Berlin Highlights: the Holocaust Memorials

There's no question that Berlin has brilliant architecture to spare, but I find it interesting that besides the Reichstag, the city's two most interesting pieces are memorials to Germany’s darkest moment: the Holocaust.

Peter Eisenman’s ""Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe" is quite simply one of the most interesting and emotional pieces of architecture I’ve ever seen. Thousands of concrete stelae cover a space in central Berlin that’s roughly the size of a football field, and each stele is said to be unique – in terms of height and thickness – representing, in a way, the uniqueness of the individual victims of the Holocaust. For a contemporary viewer like me, who’s heard the figure “six million murdered Jews” repeated again and again until it almost loses all meaning, it was a powerful reminder of the individual nature of this colossal tragedy.

More astonishing, though, was the site’s uncanny resemblance to the Jewish cemeteries of Old Europe, with its crowded disorganized rows of wilding-titling rough-hewn stones. Of course, all but a handful of these cemeteries were destroyed during Hitler’s reign of terror, and apparently it was not uncommon for the Reich to reuse the stones as street pavers. The only extant example I’ve ever seen is the Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague, and Eisenman’s memorial perfectly captures the feel of that unusual space. I find it really fitting that a memorial to Europe’s murdered Jews also manages to pay tribute to, and in a way to recreate, a such an important symbol Europe’s ancient Jewish culture – without it seeming contrived.

Visiting the memorial is also deeply unsettling physical experience, one that’s to make you feel small and vulnerable. As you walk down a subtle slope and deeper into the memorial, the stelae, which appeared about waist high from the outside, suddenly shoot up like trees in some petrified forest. The towering stones, leaning as they do at noticeable angles, looked as if they might fall at any moment, and the cobblestone paths between them are uneven and undulating, as if the Earth is rolling beneath your feet. It reminded me a bit of being eight years old and walking through the “Casa Magnetica” at Six Flags, where everything was built at a 45-degree angle, and yet the memorial always manages to stay above the level of some amusement park ride.

In the center of the field the stelae reach their greatest height, some ten or twenty feet tall, and no matter how bright the sun is shining very little of it ever reaches the ground. It is a very deep, dark place. From this vantage point, the rows of stones stretch out as far as the eye can see, curving slightly at the ends so that there seems to be no exit. It’s very easy to become lost inside. Once Kevin and I became separated, and it was twenty minutes before we found each other again – calling out for one another over the tops of the stelae.

On the day we visited, I noticed several younger tourists used this very sense of disorientation to play an excellent game of hide-and-seek. However, some of the older visitors were really put off by this, deeming it inappropriate behavior at a Holocaust memorial. But Eisenman, himself Jewish, has emphasized from the beginning that he didn’t want to dictate the memorial’s interpretation or even its use. “People are going to picnic in the field. Children will play tag in the field. There will be fashion models modeling there and films will be shot there. I can easily imagine some spy shoot 'em ups ending in the field,” he told Der Spiegel. “What can I say? It's not a sacred space.”



But the Germans had other ideas. Fearing that the memorial might become a target for neo-Nazi graffiti, they insisted on coating the stones with an anti-graffiti sealant. But Eisenman was against this from the start, saying that the memorial could serve as an important litmus test for public sentiment. “If a swastika is painted on it, it is a reflection of how people feel,” he said. “And if it remains there, it is a reflection of how the German government feels about people painting swastikas on the monument.” So far, no graffiti of any sort has appeared.

In addition, the private foundation that owns the site has also installed an “education center” beneath the memorial, also against Eisenman’s wishes. It explains, in very apologetic tones, the history of the Holocaust and points out the meaning of the memorial and the lessons the visitor should take away. It never ceases to amaze me how the Germans can never let a thing just be. They are big on intention, interpretation, and didacticism here. Fortunately, you can completely avoid this room, which is underground, and interpret the memorial for yourself. You might not know it’s there at all unless you go looking for it.



Just a few blocks away, is Berlin’s other big Holocaust attraction, if one can call it that: the Jewish Museum-Berlin. A few years ago, the museum got a new look: a building from the American architect Daniel Liebeskind, the one with the funny black glasses who won the competition to design site plan for the new World Trade Center. Titled “Between the Lines,” the Berlin building is a “deconstructivist masterpiece” (or so says the museum’s Web site), and immediately after its completion it was opened to the public – long before it held any exhibits. The empty space itself was unusual enough to attract hundreds of thousands of visitors.

Like Eisenman’s memorial, the Jewish Museum is designed in such a way as to create a sense of insecurity through uneven and sloping floors and walls that jut-out at odd angles. (I apologize for not knowing which architect first came up with this concept; both structures were built around the same time.) But the Jewish Museum caused even more of the “Casa Magnetica”-effect than the Holocaust memorial: I actually felt a little dizzy and nauseous inside, especially on the staircases. Even more than Eisenman’s project, though, Liebeskind’s building attempts to give a physical form to the idea of the Holocaust. Its footprint is an enormous zigzag, which Liebeskind calls a “broken Star of David.” OK, then. If you want to be literal about the extermination of the Jews, I guess a broken six-point star is the way to go.


Critics of the museum have claimed that the space is overly thought-out at best, and downright kitschy at worst. Compared to Eisenman’s more stripped-down space, I would have to agree. The main exhibit space consists of three long halls, or “axes” as Liebeskind calls them, awkwardly named “The Axis of the Holocaust,” “The Axis of Emigration,” and the “Axis of Continuity,’ which – you guessed it – correspond with the typed of stories they tell. Still, Liebeskind’s boutique design is not the real purpose of the Jewish Museum. The exhibits, which chart the stories of a few dozen real families through the years of the Holocaust using their letters and photos and artifacts, are why I went and why I’d go back again an again. I guess the most that can be said for the axes is that they don’t detract from the brilliantly curated exhibits they hold.

However, Liebeskind’s “voids,” five enormous empty spaces at the end of the axes, are amazing. There are five voids in all, but the two that stood out most were the “Memory Void” and Liebeskind’s own masterpiece, “The Holocaust Tower.”

The “Memory Void” houses an installation by Israeli artist Menasche Kadishman titled Schalechet, or “Fallen Leaves” in English, but the 10,000 or so three-dimensional plates that fill this void are about as much like leaves as, well, a fish is like a submarine. The heavy, iron slabs are coarsely cut into the shape of human faces, and they play with the same ideas of individuality and repetition as Eisenman’s stelae: Each face is hand wrought and so is a little bit different. And here, too, the visitor is encouraged to participate – by walking across the room, on top of the exhibit. Of course, walking on top thousands of metal faces is terribly disconcerting, not to mention the enormous racket it makes in an empty concrete hall. I couldn’t help feeling the way a cat must feel when he wanders into a puddle by mistake: I just wanted to get back out again, as fast as possible. I have a hard time putting in to words exactly what this has to do with the Holocaust, nonetheless, it was a rare experience, and one that everyone should experience for himself.

Finally, Liebeskind’s real pièce de résistance is his Holocaust Tower, a bare, concrete room, semi-detached from the rest of the museum, and one which is neither heated or insulated. The temperature inside is always the same as the temperature out-of-doors, and the room isn’t lit. The only light in the space comes from a long slit near the ceiling, which allows in a narrow stream of radiant natural light. I’ve heard this room compared to a gas chamber and to a cattle-car, one of the infamous train cars used to transport Jews to the concentration camps. Both of these descriptions are pretty apt, although I prefer to see the space as a less blatantly symbolic. Quite simply: You feel trapped here, and the light streaming in from above is a reminder of you of the world you are cut off from as well as a sign of hope. And that’s a pretty remarkable feeling and a pretty remarkable space.

Disclaimer: I apologize for going on and on about Berlin’s architecture. I realize this is no less than my third post on the subject, and I promise it will be my last. My excuse must be that, while at my former job, I worked on two websites related to this topic: one on Daniel Liebeskind, and another on Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial. Although I spent months researching and writing on these projects, I never visited either site in the flesh until now, and although it is now some years later, I guess I had a few ideas still rolling around in my head.

Berlin Highlights: Der Reichstag

Germany’s capitol building, the Reichstag, is so fascinating both historically and architecturally that I feel compelled to give it its own post. I’ve visited it twice in the past three months, and even so, I’d go again. It was worth every minute of the two-hour wait to get inside – even in the rain.


The History (in brief):

The original Neoclassic building was opened in 1884 to house the new German congress – even though the country was still a technically a constitutional monarchy. After the monarchy fell, as a result of the nation’s defeat in World War I and the badly settled Versailles Treaty, the Reichstag became the real seat of the Weimar Republic until someone set it on fire on February 27, 1933, destroying its famous cupola and badly damaging the rest of the building.

This particular event is really interesting. Even now, it seems no one knows for sure who set the fire on that February night. The leader of the National Socialist Party, Adolf Hitler, claimed it was the communists. The communists claimed it was the National Socialists. Whoever was actually responsible, there’s no denying that Hitler successfully used the event to turn public sentiment against political opponents, suspend the constitution, and strength his grip on power. Not to overreach here, but to an American, it all sounds eerily familiar…

Anyway, during the Nazi era (1933-1945), the Reichstag remained a burnt-out ruin. As my tour guide said, “Hitler and his sham parliament never set foot inside the Reichstag because they had no use for democracy or the parliamentary system.” I thought it funny that a contemporary German, one born after the Second World War even, would go to such lengths to distance her parliamentary building from the country’s most infamous citizen. Apparently after Reunification the nation was divided over the decision to renovate the building and make it the home of the Bundestag (parliament) once again – not just because it meant moving the capital from Bonn to Berlin, but because average Germans felt the building itself was too tainted by the Hitler era.


Now that I know the history, it’s not all that surprising that they would have felt that way. The Russian Army, not realizing that the actual seat of Hitler’s government had been across town on Kaiser Wilhelmstrasse, made the Reichstag one of their primary targets when they lay siege to the city in April 1945. When they finally reached the building on May 2, 1945, they flew the red flag from its roof and defaced the interior with graffiti. Even now you can see some of the graffiti – in Russian, Polish, German, even English – preserved in an upstairs room accessible on the special guided tour. I got to see it on this last visit, and fortunately, I was in the company of a number of Russians and Poles, who translated for me -- mostly just lines like “Vladimir wuz here 05-25-1945,” etc.

During the Cold War, the building was slowly rebuilt, though not its famous dome. Still, because of tensions between the East and West, it was rarely used, as it lay a stone’s throw from the Berlin Wall. Nonetheless, its enormous front lawn was the site of several peace concerts in the 1980s. I think even Bono was there.


The Architecture:

[Cristo and Jeanne-Claude, Wrapped Reichstag (1995). Photographs by Wolfgang Volz.]

After Reunification, the building was given a much need face-lift. British architect Sir Norman Foster designed its modern dome. I’ve heard Germans call it “the salad spinner,” but I think it’s really brilliant. Walking up the spiral ramp inside is an other-worldly experience, and because of its glass surface you get an incomparable view of the city of Berlin and all the new building that’s going one there. (Kevin and I counted 36 cranes on our last visit).

Unfortunately, I can’t speak so highly of the interior design. In fact, I suspect the Plenary Chamber, the actual hall where the Bundestag meets, was decorated by none other than the set designer from Star Trek – the original series. The hall itself is pretty spare: off-white carpets, off-white walls, but the 600-and-some-odd members sit in chairs of the most absurd shade of purple. I mean, I’m a big fan of purple, but it’s just not a dignified color for a government. I also find it odd that a country with such a long history would choose such a modern concept for their parliamentary chambers. By comparison, the United States of America is a baby of a nation, but we’ve given our congressional chambers a real patina of age. But I suppose it’s psychological: We’d like to think that our government is older than it is; they’d probably like to think theirs is younger. Anyway, the designer calls the space “practical” and “meditative”; I think it looks like the meeting place for the United Federation of Planets.

Finally, the Germans just can’t seem to restrain themselves when it comes to modern art, even in their places of government. The Paul Löbe Building, which houses the parliamentary offices and is next door to the Reichstag, is dripping with conceptual art: art installations, text-based art, neon art, sculpture. Inexplicably, someone on the decorating committee selected a work from American artist Joseph Kosuths to adorn the floor of the building: a quote from Thomas Mann’s magnum opus Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain) written in two-foot script, which reads “Was war also das Leben?” (What then is Life?”) – and ends some hundred words later with no clearer idea of what life is than when it began. Otherwise, the building is a beautiful piece of architecture. When I was there, on a quiet Sunday just after sunrise on a quiet Sunday, I couldn’t restrain myself from photographing the interior from every angle.

So while I don’t think much of the German’s taste in art, I do appreciate their taste in architecture. In my opinions, that’s their real métier, and they should stick to it. They could even teach us Americans a thing or two.

Around Deutschland in 14 Days

Kevin and I just returned from a two-week trip around Germany, organized and paid for by the Humboldt Foundation, and while I never want to look a gift horse in the mouth, I am glad that it’s over. Ten cities in 14 days means that we never got to spend more than a day or two in each city, and sometimes significantly less time. On the final jam-packed day of the trip, we managed to leave Bamburg, visit Rothenberg and arrive in Würzburg all during normal business hours. It was just a little much. When you visit new cities at such a fast pace, the most you can take away from each is a snapshot of its most famous building and the flavor of its most famous dish. My memories of the trip read like a laundry list of such things:

Bamburg: the Bamburger Reiter, Rauchbier (that’s smoked beer)

Münster: the Münster Rathaus, Haxenfleisch (that’s a whole pork leg)

Hamburg: the Hamburger Hafen, Matjesfilet (that’s raw pickled herring, and I like it!)

Fortunately, since Kevin and I had visited many of these cities before on longer more leisurely trips, we didn’t have to feel that we were missing much. This time on our layovers in Berlin, Dresden, and München, we got to see some of our favorite museums one last time and a few new places that we never would have seen on our own. The workshop of the luxury watch manufacturer A. Lange & Söhne, located high up in the Ore Mountains, was actually pretty cool; the tour of the Airbusfactory in Hamburg, I could I have done without, although I bet there were engineers on our trip who would have disagreed.

Still, there were days when, in the middle of a three-hour walking tour of a city following a four-hour bus ride, Kevin and I would want nothing more than to slip off from the rest of the group and settle ourselves into a shaded café, where we could read novels and sip our double espressos. Sometimes we did. Those were my favorite memories of the trip.

But without sounding to hokey (I hope), what the trip lacked in leisure time it made up for by throwing us in the constant company of interesting people. There were 33 people on our bus, and they were of all ages, nationalities and disciplines. There were Jordanians and Egyptians; Chinese, Japanese, Thais, and Malaysians; Russians, Poles, Kyrgistanis; Indians and Madagasks. (The one Madagask being my friend Dina from my German class in Frankfurt). There was even one other American – a chemist from Washington State.

Oddly enough, although this was a German-sponsored trip of Germany, the working language was English. Everyone on the trip spoke English, more or less, and so Kevin and I got to purge ourselves of all the cocktail conversation that we’d been saving up for eight months. As some of the only native English speakers on the trip, we had a captive audience.

But don’t think that I didn’t practice German at all on my summer vacation. Our tour driver was a charming old Sicilian who looked just like Rosano Brazzi, and as he was one of the only people on the tour who spoke German but no English, and I was one of the only people who spoke any German at all, we often sat together at dinner. After many beers he’d open up to me about the secret to making good Spaghetti Alio Olio and everything he knew about the Mafia. (There was a terrible quintuple homicide at a pizza place in Dusseldorf during our trip; it was obviously a mafia hit.)

Also, as part of its effort to maintain and spread the German language, the Humboldt Foundation provided a German tour guide in every city,and so as the rare German-speaker, I was obliged to always travel with the German-speaking tour guide. Often, I was even asked to translate German into English, when members of our group hadn’t understood. At one point, I even overheard our German tour guide, telling another tour guide, “You know her German's actually pretty good.” It almost made it all worthwhile.


For posterity’s sake, the pictures in the slideshow belong to the following cities: Münster, Bonn, Hamburg, Berlin, Dresden, Bamburg, München, the Danube River, and Rothenburg ob der Tauber.

The Many Faces of Berlin

Although Kevin and I were ostensibly in Berlin to meet other Humboldtians, I was really more excited about acquainting myself with the city’s wealth of architecture. Berlin is one of the rare cities that wears its full history on its sleeve. Despite heavy bombardment during World War II, you can occasionally see remnants of its glittering Weimar past. And there are still distinct differences between East and West Berlin, even though Reunification was more than 15 years ago. Add to that another layer of world-class contemporary architecture, and you’ve got a truly varied cityscape.

What I love most about Berlin architecture is that Berliners aren’t afraid of altering their old buildings. Unlike Bavarian cities, Berlin never feels like a Heimat set piece, all stucco and fachwerk. Take the Sony Center, really just a massive mall in the heart of old East Berlin, but it’s built into the remnants of the old Grande Hotel Esplande, a bar and hotel for the fin de siécle jet set. A brightly lit tent towers a hundred feet over an open-air courtyard, and the light illuminating it changes gradually every thirty seconds from magenta to violet to blue. The two architectures seem apposite, but somehow it just works.

On the other hand, there are a few modifications I don’t get. For instance, while we were walking Unter den Linden, we passed by the famous Humboldt University, one of the most prestigious universities in Germany. The main building of the university was getting a new paint job: A giant white “V” across its 19th century façade, even across the windows. I have no idea what the “V” stood for (maybe it was the Roman numeral for 5?), and it wasn’t really an improvement on the building’s looks, but I appreciate nonetheless that the University wasn’t afraid to be experimental.

A Day at the Palace

Kevin and I recently spent a week in Berlin as guests of the Humboldt Stiftung, the German academic foundation that’s sponsoring our year in Germany, and I can only assume that the Germans must value academics very highly, as they treated the 300 Humboldtians, their spouses, and their many, many children (1,000 people total) to a week fit for royalty. There was a round of dinners and cocktail parties, lectures and performances to attend, but the highlight was a visit to the Schloss Bellevue and a chance to meet the German president.

Although the Schloss Bellevue is roughly equivalent to the American White House – all white columns and rose gardens, the German president is nothing like our Commander in Chief. His roll is largely ceremonial – entertaining 3,000 foreign academics on his back lawn, say – and it’s really the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, who wields all the political power. I doubt that many Germans even know the president’s name. (It’s Horst Köhler, by the way).


Nonetheless the Humboldtians, many from third world countries, were wild with excitement about the visit, and several had accepted the request to don their traditional national garb for the occasion. I declined, having left my American flag bellbottoms and my “I (heart) NY” T-shirt back in the States, and Kevin declared it much to warm for flannel and a toque.

Normally, I think the Germans’ repeated appeals for national apparel reek of “Exotisismus” – I have been asked no less than three times in the past six months – but even I had to admit that the effect was impressive. Bejeweled Indian and Pakistani women in saris, African families in bright calicos, and the most beautiful Japanese woman I have ever seen, decked out in full Kimono, sandals, and parasol – it was like being in some live-action version of Disney’s “It’s a Small World After All.” That, and the children of every color working together to hold a giant inflatable Earth balloon above their heads.


Anyway, despite being warned many times that the president would not sign autographs or pose for individual photos (apparently this has been a problem at past Humboldt events), the crowd crushed around him, and so I never got a clear view. Instead I sat back, enjoying the mimosas, and tried to decipher his speech, which was in German. I flattered myself that I understood about 85% of what he said. (Although isn’t always the case that the other 15% is really essential?) But all political speeches being roughly the same, regardless of language or the nationality of the politician, even Kevin understood most it.

Still, I was excited about the chance to practice my German. Despite the organizers’ best efforts, English was clearly the language of preference and thus, the working language of the conference. I felt bad for the Germans, actually. They are so clearly fighting a losing battle against the English monopoly. And after all, it was their conference. They should have been able to have in their own language if they wanted. But across the world, most people’s second language is English, and even if they later learn German, they’re often more comfortable with English. My friend Dina, an engineer from Madagascar whom I meet at my German class in Frankfurt, spoke almost entirely in English, although his German is good and his French is exceptional.

The waning of the German language was clearly on the minds of our hosts. One night, after a string of lectures, mostly in English, the President of the Humboldt Stiftung, Professor Doktor Wolfgang Frühwald, stepped up to the podium, began his introduction in English, and then said, “Now I will deliver my speech in German, the language of Alexander von Humboldt. English translations are available in the foyer.” He then delivered a brilliant speech about the need to learn foreign languages in general and German in particular, and then harangued those fellows who hadn’t learned some German during their stay as having “wasted a great opportunity.” I patted myself on the back for having used Humboldt money to learn some German this year, but of course he was really preaching to the choir. None of the Humboldtians who hadn’t taken the free German classes could have understood his criticism.

Nonetheless, after a week of speaking English with non-native English speakers I was exhausted. Even with foreigners who speak very good English, you often have to modify your speech and strain to understand what’s being said. And so after the picnic, when the group boarded a cruise ship for a tour of the Havel, Kevin and I desperately sought out a table of North Americans. We found just the group: a Canadian historian, an engineer from Chicago, and the engineer’s wife and two teenaged kids. On the face of it, we didn’t have much in common, but either we’re all brilliant conversationalists, or we were just starved for company from our homelands, but we talked non-stop about everything under that sun: art and religion, science and politics, and above all German-American cultural differences. I must have spent six months worth of saved-up conversation in those three hours.

All in all, it was a wonderful day, and I remarked later, that I figured it must be pretty good to be the German President, if you could dispense with the political duties and spend all your days throwing big parties full of interesting guests. Kevin replied that Canada, too, has a ceremonial leader, who lives in a palace and does nothing but give parties, and that Canadians usually nominate a prominent academic or journalist for the role. I joked that if we stayed in Canada, we'd make a pretty competitive duo. Although he suggested a better choice would be to remain in Germany, where they elevate their academics to Head of State.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel was a physicist before she became a politician.