Student Bloggers

Whenever you visit a different country or city, one of the main things that we as people tend to do is go see the most famous sites. These can range from buildings, museums, monuments, memorials, etc. This inclination within us to see these sites is based on our attempt to build a history of the place that we are seeing in order to understand its general relevance in the grand scheme of things.

Over this past weekend I accompanied an Arcadia Scotland, Ireland, and London groups on a trip to Berlin, Germany.

On my first full day in Berlin, I took a walking history tour of the city’s main attractions. Berlin is a city of conflicting history shaped by the past century. From being the center of the Nazi party during WWII to being the heart of the Cold War with the Berlin Wall. It is a city that seems cursed with having to constantly change and redefine itself. It can be explained by a quote from Karl Scheffler, “Berlin is a city that never is, but is always becoming.” The city is in an almost constant state of transformation. Changing to reflect the times while holding on deeply to the past by the scars that the city physically bears.

We started the tour by walking to Alexanderplatz. From the outside it appears modern, reflecting technological advances and modern architecture marred by buildings made of glass and a TV tower that towered above everything else. This area reflected the city’s strive to be on considered on the modern level by its international counterparts.

In the frigid morning air, we walked further along down the streets lined with shops until we came across Museum Island. This island houses museums that contain artifacts that range from ancient Egyptian times to modern art. Some of the museums have been standing since 1830! The buildings have had to be repaired over time due to the wars and some even lost some of their original structures due to the bombings during WWII.

I had the opportunity to visit a few of these museums after our walking tour that day and was struck most by the Neues Museum that housed the archeological exhibits, specifically focusing on Egyptian artifacts. Inside one of the main chambers of the museum you can see the bullet holes scarring the walls from the Second World War. Most of Museum Island had endured damage caused by air raids and bombings during the war. Other buildings from that era, if they are still standing, also bear these scars left behind.

We also visited the Neue Wache (New Guardhouse) which serves almost as the equivalent to the tomb of the unknown soldier, but it houses deeper significance. It serves as the Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany for the Victims of War and Dictatorship. Over the past sixty years it has had four different designs based solely on the political powers that have been in charge, thus showing how different narratives have been represented making the memorial biased to the regime that is in charge at the different times.

The tomb houses the remains of a victim of the Holocaust and an unknown soldier. It is a location that seeps emotion due to the emptiness of the chamber with a sole sculpture in the middle. The sculpture, by Käthe Kollwitz, is called Mother with her Dead Son. Just as the title says, it depicts a mother holding on to the body of her son. This alone brings forth emotions by the viewer. It can be interpreted as losing any person who you are close with, but wanting desperately to hold on to them. Above it, there is an oculus in the ceiling leaving the statue exposed to the elements, which symbolizes the suffering endured by the victims, civilians, and soldiers through all of the seasons.

Additionally, we saw Bebelplatz, most notorious for the book burnings by the Nazis. Situated in the center of the plaza is a memorial commemorating this event. From the surface, there is a five by five glass window looking down upon a library underneath the plaza. The entire room is white with empty bookshelves lining the walls. There is enough room on the shelves to house 20,000 books, which is the approximate number of books that they burned on the first night of the book burnings. Next to it is a quote from a play by Heinrich Heine that was written a century before these horrible events transpired. Oddly it foreshadows the atrocities that were to take place. “Where they have burned books, they will, in the end, burn human beings too.”

The most emotionally provoking memorials housed within Berlin, is the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Standing on the outside of this memorial it resembles an above ground cemetery with blocks that are roughly the size in area of coffins. They range in height getting taller as you near the center due to the memorial being situated on a hilly piece of land, but it appears almost flat from the top. Each of the blocks are evenly spaced from one other. As you walk among them, a wide range of thoughts sweep over you. At times it feels as if you are walking through a maze. The other side seems unreachable and the blocks seem almost to close in around you. No matter which direction you look in, there are more of these pillar like blocks that tower around you. You can see others wandering aimlessly about, almost as if they too are lost. In the end, I was left feeling almost haunted. The abstractness of it is captivating, because it is up to you to determine its meaning due mainly in part to there not being any sort of plaque detailing the artist’s interpretation of the piece.

These memorials and sites capture their various significances in ways that made me feel deep emotions. But, I think the one site that left me with the most emotion was visited the next day. We traveled outside of Berlin to Sachsenhausen, which was a concentration camp used by the Nazis specifically for political prisoners, but it also housed other victims of the Holocaust. It was utterly haunting.

We walked in grief that day. Everyone was silent as we were guided through the remnants of the concentration camp. Only a few of the original buildings remained while some had been rebuilt in likeness. Our tour guide explained the horrors that occurred there, and as he spoke of each additional one, I grew sad but also furious. How could people inflict such violence upon others?

The entire experience was eye opening because it instilled in my mind what I want to do with my life. Now, I am completely sure that I want to pursue a career in Human Rights so that I can help protect people’s basic rights as human beings from being infringed upon, and so that I can help stop any atrocity like this from ever occurring again.

Overall, this trip was extraordinary. Berlin is a beautiful city that is constantly attempting to become. It is a place filled with interesting history that makes an emotional thinker, like myself, ponder deeply about everything all at once. One thing that I absolutely commend Berlin and Germany on is memorializing the victims rather than the perpetrators. They recognize their past faults and attempt to grow from them by creating memorials in the memory of those they have wronged rather than those who did the wrongs. Memorials are important for keeping the memory alive. We must remember, so we can learn from our mistakes and strive to create a better world for all.