Monday we took a walking tour of Eastern Berlin. The tour started at the Berlin Dom, or cathedral, built in 1906. The original cathedral was heavily bombed in 1943 at which time to dome was completely destroyed and rebuilt in a more squat configuration. There has been a church on this site since the 15th century. It was from here that Kaiser Wilhelm announced the start of World War I.
From there, we crossed the Spree River onto Museum Island. From the bridge, we could see the dome of the New Synagogue which was built in 1866. The synagogue was one of the only buildings not burned on Kristallnacht as an ordinary police man on patrol that night stood up to and disbursed the Nazi mob and called in the fire department. We’re hoping to visit the synagogue latter in the week.
Museum Island was built by the Russian kings in a classical Greek style to serve as a cultural retreat for the people of Berlin. During the War, all of the collections were moved to underground bunkers, no small feat when you consider the massive size of each of the five buildings on the island. The most heavily bombed of the museums was actually closed from 1943 – 2009 while they completed repairs. As we walked around this area, we could still see the bullet marks, a constant reminder of the devastations of war.
The Island opens up into the Lustgarten, the original garden of the no longer standing royal palace which was at the opposite end of the garden. The fountain our guide showed us here was built from a single piece of granite.
From the garden, we had a clear view of the TV Tower built by the GDR. When Berlin was divided, the GDR tour down the palaces and built modern structures. The TV Tower was meant as a new, socialist architecture for a new city. The government intended it to be an icon. Ironically, when the sun hits the chrome sphere, the reflection takes the shape of a cross. Some people say that this God’s way of laughing at socialism. A subsequent tour guide on the boat ride we took later in the day said that there is a rotating restaurant at the top of the tower. Under the GDR’s control, it took one hour to complete the rotation and you had exactly that long to finish your meal. Now, it takes only a half hour to make a complete rotation so they can move twice as many people through the restaurant in the same amount of time. The guide called this capitalism.
We walked down the Unter den Linden passed the Royal Arsenal built in 1703. There have been Linden trees planted along this street since the 17th century. The street was meant to function as a military parade ground linking the palace with the Brandenburg Gate.
Along the Unter den Linden we stopped at the Neue Wache, the former guard house which now serves as a war memorial containing a pieta-like sculpture by the Berlin artist Käthe Kollwitz who lost her own son in World War I. Kollwitz was one of the artists blacklisted by the Nazi’s for her outspoken political views.
We also passed Humbolt University, the oldest university in Berlin. The structure was originally a royal palace. In the early 20th century it was one of the best science universities in the world, home to the likes of Albert Einstein. When the Nazi’s seized power the closed the university and under the GDR, education here became highly politicized. In 1961 several professors left Humbolt and founded the Free University in West Berlin.
Across from the University is the Royal Library, now a law school. It was here in on May 10, 1933, just three months after Hitler took power, that the Nazi club of the University burned thousands of books. There is a plaque on the cite quoting a famous playwright which reads “That is but a prelude. Where they burn books they will come to burn people.” The memorial at this site is an empty subterranean library which can only be viewed through a three foot square window in the side walk. In the library there is shelving space for approximately 20,000 books.
Also near the library is the first Catholic cathedral built in Berlin after the Reformation. The design is based on the Pantheon in Greece. With the exception of the Nazi period, Berlin has been a city of religious freedom granting asylum to groups such as the French Huguenots.
Next we walked to Gendarmenmarkt, the location of the French and German cathedrals, and then on to Friedrichstr., the main north-south thoroughfare in Berlin. This street was once the no man’s land between East and West Germany. Along the way, our guide pointed out the Stolperstein, or stumbling stones, which serve as a memorial to Jewish citizens of Berlin who lived at that address and were killed by the Nazi’s.
Friedrichstr. is lined with photographs of what the street looked like during the GDR. It is amazing the transformation that has taken place. The once heavily fortified area is now home to bustling stores like McDonald’s and Starbucks.
Our hotel is just a few blocks from this area and Checkpoint Charlie. It is hard to picture that the standoff between Russian and American tanks that took place here in 1961. Checkpoint Charlie is just a replica for tourist. On one side is a picture taken in 1984 of Sargent Harpor, an American soldier and on the other side is a picture of his Russian counterpart.
We continued to walk along the path of the former wall to the Topographie des Terrors which stands on the former site of the Gestapo headquarters and SS Central Command. Ironically, the remaining foundations of these buildings were on the west side of the Wall. It is now a memorial site and museum. Looking just over the top of the Wall to the east, we could see the roof of the East German government headquarters building. It was from the corner of this building in 1965 that a man, together with his wife and son, made a daring escape using a zip line.
Next, it was back to the east to a building which in 1936 became the Nazi Air Force Ministry. When it was finished, it was the largest office building in the world. Amazingly, this strategic building was not destroyed during the air raids. In 1949, the GDR was founded here. It currently houses the Federal Finance Ministry.
We walked around the corner of the building to a typical communist mural from 1951. The mural was representative of the state sponsored art from the time. It was a utopian scene where industry shakes hands with the Proletariat. In the foreground, we see the Young Pioneers’ Club, the communist equivalent to the Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts.
Across the plaza, on the ground, is a memorial the same dimensions as the mural. It was on this site on June 16, 1953 that the people staged a massive protest demanding a democratically elected government, free press and the end of work orders. The next day Soviet tanks dispersed the protestors killing 63 people. The memorial is an enlarged photograph of the faces of those people so the entire plaza exemplifies the idea of communism as portrayed by the government juxtaposed against the reality of communist life.
We continued on to Wilhelmstr. the central government street of both the Weimer Republic and the Nazi’s. Today this location is the site of prefabricated flats erected by the GDR and ethnic restaurants, such as the Chinese take-out place on the corner. I am sure that it is a major insult to Hitler that the site of the New Reich Chancellery and his headquarters is now home to various ethnic populations.
There is a memorial here to George Elser who, as best as historians can figure, acted alone in 1939 in an assassination attempt against Hitler. There was much debate in how to mark the site of Hitler’s bunker where he committed suicide. Obviously, the Germans did not want to enshrine a madman nor encourage a gathering of neo-nazi’s so it’s just marked with a simple informational plaque in the middle of a parking lot.
Our tour was starting to wind to an end. Our guide took us to visit the Jewish Memorial built between 2003 – 2005. It takes up an entire city block and is composed of 2,711 unique columns each placed at a slightly different height and angle. It is compulsory for German soldiers to visit this memorial as part of their training.
Around the corner from the memorial is the Reichstag. The building was burned by what historians agree to have been the Nazi’s as a pretext to crush the opposition. We’ll be visiting the Reichstag on Thursday so I’ll know more about it after our visit.
The tour ended at the Brandenburg Gate which during the Cold War was right in the middle of no man’s land. In 1791, the city of Berlin ended at this gate which was used as an entrance to the city for strictly the royals. Beyond the gate was the royal hunting ground, or Tiergarten which Robin and I walked through Saturday night. While everything around the gate was completely leveled during World War II, the gate itself was relatively unharmed except for some bullet marks.
For most normal tourist, a walking tour of Berlin would have been enough for one day but Robin and I have a knack for fitting a whole week’s worth of sightseeing into about twelve hours. When the tour disbursed, we walked back down the Unter den Linden to the Spree River where found a boat tour that would highlight some of the other areas of Berlin.
When the boat tour concluded, we walked over to Nikolaiviertel, a plaza that was restored to look like medieval Berlin and then off to dinner at the Brauhaus Lemke.
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