Sachsenhausen

Model of Sachsenhausen

The rainy weather last weekend was appropriate enough for my Sunday excursion; I joined a group from the Goethe Institute to tour a concentration camp in Oranienburg, just outside of Berlin proper. Sachsenhausen was a model camp for the Nazis, perfectly laid out within the bounds of an equilateral triangle, and displayed to visiting ambassadors and rulers (even through 1945!). The gates are chilling enough, with their ironic slogan: "Arbeit Macht Frei." About 100,000 persons were murdered within the precincts. More died here after the Soviets and the DDR took it over as their own Speziallager No. 7.

Entrance to the concentration camp

Our guide was an elderly gentleman who enriched his store of historical knowledge with personal accounts from his experiences during World War II. He must have grown up quickly between the age of 8 and 16. If I understood correctly, he was sent off to stay with relatives or friends while his parents were interred at Sachsenhausen. They survived the camp, unlike many others.

We had a large tour group and since our guide tended to go into more detail than my language skills could keep up with, I couldn't catch everything he said. But I did grasp the enormity of his commitment to telling these stories and their personal resonance. At certain moments, he spoke more slowly and would look off in the distance at nothing in particular. I'm sure his memories filled that void with more than I will ever struggle to make sense of in this world.




It was the sheer number of stories that made our visit to the historic and commemorative site so overwhelming. I think this was the educational strategy of the museum, as well! All of the outbuildings, some original and some reconstructed, displayed pictures and information about the people who lived, worked, labored, and perished at Sachsenhausen. The exhibits focused on sustaining individual identities beneath a crushing load of numbers (numbers deported, abused, put to death). Yet the amount of names, people, stories (each one different and unique) was too much to take in...

Our walking tour also became rather long. After we stopped at each of the monuments dedicated to different groups of prisoners in the wooded area outside the main camp, and got through the front gate, it was already 1.30 or so (We met at 9.30 in the morning for our Ausflug!). I was getting chilled by the rain, so I split off from the group at Barracks 38 and 39 in order to finish looking at the grounds on my own. Louise and I refueled on kaffee und kuchen, then explored the rest of the camp.

Barracks 38 & 39

T-shaped Prison

One of the prison cells at Sachsenhausen

Memorial sculpture with fresh roses at the Crematorium

As I rode the U-Bahn back to my apartment, I sat across from an elderly gentleman. He was dressed precisely and sat erect, although his eyes didn't focus clearly on anything. They seemed clouded by cateracts. Once more, however, I was struck by the realization of how much he had seen during his lifetime. The modern world rushing past must seem to be an entirely different world from what he used to know. It made me wonder what the world would be like when I have experienced that many years of my own life.

Rainy Day

A few more pictures from Schloss Charlottensburg and its gardens...




The red bridge leading to the Luiseinsel was quite picturesque surrounded by dripping greenery. When two other persistent visitors crossed the bridge in the rain, the scene suddenly became a Japanese print (suited to the chinoiserie and japanese motifs copied throughout the interior decoration of the palace rooms).

The remaining photos are a portrait series of Louise, who decided to give up on staying dry. We had fun, regardless of the weather.

Schloss Charlottensburg

Okay, so this past weekend it rained. This is not new news anymore, in fact, it is almost funny. I resolved to go out and do some of the big sights that I need to fit in before my time in Berlin is over.

On Saturday I met Louise (another classmate at the Goethe-Institute) at the Schloss Charlottensburg. The tours of the interiors and our stroll around the gardens took most of the day. Sunday, I traveled with a group from the institute to Sachsenhausen, a WWII concentration camp located just outside the city. I'll have to post on this another time. It was a rather overwhelming experience, and the overcast skies and constant drizzle certainly contributed to the somberness of the setting. Its grim history was also quite a contrast to the splendour of the Prussian court at Charlottensburg.

Entrance courtyard to Schloss Charlottensburg

The Baroque palace in Charlottensburg was built as a summer residence for Queen Sophie-Charlotte when she was the wife of Elector Frederick III (to become Frederick Ist), and was expanded as the living quarters of the royal Hohenzollern clan (in the tradition of such Baroque palaces as Versailles). Although the palace was significantly damaged in World War II, its furnishings and works of art had been removed for safe-keeping, and the interiors have been mostly restored. It makes for a full day of touring if you follow all the intineraries on the audio guide! But it is worth it. The interiors are stunning, with a large oval ballroom at center facing the gardens at back. The most interesting (and most kitsch) was the porcelain room designed by Frederick after Sophie-Charlotte's death to hold and display her collection of Chinese blue-and-white. It is crazy. You'll have to take my word for it, since photography inside the palace wasn't allowed...

I would have loved to sneak at least one or two photos, however. The art collection of the Hohenzollerns included Watteau's "Pilgrimage to Cytheria," "Return from Market" by Chardin, and J. L. David's "Napoleon on the St. Bernard Pass." These were all delightful surprises on the brocaded and silk-covered walls.

The palace served another generation of rulers under Friedrich Wilhelm III and Queen Luise. Her mausoleum is tucked away in the gardens. It was on our trip out to find this sepulchre that the skys opened up and it began to pour. We took refuge under the trees at first, but soon the amount of falling water was about the same under the trees as out in the open. We gave up and continued our way out to the Belvedere, where more of the royal porcelains were on display. These were behind glass cases, and some of them incredibly beautiful. I need to start saving for a tea-set like that... maybe I'll purchase one by retirement!

Mausoleum for Queen Luise

View of the Schloss Charlottensburg across the lake and gardens

Belvedere, built as a tea house for Friedrich Wilhelm II

Balconies in Berlin

Berlin is full of architectural wonders, but the most typical building facade is the Plattenbau (pre-fabricated). It make for a very distinctive profile in the city streets. Some just look grim and awful, but others (when kept up and painted) are really charming. What I enjoy most are all the balconies looking out over the streets below. The balconies are often as green as the city parks and squares, supporting aerial gardens full of potted plants.

The following are just a couple examples from a walk around Prenzlauer Berg:

Views fom the Fernsehturm

This is an aerial view of Berlin, looking toward the Tiergarten and Potsdamer Platz. The main boulevard that you see turns into Unter den Linden once it crosses the Museumsinsel (where the huge Berliner Dom is most obvious). This culminates in the famous Brandenburger Tur.

I took the photo from the panorama platform inside the Fernsehturm. There is always a line for going up in the tower, and Louise and I were both too hungry to join the second line for the TeleCafe on the next floor up. But the views were worth our time. It also helped to put into perspective the topographical relationships between different areas of the city that I'd already visited on foot! I had walked around the Tiergarten, diplomatic quarter, and Potsdamer Platz on my first weekend in Berlin (once the sun came out!). But I didn't have a sense of where all that lay in relation to the historic center and area around Alexanderplatz.

On the other side of the tower, I could look down on the Goethe-Institute where I commute every day for my language classes. You can just pick out the cross streets at the Weinmeisterstrasse U-Bahn station (where I pop up from under the city on the U-8 line each morning); these intersect at center right in the photo below. The Goethe-Institute is the building on a diagonal to the lower left of the intersection... Our classrooms are located around the second courtyard. These are the two black rooftops with lots of glass skylights. Good luck figuring this out!

Alexanderplatz

These are a few belated photos, although I only took them this past weekend. I don't always have my camera with me when I'm walking around. Especially not when I go out on the Spaziergangs offered by the Kulturprogamm at the Goethe-Institute... These are great ways to explore the city and get a bit of cultural context and history thrown in, but it takes all of my attention to successfully follow the guide (since the tours are all auf Deutsch).

One of our first tours was through the historic Mitte, the central part of Berlin and its oldest neighborhood. This was where the medieval town was founded, originally two merchant trading posts placed on either side of the Spree river (one named Berlin, the other Coelln - a forgotten city that got swallowed up by its twin). I say medieval, but Berlin isn't all that old; it began only in the 13th century. Its location also helped to define the city in more recent history, since the division between East and West Berlin made a semi-circular loop around it, including Mitte on the Eastern side of the Berlin wall.



Alexanderplatz was the main commercial hub of East Berlin, and is marked by the distinctive Fernsehturm (built by the DDR in 1969). I can see the tower from my apartment in Kreuzberg. Actually, you can see it from pretty much anywhere in Berlin! The photo above is an interesting juxtaposition of the tower, meant to celebrate the technological prowess of a secular East Germany, and the Marienkirche, Berlin's oldest standing church. It usually comes in second in the guidebooks to the Nicholaikirche, which had to be mostly rebuilt after WWII.






I thought after my discussion of the fountains in Leipzig, these photos would be more than appropriate. I was really pleased with the closeups I got of the rearing centaurs supporting the figure of Neptune. The sun was behind the fountain, so the light was really interesting. Because I watched the 5th Harry Potter movie in the Cinema on Alexanderplatz, the fountain is also fitting in comparison with the showdown between Dumbledore and Voldemort and the climactic scenes in the Ministry of Magic.




Not the Ministry of Magic, but rather the Rotes Rathaus, Berlin's town hall and seat of city government. The Senate meets here. We've just done a whole chapter on German politics in my language course, but I will spare you the details... I find the terracotta frieze running around the sides of the Rathaus much more interesting =) The panels show events from the city's history up through the 1870s, when the building was completed.

Another view of the Rathaus

Frieze depicting the city's history