are still to be found therein. It also has a sink, which is an extremely nice amenity in a house with a shared toilet. Fortunately, the bath and washer (yeah!) are separate from the toilet. Since moving to Europe, I have begun taking showers weekly, whether or not I need one. Not really. I understand that intermittent bathing is the norm in some European countries, but as I’ve mentioned before, Germany is quite fastidious. Since returning to school and commuting by bike, I’ve learned to just take showers whenever it makes sense. Why shower before riding my bike to school when I will be all sweaty 5 minutes out of the house? On the other hand, I sometimes take two showers a day if it makes sense. In any event, I’m not perturbed by the shower situation due to my previous conditioning.

My apartment building is a Mietskaserne (literally “rental barracks”). A Mietskaserne is a typical building for Berlin, built between 1860 and 1914 or so. Berlin underwent explosive growth, even relative to the growth of other Western cities in this time period. Between 1850 and 1877, a few years after Berlin became the capital of the new German Empire (Reich number 2 for those keeping count back home), the population doubled from ½ million to 1 million, to 2 million in 1900, and 4 million by 1920. (It’s only 3.5 odd million today). Berlin’s population density at this point was the highest in the western world. But, it wasn’t too bad because despite the bad name, the Mietskaserne are relatively well built.

Mine is a typical Mietskaserne, 5 stories (or 6) with a courtyard. I’m living in the back building (off-the street) and have a lovely view of the neighbors in the front building. The place is heated with coal. (Yes, coal.) I have a coal oven in my room. Every few days I must go to the coal cellar in the basement to haul up some more coal. It’s really not too bad. I kinda like the smell, and the room can get pretty toasty and stay that way for hours. Which is good, because it’s getting cold outside. The coal oven is made of brown, enameled tile and stands about 5’ tall, by 3’ wide, and 2’ thick. The coal bricks are the same dimensions, only inches instead of feet. There is a trick to getting the fire going, well it’s not much of a trick, you just need to follow a procedure to avoid asphyxiation. Which does concern me some. There is no fire escape, no fire alarm, no fire extinguisher, and no carbon monoxide detector. The Mietskaserne is built solidly from brick-even the interior walls and ceiling are made of brick. The wall between my room and the hall must be close to 2’ thick, so it’s unlikely the building would burn to the ground, but still. I plan on getting a smoke detector and CO detector soon. Nobody else in Berlin seems particularly concerned.

Though my place is certainly funky, it has a lot of charm. My room is large and well lit. It’s warm (once I get the coal burning). My roommates are interesting and really nice. My second night here I had dinner in the kitchen with the two of them and it was quite cozy. Marcello is a carpenter, and Judith is studying to be an actress. I was really quite touched when Marcello asked me to share his dinner with him. I had picked up some good bread and mineral water, and Judith had made a salad to complement the pasta and fish Marcello cooked. Very communal.

I think the University of Washington made a big mistake in sending all of us students out to Biesdorf, that abysmal suburb that no Berliner has ever heard of. Although they have heard of the area Marzhan to which Biesdorf belongs. It’s notorious for skin heads and has been the site of racial violence in the past. But that’s not what’s really bad. What’s bad is that it’s a soulless suburb not much different than any soulless suburb you’d find in the States. I certainly didn’t come to Berlin to live in such a place. Since I have lived in this apartment I have spoken considerably more German out of necessity, and am finally experiencing Berlin culture.
Posted by edward at 23:28:00

Comments

janet wrote:
I have the privilege of spending a few days with Edward in the flat, and I love it so far. Marcello and Judith are extremely sweet, and somehow the place brings out a rustic creativity... the feeling that anything could happen if you're open to it. There is a phone, but no TV and we just listen to BBC on the radio or songs on Ed's mp3 player wired to this 80s era boombox. Or Klezmer or German radio bellowing through the hallway.

The last few mornings I've been really groggy and haven't been able to get myself out of bed (a comfy one) before noon. Whether that's due to CO or jet lag, I have no idea. But a couple of cups of coffee at a local cafe seem to take care of it.
11/19/04 18:34:21

kim collmer wrote:
this is great ed! it is fun for me to read since i will be there soon.
11/17/04 20:25:52

07 November
The Grass is Always Greener

It’s a quarter until 2 am and I’m still up. For the last three hours, a cute, but very irritating dog by the name of Libre has been keening for her master. Keening for something anyway, I’m not really sure what she wants. She’s been scratching at my door wanting in. I wish I could say what kind of dog she is. Small, with a small, high-pitched bark. Libre barked incessantly when I first met her, and I thought that perhaps it was just the excitement of meeting someone new. No such luck. When I came home tonight after a visit to an internet café, I could hear Libre from the foyer, her bark distinct though she was three floors away (four for you Americans back home, Germans start counting floors at zero). Libre was my introduction to my new Wohnung in Berlin.

I finished moving in to my new place yesterday afternoon. Actually, I have one more trip to make to pick up the boom box and bicycle I bought at a flea market in Treptower park, home to an impressive memorial to the Soviet soldires during WWII. When I arrived from Seattle, I managed to carry everything on my back in a single trip from the airport. Five weeks later, I had accumulated enough stuff that three trips were now necessary. My friend Kim planned on renting this apartment in Prenzlauerberg, a neighborhood comparable to the East Village as it might have appeared in the 1970’s. Of course, I have no way of really knowing that, but Prenzlauerberg definitely has the feeling of cool that I imagined the East Village to once have had (and still does if you can afford it, I hear). Prenzlauerberg is still quite affordable, however. I met someone at a meeting who told me they bought an apartment for €40,000 ($48,000)! You couldn’t get 500 square feet for that much in Seattle.

I ramble, I’m tired. At last the dog has shut up, but I’m too riled up to sleep. Up to this point I was admiring my composure in the face of such a strange, chaotic environment as the one I now find myself in, until the dog nearly drove me over the edge. Yet another reminder that I will never own a small dog with a piercing bark, nor will I ever intentionally have any child as I think I would find an infant’s shrill cries even more intolerable. How on earth did my parents ever cope? The only mitigating factor with this dog was that at least it wasn’t mine.
Posted by edward at 15:31:00

08 November
Libre the dog / pets in Germany

Libre is gone, and I miss her. She could be as sweet as she was irritating, and she mostly just wanted some attention. I am still adapting to the ways of Germans, and Italians, and Europeans in General. And even if I were acclimated, I’d still feel a certain animosity directed towards me as an American. But German animals are exactly the same as American animals (though we don’t tolerate quite so much of the dog shit on the sidewalks in America). German dogs and American dogs speak the same language, and don’t notice or care that I’m American. Some days, that is much appreciated.
Posted by edward at 15:32:00

11 November
Dresden and the Goth scene

I just got back from a train ride to Dresden. The trip was a little over two and a half hours, but it flew by as I was engrossed in Stassiland a book about life under Stassi oppression in the former East Germany. Although our entire class was in the same train car, I wound up in a compartment with a stranger. He seemed like a nice, well-dressed man, about my age, and looked like Harry Connick Jr., but we didn’t exchange any words on the entire, non-stop trip, except when he told me, in English, to enjoy my trip. Sleep deprivation, hours of silence, and a thoroughly engaging book left me in a dream like state when I arrived at the Ostbahnhof in Berlin. I don’t understand how it can feel so cold without actually freezing. It was cold, windy, and raining while I waited for the tram that would take me the last kilometer home.

I had a great time in Dresden. We were quartered in an extremely nice hostel called Louise 20. It consisted of two recently renovated buildings on the front and back of a courtyard. Five or six stories. In addition to the ubiquitous breakfast, the back building contained a full-fledged restaurant. The front building housed one of several lounges on Louisestrasse.

It is interesting to watch how 20, more or less college aged kids divvy up the rooms. Some of the rooms housed bunk beds, with four to a room. Some rooms were attached to suites as nice as any I’d seen in a three or four star hotel, sparsely appointed in the best northern European style. Blond, hard wood floors, light stained furniture, full kitchens and balconies off the living room. So, who would sleep with whom and in what room? When we were asked who wanted which rooms, we didn’t yet know how the rooms were arranged. Were the six person apartments like a Prussian barracks? I pulled seniority (the next oldest student is 28) and when it was offered, I jumped at the chance to occupy the only available single room. Two weeks ago in Weimar I shared a room with five male students in a hostel mostly lacking in niceties. (It was clean, however, and hostels throughout Germany are a good way to go, especially if you’re single and young at heart). I like all my classmates, but I just wanted some privacy this trip.

When I came home from a tour and two museum visits, I was looking forward to a nap and some alone time. However, in the evening while making my bed, I looked out my window and I saw my classmates arranged on the balconies across the courtyard. I could stick my head out the window and speak with them without trouble. There was such gaiety exhibited on the other side that I began to regret my decision to isolate in my room. They invited me over for dinner. I hesitated, then asked what I could bring and showed up at their doorstep minutes later with a couple bottles of wine. I drank nothing but water, but my classmates all complained about the Romanian wine I had purchased. It certainly smelled bad. Our class was divided into two groups, in two different suites, on adjacent floors.

As you can imagine, much alcohol was consumed by my friends whose 21st birthday was not far behind them, or for whom it had yet to arrive. Everyone was in a terrific mood, and Brad, the consummate host, lead the preparation of a simple, but delicious meal for a dozen or so of us. Brad, I should say, it quite an extraordinary young man. He resembles James Dean, is always cheerful, friendly, sociable, and bright, though he has a certain naiveté to him, but even that is charming. I’ll admit that when most men exhibit these traits, I am usually non-plussed and I can’t help but believe that their charm is superficial and belies a reptilian disposition, probably because I feel threatened by them, and because these traits are present in me. Not so with Brad. He’s the rare man who is as charming with men as he is with women. (For my D&D friends reading this, Brad has a 19 Charisma.)

After dinner, I led a small group of us on a clubbing expedition in Dresden. After having lived in Berlin for six weeks, I have made only limited progress towards exploring Berlin’s Szene. This despite the fact that Berlin is a city reputed to be one of the best for clubbing in the world, a city hosting Nick Cave, Thievery Corporation, and Tom Waits in the same week, not to mention hundreds of other acts, operas, symphonies, etc. Part of the cool of Berlin clubs is that you pretty much have to know someone who knows what’s going on just to find them. So, I was highly motivated to make the most of Dresden nightlife. We started at a place near the hostel, which was as I had suspected not really a club, but just a bar. It would just be too easy to find a really cool techno club so close to where we were staying. The real clubs were in the industrial part of town (conveniently found at a tram stop called Industrielland).

The tram deposited us in what felt like the middle of nowhere, too far north of town to be found on any of the tourist maps. It was near Midnight, and at first I had a terrible sinking feeling. Not only did we appear to be all alone in an industrial wasteland, we were lost: my directions stopped where the tram left us. Having brought my American paranoia with me, I immediately began to fear the worst. A roving gang of violent neo-Nazis (as opposed to the non-violent neo-Nazis) would jump us while accusing us of being racially impure. As the only sober man in the group, I would be the first to fall. As I may have mentioned before, and will go into more later, Germany is much, much safer than America. Only one of the roads appeared to lead anywhere, so we walked a short distance down it and after 15 minutes of wandering, we found the first club, Strasse E.

It was nearly impossible to tell that it was in fact a club until we were actually inside. Up until that point it was just a dark, maybe even abandoned warehouse. It was dark, alright, in fact it was Dark Wave, what I would call “Goth”. I’m not sure why it’s called Dark Wave instead of Goth. Somehow Dark Wave sounds even dorkier than Goth. Is this a German thing? I don’t know. As I was once a pseudo-quasi Goth (that is, I was almost, sort of a Goth, as opposed to a Visi-Goth) I felt pretty comfortable. I was also more or less dressed for appropriately, at least my clothes were dark, and I’ll admit, I had packed clothes for just such an occasion.

However, my friends looked exactly like what they were, American college kids. Now for those not familiar with the Goth scene, let me describe it briefly. First of all, a Goth club is dark. All clubs are of course dark because it’s hard to sell drugs in bright light. But Goth clubs are darker. Second, Goths take the Goth scene very, very seriously. For them, every day is Halloween. Just like in most clubs, Goth patrons dance alone. But just as they are darker than other club patrons, they are also more alone. You never saw such a crowd appear to be all so alone. There is a wide range of clothing suitable for Goths. Everything from crimson, velvet pirate shirts, to tattered black t-shirts with spike bracelets can be seen at a Goth club. Eye makeup is worn by both men and women. Heavy boots are also ubiquitous. Sometimes Goths are dolled up as Victorian ladies, or Edwardian gents. Just as long as the clothes are dark. There are some superficial similarities between Goths and Punks, or even Goths and Butt-rockers, but Goths take it more seriously. The operative word here is style. I can’t paint a very good picture of what a Goth looks like, but suffice it to say that my group looked absolutely nothing like anyone else in the club. Again, the American paranoia kicked in until I remembered that as these were Goths, they would likely not start a fight as they were too busy planning a Depeche Mode fan club meeting (seriously, they were, and I have the flyer to prove it). More importantly, they were much to self-involved in their own dancing to pay us any mind—up to a point anyway.

I noticed an evolution in Goth dancing that I hadn’t ever seen before. I call it Goth square dancing. A circle of seven or eight Goths would dance in place, imagining themselves as wraiths unfettered by this mortal coil. They seemed to be tracing the pattern of a medieval, Christian labyrinth with their feet. Periodically, two Goths of different sexes, or at least indeterminate sex, would pair up from opposite sides of the circle. Then, following some cue I could not discern, they would slowly move towards each other to the drone of the music, almost touch, and then back away to the edge of the circle again. Then another two Goths would likewise approach one another. Wenzel described the dance as the Gothic Hokey-Pokey, and that is a very apt title. “You put the right foot in, you put the right foot out, you put the right foot in and you shake it all about. . . I’m really not sure what they were doing, probably some Druidic thing one of them read about on the Internet. What was clear, however, was that they didn’t want a bunch of drunk American kids, full of vim and vigor, barging into their square, or circle, or let’s call it a pentagram.

Now remember, I like all my classmates, and I love Heather and Maddy. But they are not Goths, and unlike me (who teases Goths only because I have Goth tendencies) they do not have a Gothic bone in their bodies. In fact, Maddy is the opposite of a Goth. She is lightness itself. And when she has a few drinks in her she is as carefree as a songbird. The Goths recoiled from her as a vampire recoils from the cross. She was oblivious and I envied her for it. My other friends were all having a great time—there are a number of crossover Goth songs to which they could dance. Wenzel, who was born in East Berlin (not that that matters at this point in my journey), was actually getting whatever it was the square dancing Goths were doing, and was doing a great job dancing with them. He approached me in between songs and said that a couple of the Goth girls were hitting on him. If true, this would be quite remarkable, because Wenzel, although more sophisticated than most of his fraternal order, nevertheless looked as if he just hailed from a “rager” at the fraternity house, and the Goth girls in questions all looked like heroin addicts in an Edward Gorey book.

All in all, we had a great time at the Goth club. Over half the songs were familiar to me, and this isn’t a good thing because it means that the latest music they played was from 1989. For the love of God, move on with your lives! Bella Lugosi is dead! And Robert Smith is going to die soon if he doesn’t lose a few pounds. Anyway, the DJ made the decision to go for us. He began playing really obtuse, excessively Goth music, even by Goth standards. I suspect he did this specifically to get me and my friends to leave, which we did. I can’t blame him. At one point the DJ put on a song that was a cross between a bavarian folk song and Bauhaus. Chance did a wonderful job of dancing the Bavarian slap dance to the song.

We wandered across the street to another club called X-something or other, or Something-X. Actually, before heading over, we sent a scouting party. If they didn’t comeback that could only mean that the club was worth visiting. And it was. They were playing hardcore, super danceable techno. When a club is playing the kind of techno dance music that I absolutely love to dance to, the club is invariably empty. The presence of our group doubled the occupancy of the club. Here the jaw grinding, “woo-woo” yelling speed-freaks were not the least bit troubled by a bunch of drunken Americans. In short, we had a blast. I danced more than I had in years. The club also had an interesting room that I call the “sex room”. I think Wenzel discovered it. It is a dark room, cordoned off from the rest of the club by a heavy curtain. Inside were a few tables and chairs, and an alcove with what was essentially a bed in it. We sat on the pads in the alcove briefly before I realized that bodily fluids were likely regularly exchanged there. Oh to be young again!

I want to say just a few more words about the Goth club. I thought that perhaps Berlin would be the city most suited to a Goth scene. But after my recent visit, I have to say that Dresden should claim the title of most Gothic city. For one thing, Berlin isn’t all that old relative to Dresden Until the German unification in 1871, Berlin was a frontier town. Most of its architecture comes from the 1800’s and much of that was destroyed in the War to be replaced by modern buildings. Dresden on the other hand was a really old city, prominent in the middle ages. And, until 1945, was full of Gothic architecture. (Actually, I’m not sure if the archtiecture was what an art historian or archtiect would call Gothic, but a Gothic scenster would.) In 1945, for reasons which are obscure, the Allies bombed the city to dust, killing at least tens of thousands, and displacing hundreds of thousands, in a single night. Yes, the Germans started it the war, and they were the first to bomb civilian populations indiscriminantly. Yes, as an act of revenge it was perhaps deserved. However, from a strategic point of view, it was completely useless. The war was over, and even if it wasn’t, no strategic objective was achieved. The British should know more than anyone that bombing the civilian population does nothing to diminish their fighting capacity, and if anything improves their resolve to continue the fight. People argue back in forth about whether or not bombing Dresden was morally justifiable. I’m of the opinion that it was immoral, but much about war is immoral, and in the logic of war, revenge is reason enough--sometimes people just need killing.

So, what’s this got to do with Goths? Well for one thing, much of the city has been rebuilt more or less exactly as it was, and therefore it looks Gothic. We visited the Dresden Opera house and I was impressed, awed really, by the thing’s beauty and craftsmanship. Much of the marble used in the building was actually artificial. Numerous columns were made using a technique that requires a master craftsman 500 or more hours. The result is more beautiful than natural marble. When it was originally built, the artificial marble was used because it that much marble was too expensive for the Saxon king who built the place. Nowadays, it would probably be cheaper to quarry the marble than to pay master craftsmen for thousands and thousands of man hours, but they wanted authentic, artificial marble.

The other reason that Dresden is a good home for Goths is the War. I’m not sure if Dresden was any more or less “nazified” than any other German city, but it surely had its fair share of evil doers. One thing is sure, Dresden was destroyed like perhaps no other city besides Hiroshima or Nagasaki. At least some of Dresden’s citizens must have believed that the fire bombing was the wrath of God, punishing the city for the crimes of National Socialism. Perhaps this guilt was suppressed. In any event, the whole city became a tomb, and Goths love a good tomb. So this combination of guilt and punishment seems uniquely suited to Goths. On the one hand they lament their misery, on the other they believe that it is deserved, and they therefore relish it.
Posted by edward at 03:33:00

Comments

kris wrote:
thanks for letting me read this great entry. goth, i wish i'd been there!

one question...i was recently on live journal where a number of my friends were having a bit of fun at the expense of the newest laibach album (ohhh that ages me...I meant cd) anyway the discussion was hovering around the concept of fascism and fashion...and well here i am digressing...its not necessarily "goth" but that genre between goth and industrial...what do you think the fascist garb fascination is?...I love to know your theory...
11/23/04 22:58:44

King Zardoz wrote:
"I noticed an evolution in Goth dancing that I hadn’t ever seen before. I call it Goth square dancing. . ."

This is the best thing I've read in a long time.
11/24/04 19:42:55

edward wrote:
I've been thinking about this some and I have a couple of theories.

First, the world view of the totalitarian is not so different from the stereotypical goth: Both believe that the world is filled with degenerate, ignorant, men and women who must be dealt with accordingly.

Second, the goth is attracted to the death and demonism, thus the fangs, the spiky hair, black lipstick, ghastly palor, etc. Totalitarianism was deadlier than any imagined demon, ergo why dress like a vampire when you could dress like a gestapo? I don't think the average goth really wants to be a member of the SS anymore than they really want to be a vampire (there are exceptions of course), but nevertheless they are attracted to the inhuman nature (and therefore perhaps immortal nature?) of both.

Third, it's kinky. I think the image of the totalitarian represents total domination over another and therefore fulfills a fantasy of domination or submission. No much different than someone wearing the garb of a medieval jailer, i.e. leather and chains.

Edward
12/05/04 18:08:35

Leon wrote:
This was hilarious. I wish I had taken the time to read these earlier.
12/17/04 06:06:08

12 November
Dresden Museums

While in Dresden we had occasion to visit several museums. I visited the museum of arms and armor. According to the museum, it’s the best of its type in the world. It was impressive. I saw a two handed sword that looked like it required three and half hands to use it. There was a collection of child sized suits of armor that was just downright creepy. Remnants of the Children’s Crusades perhaps. Everyone was impressed with the gun/battle axes. I took pictures, but I sure would have liked to fondle everything.

We also saw the porcelain museum. It was pretty.

Only in Germany.
Also in Dresden is the Hygiene Museum. Founded ca. 1900 by a soap baron, the Hygiene Museum was the originator and perpetuator of racist hygiene theories. After the War it was preserved by the East Germans, who denounced the Nazis as fascists, but apparently didn’t have a problem with racist hygiene per se.
Posted by edward at 18:37:00

Comments

Kris wrote:
I have always been curious about the hygiene museum too...do you think that because the theories were under the auspices of "science" that somehow they're given a certain degree of justification? It seems to be the case yet to my knowledge nothing ever came from these theories or the horrible experiments conducted in the camps...do you know of anything. It is weird to think of the cruelty of science...I read "quicksliver" by neil stephenson just before we came to berlin and the experiments outlined in the book...haunt me still...even though they were probably 1% of the total content...
11/23/04 22:46:57

22 November
Sachsenhausen

Last Wednesday our class took a fieldtrip to Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp north of Berlin in Oranienberg. Originally Janet was going to join me, but I made the mistake of taking her to Der Untergang the night before. Der Untergang ("The Bunker") is a film about the last days of Hitler and his Henchmen (a terrible name for a rock band). I enjoyed, but as you might imagine it's not very pleasant. It got a lot of things right, as far as I could tell, but for all my studies of the Holocaust I know relatively little about Hitler, so who knows. However, it did romanticize the characters a little bit. Yes, Hitler was evil, but he was portrayed as human, and as such you find yourself having a little bit of sympathy for his character. I think it is good to portray Nazi's as human beings, they weren't demons or martians, however evil they were. Still, I think this movie over did it a little bit. I could definitely see some twisted neo-Nazi getting his rocks off on this film.

Anyway, Janet had enough sadistic Germans for one 24 hour period, so I went to Sachsenhausen without her. The web site listed above is as informative as anything I could share, so I won't rehash all that I saw there except for the following observations.

What touched me the most was the experiments SS doctors performed on a group of pre-adolescent boys. The boys, all Jewish (not everyone killed at a concentration camp was Jewish, but they certainly had the lowest survival rates), were sickened with a hepatitis virus and then monitored to see how the disease progressed. Liver samples were taken from the boys without any form of anesthesia. It's not clear if the boys survived, even if they had they would likely have been murdered anyway. What really makes me sick though is that these boys were taken from the queue to the gas chambers of Auschwitz to Sachsenhausen. I believe the torment of not knowing when and how your life would be snuffed would be worse than death when it finally came.

Next, at Sachsenhausen the SS provided a brothel, stocked with female inmates from female concentration camps such as Ravensbrueck. The brothel was first for use by the guards, and then the prisoners could have their way. When the women were "used up" they were replaced. One of the greatest evils of the SS was turning otherwise decent human beings into the souless zombies that would welcome the chance to denigrate and dominate other humans.

This brings up another interesting point. The vast majority of documents that I have seen regarding the concentration camps don't adequately reflect the fact at least half their victims (not counting prisoners of war) were women. In fact, towards the end, being a woman was a death warrant. Men were often worked to death, but women were executed immediately. Why the discrepancy. More pointedly, why did our class visit two male concentration camps. Why not one of each? People make light of efforts in the area of gender studies, but there is a very simple fact: history and the world consists of roughly 50% men and 50% women, why are we studying only half of our world? Maybe men have historically been the leaders and generals, but that doesn't mean that women should be ignored. In the case of holocaust studies to do so ignores half the victims. And people who label women who call attention to this fact "feminazis" obviously haven't been to a concentration camp.
Posted by edward at 23:20:00

Comments

Kris wrote:
I was wondering why Sachenhausen was chosen as a second concentration camp site rather than Ravensbruck or another womens' camp too...I have never been to Ravensbruck and apparently there is an exhibit about the camp in Sachenhausen...I just read about this today in a newspaper from last week...I was catching up. anyway there has been alot of work done here about womens' experiences as prisoners during the war..and of course I can only think of stuff in German.
11/23/04 22:42:10

23 November
Last days of the DDR

Brad and Jason took us on walks that dealt with the disintegration of the DDR. Jason led us on a walk starting at Alexanderplatz and winding up at a church in Prenzlauerberg. The walk followed the course that people took during the November 4th, 1989 protests that originated at Alexanderplatz. The DDR was celebrating the 50th year since the countries founding. Gorbachev was on hand for the festivities. It amazes me that as the country celebrates its founding, it was in the process of dissolving. One of the contributing factors, as I understand it (and this isn’t an area I’ve studied in detail) was the Soviet Union’s own problems and its unwillingness to bolster the DDR artificially. The Soviets made it clear that they would not interfere in East German affairs—at least not the extent they had been. Did Gorbachev and the KGB, or either, know about the impending crisis? ...

In hindsight one often asks how could they not see that their own country was a month away from disintegrating? Someone had to know, right? I also wonder what role the CIA and American meddling played in events directly. I know that Reagan’s policies such as beating the Russians in an arms race (and running up a huge debt that disappeared during the Clinton years only to return during the Bush years. Those tax-and-spend liberals!) went a long ways towards indirectly causing the collapse of communism as a tool of totalitarian regimes in Eastern Europe. But were we more directly involved? Did we cause a few key people to defect through black mail or bribes? Was the infrastructure—electric grid, essential computer systems, telecommunications—sabotaged in such a way to hinder communication between government agencies at a crucial time. Did we have super spies who orchestrated the bloodless revolution from the inside? I should say that I would likely have approved of such tactics under the right circumstances. It is just hard to understand how else the East German government could have imploded. On Oct. 3, 1989, 1,300 people are arrested during altercations between people wishing to emigrate, activists, and police. (How many were arrested during the WTO riots in Seattle? I wish I had internet access when I need it). Nov. 9 the Wall is down.

After leaving Alexanderplatz we walked to the Volkspalast where a Christmas market/carnival was in full swing. There are Christmas markets all over Germany. Every city has at least one. There are ½ dozen in Berlin. I think the ones I saw in Dresden and Cologne were the classiest. Of course, the one in Cologne was my favorite because I got to be there with Janet. The worst has to be the one at Alexanderplatz.

A few words about Alexanderplatz are in order because it’s just one of my favorite places. Alexanderplatz is dirty (especially for Berlin) but even by American standards (generally dirtier than German cities) Alexanderplatz is a mess. It seems to be perpetually undergoing renovation. The main plaza is bounded by the train station (one of the main hubs for Berlin mass trans.), the Kaufhaus department store (125 years old this year apparently), and two ugly, impenetrable malls. The Kaufhaus is a good department store, reminding me of the downtown Seattle Bon Marche—not as fancy as Fredrick & Nelson’s (still sad it’s gone, it’s lunch counter was marvelous) or Nordstrom’s, but a capitalist paradise all the same. How did the Kaufhaus survive communism? (Now that I think about it, the history of the Kaufhaus and other department stores such as KaDeWe in Berlin would have been a perfect—and far simpler project than the stubborn bastard of a project I took on. It would have met all the requirements of the program dealing with Berlin, space and architecture, early 20th century Berlin, mid-Century, and post-Wall Berlin. I’m sure there is even a Schinkel designed department store somewhere. Also, the history of the Jews in Berlin would also have been a factor as they owned a number of them, were the pioneers of sorts of the department store, and were loathed for it by the Nazis and a great many other Germans. Damn, wish I had thought of that earlier.) There is a free public restroom which looks scary. I would not go in there. I’ve heard rumors about the place. The platz itself is littered with punks, derelicts, (relatively to the US, a rarity, but I’d say about 50% of Berlin’s derelicts hang out there), and wurst vendors. Several men patrol the square wearing grills on their waists and serve fresh hot dogs to those who pass by.
All the building there stem from a rather unfortunate period of design from the 50’s through the 70’s. At their peak these buildings would be uninviting monstrosities. They are enormous and don’t really do much to encourage pleasant strolls. The platz (plaza) itself is huge, anonymous. Imagine about 3 football fields worth of bricks side by side. The best looking buildings in Alexanderplatz make Sieg Hall on the UW campus (generally agreed to be the ugliest building on campus, and former home to electrical engineering and computer science) look like a thing of beauty. But these building in Alexanderplatz are loooong past their prime. The paint is pealing, their concrete facades disintegrating, graffiti covers the first two floors. It is hard to imagine that the tenements surrounding Alexanderplatz once held cherished apartments. People joined the party or became informers for a chance to live in one of these buildings. The buildings also display East German socialist murals to behold. These are building size (i.e. block size) reliefs of East German motifs. What is so great is that they usually depict workers and peasants happily slaving away in some giant collective. Something you might expect in a 1930’s Soviet propaganda poster. But then, at the forefront, is a cosmonaught, eyes facing the future.

Speaking of cosmonaughts, the most obvious feature of Alexanderplatz is of course the Fernsehturm. I like to call it the mothership, as in the Awesome Power of a Fully Operational Mothership (a great Russian version of the Space Needle. I wish I could better explain what is so Soviet appearing about it, but it just is. Heather has a guidebook that says that tourists should definitely go to the top of the Fernsehturm because it’s the only place in Berlin where you can look at the city and not see it. I just love it.
Posted by edward at 15:49:00

24 November
Karl-Marxallee

Me and Karl Marx.



I was supposed to meet the group for a tour of Karl-Marxallee, originally called Frankfurterallee, then changed to Stalinallee in honor of the man with the dubious distinction of killing more than Hitler. By the way, I don’t equate what Stalin did to what Hitler did. “Relativizing” the Holocaust is not something that I could support. There are significant differences between the two that make Hitler’s apocalyptic mass murder worse than Stalin’s, although Stalin does have the numbers.

Anyway, we were supposed to be on a tour at 10:30. But, they changed the schedule on me! Had I gone to class yesterday, I would have known this, but had they stuck to the schedule more often perhaps I would have felt like going to class. As it was, I was dead tired and slept through my alarm. Kris called me to ask if I could let the prof. know that she wouldn’t be in class yesterday, I said sure, no problem. After I got off the phone I realized that class was starting in 5 minutes. After talking it over with my TA, I decided to take the rest of the day off. It was to be Janet and my last day in Berlin together. It has been par for the course to wake-up in the morning, syllabus in hand (one of the many, ever changing syllabi anyway), expecting to perhaps spend as many as three hours in class, doing site visits, and taking tours. Then the day more often than not ends up taking five or more hours of semi-structured time (“structured” in the sense that you can’t do anything you want, “semi” in the sense that there doesn’t seem to be a plan to or class content for many of these meanderings through the town).

I called Kris (our TA) and found out that the class had been moved up until later in that afternoon. Janet and I would be headed to Cologne on a train by then, so I did the tour on my own. It was a beautiful, cold, crisp day in Berlin. After the DDR was founded, Stalinallee was supposed to be some sort of model for the success of the new country; proof to the world of how successful communism was. It was an attractive part of town. Here’s an excerpt from the write up did for the tour:

I find the street rather attractive. It is one of the few streets in Berlin that I’ve encountered that offers such a long view. The slight elevation at Strausberger Platz offers even a greater vista. Ladd describes the buildings flanking the street as ostentatious, but I don’t agree. Compared to some of the architecture in Berlin, they seem quite modest, and only moderately adorned. True, the buildings aren’t in the sparse, modernist style. Nor are they the pre-fabricated structures Khrushchev would have preferred. While walking down this street, I really got a sense of one of the better aspects of live in East Berlin. It’s hard to imagine a similar street being developed in the West after the war. A really good mix of commercial and residential zoning as well.
Posted by edward at 15:50:00

Comments

Kris wrote:
I find Stalinallee really fascinating and am looking forward to seeing it come alive over the next 10 years. Many of the residents are elderly and were officials or other high level functionaries in the GDR...they have the apartments for life so the attempt by the city to revitalize the area will have to wait...god this sounds crass...I don't mean it that way at all. My hunch is that even if Frankfurter Allee were not a ghost of Stalinallee it would still be going through this transitional phase...
12/12/04 16:58:33

26 November
Köln (Cologne)

Janet and I were in Cologne together this weekend. We had a wonderful time, even though we were both fighting losing battles with colds. While we were there, we had hoped to see our friend Randy Jones, also from Seattle. Randy was performing in Wiesbaden, but travel to and from Wiesbaden just wasn’t feasible. As luck would have it, Randy was supposed to be in Cologne for one night. He had sent an email to that effect to Janet. I called him on the night in question and left a message for him on his cell phone (called “handy” in Europe. I don’t approve). Knowing how expensive and unreliable American cell phones are in Germany, I held little hope that a rendezvous would actually happen. Cologne is a big city, I don’t know how big just now, but I imagine that it’s larger than Seattle. So, you can imagine how unlikely it would be to run into Randy at the train station. But that’s exactly what happened. We were walking away from the luggage lockers when we saw Randy walking towards us saying, “There you are, I’ve been looking all over for you.” What are the odds?
Posted by edward at 20:54:00

 
26 November
Cologne Cathederal

I probably should have mentioned the Cologne Cathedral the other day, because it is phenomenal. When you walk out of the train station, the cathedral is right there, massive, looming over you in its incredible, gothic glory. I gasped when I saw it. The Cologne Cathedral is the epitome of gothic. Twin spires reach to the sky, the face of every wall is grooved with lines that meet somewhere in the clouds. It’s beautiful. We first saw it the night we arrived from Berlin and so didn’t get a chance to look at it more closely.

We came to see our friend Sara who Janet had originally met when she was speaking at an animation conference in Stuttgart. Sara led us to our hotel. She’s picked a number of hotels for us, and each one has been perfect. I wish had her talent. Sara is an artist and animator also, but is now a full time mother and house wife with two children ages 1 and 3. Janet is god mother to the youngest, Lillith. They are both adorable. The older of the two, Justine, calls Lillith her baby, and will contradict her mother on this point.

It was a little sad to spend Thanksgiving away from all our family. At least we had each other for company. We didn’t lack for good food, albeit sans turkey and pumpkin pie. Sara’s husband Lars is a gourmet. I never realized tongue could taste so good!
Posted by edward at 15:57:00

27 November
Optical curiosity shop

Sara brought us to an acquaintance of hers who runs a curiosity shop/museum of optics and projectors, Werner Nekes. He has a warehouse space on the river in Mulheim an der Ruhr, near Oberhausen. He has filled it with 18th and 19th century cameras, optical illusions, and books on optics. He has some zoopraxiscope discs from Edward Muybridge. Apparently, Muybridge had produced them for an exhibition but people didn't know what to do with them and they are now very rare. This guy has written and published several books on the subject (see www.wernernekes.de). He also showed me an encyclopedia from the 1700’s that had a huge section on military maneuvers, fencing, naval ship building, all things martial. Some gorgeous French volumes.

Posted by edward at 21:58:00

Comments

janet wrote:
I didn't know about Werner Nekes before Sara brought us to his wonderland... Sara had shown me a huge book of optical illusions and the history of film and animation (ICH SEHE WAS, WAS DU NICHT SIEHST!), and I spent a morning pouring over it, taking notes to use in art projects, even though it was in German. We made plans to visit a friend of theirs who had a collection of optical instruments and illusions--but I had no idea we'd be visiting the author of that fabulous book, and better yet, get to see many of the objects I had been drooling over.

I'll never forget our visit to his studio. Going down stairs to the main level, we passed shelves and shelves of original 35mm prints, including Charlie Chaplin and other classics. The studio/museum is housed in multiple rooms, every surface and shelf covered with old projectors, magic lanterns, books, artwork, funhouse mirrors, and so many fascinating objects it makes your head spin. There's a cozy kitchen where he steamed up hot cups of espresso we carried around as we took everything in. Adding to the dream-like quality of the place, an outdoor veranda faced the river, and Werner had set it up like a living room, so you could watch movies at night while the river flowed by.

Werner Nekes is very well known for his astounding collection of camera obscura, Victorian backlight pictures, books, and other invaluable artifacts, as well as his experimental films and documentaries. Lars knows him from the Oberhausen Film Festival. He currently has an exhibition called Eyes, Lies, and Illusions at the Hayward Gallery in London. I would love to see something like that travel to Seattle. I'll see what I can do...
12/12/04 18:07:13

29 November
She's gone

Janet flew back to Seattle, while I flew back to Berlin. It wasn’t nearly enough time together, but we did have fun. One of the most memorable times we had was when we both went to Café Burger’s Russen Disko night. This is very hard to describe, but I’ll try. Mix Russian folk, klezmer music, rock, punk, ska, hip hop, and electronic dance music, and you have Russian Disco. We danced and danced, even though I was sick (still am). We got home late.
Posted by edward at 20:58:00

29 November
The end is near!

The end is near! I’ll be home in just 19 more days. It’s hard to believe. I want to come home so bad, but my project is nowhere near finished. Some of my classmates have cavalierly let it be known that they’ve drafted 10 or more pages already. Bastards! I would sure like to know what it is that separates them from me. I have never, ever, managed my time in such a way as to prevent a mad dash to complete any project. I’ve done enough research already to write several papers, but that’s not the same thing as writing it. I found myself fantasizing about getting hit by a car, or perhaps knifed by some deranged street person. Then, when John (my prof.) visits me in the hospital and asks if there is anything he can do for me I can ask him he wouldn’t mind if I delivered my paper orally so that I could die in peace, or return to health without this project looming over me.

I have generally liked the class, and wouldn’t trade the experience, but I have felt that my time was wasted on more than one occasion. I will spend the next 2.5 weeks with my head down and not really get to enjoy Berlin as a unique city. It’s now just a place where I sleep and eat, drink coffee and find internet access so I can finish my project.
Posted by edward at 20:56:00

Comments

Kris wrote:
I too have never been one to finish projects early...though I'm a great researcher! Currently I am working on a "scarf" project...one of my friends will be turning 40 at the end of January so another friend...who always gets things done early...has organized that everyone makes the birthday girl a scarf and then takes a digital photo of themselves wearing the scarf...this will be posted on a birthday website...and all of this should be done by January 1...HA! I say.
12/12/04 17:04:52

Kris wrote:
I'm glad you've enjoyed most of the time here...I've found some of it boring or trying too...but at lease its been boring or trying in a completely different part of the world!
12/12/04 17:05:57

30 November
You are the dancing queen. . .

I was going to postpone writing this journal entry until later, but I could resist no longer. Someone has to explain German pop music to me, because I don't get it. American pop music is terrible, no doubt, but in most major cities you can find at least one station that ocasionally plays decent music. Although I'm jaded because of KEXP (years later, I still want to write KCMU). O.k., maybe you can't find good music in most American cities either. You've got your golden oldies and soft rock, your classic rock, young country, old country, "urban" (by the way, just who are they kidding with this category? In Germany this category is called "black music" which might not be PC, but it doesn't mince words).

I wander. . .I'm in a cafe which has free wireless access, and it's only just 2 blocks from my apt. Perfect! Well, it's close. Considering I'm paying up to 3 euros an hour to use the internet elsewhere, I'll settle for just about anything. I also found a laundromat that has a good cafe. Nice ambience, good food, all you can drink coffee (a rarity in Germany). The problem with both these places is that they, like EVERY OTHER *&^%ing place in Germany plays nothing but 80's music. American 80's music. Occasionally they might throw in a tune from the 70's or 60's. What's weird about this is that there doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason to their playlists. If it comes from the 80's, it must be good!

I'll need to return to this subject because it merits further attention.
Posted by edward at 23:12:00

Comments

janet wrote:
I have to concur. More than a few times we found a great place to settle in, good food, good people, and then that 80s CD would come on and eventually drive us away, bickering for a reason that had to be the subliminal effects of Air Supply, Kenny Loggins, or Steve Winwood. And some of the best music on the planet comes out of Berlin!
12/01/04 01:09:48

Kris wrote:
I agree with both of you and it has always been quite perplexing for me...I can't say I mind horribly since I am an unrepentent 80's fann particularly here since the selection of "pop" 80 played in Berlin was only heard on college radio alternative shows in the US...well in Idaho ;>
I think its pretty cool to be listening to a bit of Schubert and then have a bit of news or the weather followed by Karla Bronagahon...my spelling is horrible but you know who I mean...Betty Davis eyes...
12/12/04 16:53:12

02 December
The Hajj

Yesterday, Ulf Heinsohn took us on a tour of Turkish Berlin. Very fascinating. One of the highlights was a trip to a Mosque. The Mosque is situated on a historic cemetery for Turks, who have a long history in Berlin, although the vast majority arrived in Berlin after the war to help reconstruct it. While were in the Mosque, Ulf, who is a tad opinionated got into an argument with the Muslims. ...

Three members of the Mosque were explaining the significance of various features of the Mosque, as well as the basic tenets of Islam. What I know about Islam is very limited confined to book knowledge, so it was great to actually hear practitioners explain what and why they believe the way they do. They were explaining the 5 pillars of Islam and when they came to the Hajj, Ulf took issue with them. Ulf was undoubtedly right, he always is, but that wasn’t the point. Apparently, one of the Muslim speakers inadvertently claimed that access to Mecca (the destination of the pilgrimage known has the Hajj) was restricted to practicing Muslims by tradition and as a way of ensuring that the faithful had access to the holy site since there is barely enough room for all the Muslims in the world, let alone infidels (not his word). Ulf pointed out that this was not the case, that there should be no logical reason why non-Muslims shouldn’t be able to visit Mecca at times other than the Hajj, and that the denial of access is a relatively new thing imposed by the Saudis. I don’t know this for a fact, but it sounds right. Our guide conceded the point after Ulf bullishly refused to be respectful of this man. (By the way, what image of our Muslim host do you have in your head? I can imagine, but you would be wrong. The guy looked, dressed, and acted like any number of Germans or Americans, just nicer. I.e., he looked to be of northern European descent, spoke German natively and was fluent in English.) The issue isn’t whether the Muslim speaker was right or not, the point is that we as a class were guests in the Mosque, and as these people were kind enough to give a tour and explain a little bit about their faith, the least we could do is listen respectfully. If they had invited us out for coffee and discussion later, sure, and argument would have been fine. But it wasn’t the time (during a tour) or the place (a Mosque). It not that there wasn’t plenty to quibble about, our hosts’ justification for why women couldn’t be in the same main room as the men was just pathetic. Men would be distracted from their prayers by the site of women, whereas women are not similarly affected. Regardless of the validity of this argument, it overlooks one essential point: what do the women want, and where are they in the eyes of God in this man’s view of his faith? Anyway, I cringed when Ulf became so argumentative, and really wished that our professor has interrupted. Actually, I really wished I had the balls to say something. I felt kinda low on the totem pole, though. I was a student of my professor, who had ceded control to a guest lecturer, who had then rudely interrupted our Muslim hosts. Nevertheless, and this may sound corny, but every time I display such a weakness of character I can’t help but think of all the people who did nothing as 6 million Jews were killed. There are, of course, less horrible examples, but I wonder if I would have had the fortitude to behave any differently than the people I’ve condemned for inaction.
Posted by edward at 21:04:00

03 December
Da bus

Went on a tour of the subways today. It was interesting. You ride them every day and yet don’t know a thing about them.

Reagan’s interested me because he explained how the divide between East and West Berlin is in part preserved by the different transportation systems. 15 years after the wall came down, West Berlin is still much more dependent on the bus and the car, whereas the East relies on the Tram (both sides use the S- and U-Bahn’s though. I once heard someone say that mass transportation will never be ubiquitous in the U.S. because people love the independence of their cars too much. Maybe busses offer this to a lesser extent. Don’t know.
Posted by edward at 20:59:00

06 December
Sachsenhausen again (3x)

I went to Sachsenhausen Saturday on my professor’s recommendation. We had been to this dreary concentration camp as a class some weeks before, but I had missed a really important building that is relevant to my project. (I was dying to get home to Janet, and given the choice between a concentration camp and Janet, I choose Janet every time.) The T-Building at Sachsenhausen was the administrative center of the entire German concentration camp system. So, I headed out there yesterday only to find that, in true German bureaucratic fashion, it closed 1/2 hour before the rest of the museum/memorial. So, I had to go back on Sunday.

Sachsenhausen is about a two hour round trip when you include the dreadful walk from the train station to the camp, following in the steps of the damned. I did get there and took some pictures, but the museum portion consisted entirely of German information cards and had no English audio component (as did the rest of the museum). ...
One particularly disturbing thing was a poster I discovered less than 100 meters from the sign memorializing the death marches. With the camp in site, someone had posted a poster announcing a “Beach Party” replete with naked pole dancers (female) and cage dancers (male). What is wrong with these people! I hear someone ask, well what are the Germans supposed to do, just live with the shame of their fathers forever? Well, yes, I think that sounds about right. At the very least, have enough respect not to stick such an obscene (in many definitions of the word) poster so close to a place of infinite sorrow. I should also mention that a cute little suburban development abuts the camp—one of the houses uses the old concrete pylons with razor wire as their yard fence. I saw a nice German lady walking her dogs through the camp grounds. Apparently, a lot of older folks come here to settle down. It’s just not right. Germany is densely populated, but not so much that the suburbs must abut concentration camps.
Posted by edward at 16:06:00

06 December
The Reichstag and the German flag

Wenzel somehow orchestrated a private tour of the Reichstag for our class. This was really amazing. They have re-built the place, renovating it with a neat glass cupola, and amazing Earth friendly design (geo-thermal and solar heating and cooling). However, they have kept many of the remnants from the Nazi era and cold war years. When the place was occupied by allied soldiers (mostly Russian) they littered the walls with graffiti and many instances of this were preserved.

The Reichstag is a public art space and several permanent installations are on exhibit. All are symbolic. There was one which was basically a corridor made of small file boxes. Each box had the name of a duly elected German politician. Naturally, we all tried to find Hitler’s name. His was the only one which had gone missing.

One of the interesting things about the Reichstag is it is about the only spot in Berlin, or Germany for that matter, where you will find the German flag waving proudly. Very few people will display their flag openly. It is very different than in the U.S. I was talking to a friend about this and I was explaining how I felt that often times (but by no means all of the time) when someone displays a flag in the U.S. it is symbolic of more than just pride in country. The republicans have managed to steal the flag from the rest of us and imbue it with a whole host of values that fly in face of the liberty for which it once stood: Family values, i.e. one mother (female) one father (male), one or more children (all straight), any other family composition is not only immoral but is an intentional attack by perverts on those who believe that God will smite all but rigidly traditional families. Corporate values: welfare for multinationals while people in the richest country in the world starve. Criminal values: life sentences for drug traffickers while corporate criminals who have made millions destitute sail off to the country club on their golden parachutes. Martial values: Billions are spent on militainment (military + entertainment = war in Iraq), while our borders are porous and city police and fire remain woefully unprepared and truly dangerous states (Korea, Iran) are ignored. We talk about the denial of liberty in other nations while the Patriot Act can be used to deny any American (yes, you too) without due justice, their civil liberties (it is happening now). Blah, blah, blah. The point is some how the republicans convinced us all that they were the rightful inheritors of the flag. It just doesn’t seem right that the party that is so eager to deny citizens every right except the right to own machine guns and observe Christian prayers in schools now owns the symbol of liberty. Pah!

Don’t know what this has got to do with Germany except perhaps to point out that Germany was once virulently nationalistic as well. (And no, I’m not comparing Bush to Hitler. Hitler was a better orator. Seriously, I think we have a long ways to go yet before we start detaining people in concentration camps without anything resembling due process, and torturing them gratuitously. . . Well, at least our concentration camps are considerably more survivable. O.k., this time really seriously. I actually think its dangerous to equate what is going on in the U.S. with Nazi Germany because it denies the extremity of the situation in Nazi Germany. Still, equating and comparing are two different things.)
Posted by edward at 21:50:00

09 December
Socialists in Germany

Yesterday Charles took us on a very long tour of the socialist resistors to the Nazis. The history as it has been written in the west has gone to great lengths to minimize the role the socialists played in combating Hitler. If it wasn’t for German socialists, there would have been no resistance to Nazism worth mentioning. It was politically expedient after the war to demonize all socialism in an effort to combat a very real Soviet threat. But we shouldn’t equate every socialist with Stalinist communism any more than we should equate every conservative with fascists.
Posted by edward at 21:28:00

10 December
The joy that is the end of the quarter.

I am in agony trying to finish my project. I have attempted to edit three or so hours of interviews and at this rate I’ll be finished by February and have yet to write an actual page of my paper. Ahh!

Posted by edward at 16:09:00

11 December
The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

I was up until 4:30 editing one, ten minute segment of the interviews for my project. Scott got home around 1:00 or so, but he is blessed with the ability to sleep while someone else is up and about in the room.

Today we went to see the Eisenman Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The memorial was built after 17 years of debate. The pamphlet for the museum includes a resolution passed in 1999 endorsing the museum. Among the resolutions was this:

With the memorial we intend to
• Honor the murdered victims,
• Keep alive the memory of these inconceivable events in German history
• Admonish all future generations never again to violate human rights, to defend the democratic constitutional state at all times, to secure equality before the law for all people and to resist all forms of dictatorship and regimes based on violence.

No mention is made of the fact that Germans were the perpetrators. A very passive voice is used to acknowledge that something bad happened in Germany. ...
We were very fortunate to see the memorial as it isn’t yet open. John managed to get our class a tour. The memorial is really something, you can read more about it at www.stiftung-denkmal.de The memorial consists of a 19,000 m2 field of stele, concrete blocks arranged in narrow, perfectly straight rows and columns. The height of each stele varies from 1 – 3 meters. You can enter the field from any side, and each person should wander separately through the field. Our group of 25 was swallowed up by the memorial, minutes would pass without seeing a class mate. It was a bit like being in a labyrinth. There is no obvious reference as to what the purpose of this memorial is, although a subterranean information center is being built in the middle, but you have to find it. There is a lot of concern that people will vandalize the place, or just make their way to the middle and have a few beers. It will undoubtedly happen, but I think it would be very powerful to wander lost through the field and then stumble across a stele with a swastika painted on it. I think this would say an awful lot about what is being memorialized.
Posted by edward at 16:10:00

Comments

Lucky wrote:
I think they should make it like a carnival, with rides and clowns in ss suits handing out black and red cotton candy. Every half hour, air raid sirens would go off and they would randomly grab people and line them up against the wall. Then they just laugh and let you go. Everyone who visits gets a "have a nice day" pin.
12/15/04 06:53:25