A thought-provoking, at least me thought-provoking article from the Berliner Zeitung, which I want to share with you here. But before that, I want to congratulate all my compatriots on the anniversary of the reunification of Germany, as I will probably have little to no time in the next few days due to the upcoming festivities.
Dear compatriots, have a good day, celebrate what is worth celebrating,
at least on this day see more the positive points and things.
Everything has its two sides, the good and the not so good sides, so also the reunification of our countries. Only walls have two bad sides.
I believe that this should be celebrated, because even if not everything went well
during the reunification, the bottom line is that the result was positive.
And now to the article already mentioned above.
German Unity Memorials:
"What, the Wall went through ALL of Berlin?"Berlin-Mitte, Niederkirchnerstraße, at the Berlin Wall. A young man in shorts places his cell phone against a house wall and records a TikTok dance. In the background, the 200 meter long remaining piece of the wall can be seen. After a few seconds, he walks back to his cell phone and looks at the recording. He runs his hand through his hair and adjusts his sunglasses.
There are only a few days left until the 33rd anniversary of reunification. Some people will think nothing of this dancer, others may see it as an abuse of this memorial site. After all, at least 140 people died directly because of the Wall. On the other hand, the dancer may have chosen this place precisely because of this historical significance.
Before the Day of German Unity, some questions had arisen in the editorial office: How important are memorial sites in the middle of the city to us anymore? Does the historical significance remain recognizable when school classes pass through there every minute? And what if the sites are poorly maintained or even worse: simply boring?
At any rate, there is a souvenir stand at this section of the Wall in Mitte, and it looks somewhat deserted. On offer are: black-red-gold flags with round coats of arms made of ear wreath, hammer and compass. One, however, is red-yellow-green and is decorated by a hemp leaf in the middle. In addition, there are matryoshka dolls, disassembled into their individual parts and lined up in a staircase. The piled up wall of different colored fur caps in between makes the table below almost completely disappear. A sign says in red lettering, "We will stamp your passport with the original Checkpoint Charlie stamp!" But no one is here who wants a Checkpoint Charlie stamp in their passport.
On the opposite side of the street, a yellow Trabi sits enthroned on a round pedestal a few meters above the ground, with the giant blue hot air balloon parked behind it. On the street, a gap in the asphalt is visible, as wide as two stones. It represents the course of the Berlin Wall. A sentence can be heard from a tour group that sounds almost indignant and somewhat Swabian in tone: "It ran through the entire city center!"
Behind the remnant of the Wall stands the "Topography of Terror" Documentation Center. Tourists stand in front of it and take selfies. "Aaah, I touched it!" one student shouts after his classmates. Then they discuss dinner at the youth hostel.
Just a few meters away, at a press conference in June 1961, GDR head of state Walter Ulbricht said his infamous phrase: "No one intends to build a wall." Ulbricht was also SED party leader and spoke in the Grand Ballroom of the "House of Ministries." Also such a historic place: Today it is called "Detlev Rohwedder House." It was named after the murdered head of the Treuhandanstalt after the end of the GDR and is the subject of an impressive Netflix documentary series. During the Nazi era, it was Goering's "Reich Aviation Ministry."
A few hundred yards away is Checkpoint Charlie, the former Western Allied checkpoint. There are information boards, but stretched much larger above them is a banner from the beach bar "Charlie's Beach." There are wooden boards on the metal fence, with info boards with lots of text screwed to them. The boards "Uprising of June 17, 1953" and "Building the Wall" are threatening to fall onto the sidewalk. The large, impressive picture of the tank confrontation in October 1961 is photographed by many. Behind them, cab drivers desperately try to make their way through the people on the street. From above, somewhat impassively, the American soldier looks down on everyone from a photo, his name tag reads "Harper." On the back of the light box, a Soviet soldier looks just as stoically at the rumpled section of Friedrichstraße.
Both photos were once taken by the Kleinmachnow-born photographer Frank Thiel, before the withdrawal of the armed forces from Berlin. He understood his installation as a pictorial representation of the sector borders. Both Thiel and the pictured soldier Jeffrey Harper warn against the transformation of this historic site for commercialism. Checkpoint Charlie should remain an authentic memorial site that allows everyone to experience its history. Right now, it is too: quite a mess.
On Pariser Platz, quite a few tourists are trying to take the same picture of the Brandenburg Gate at the same time these days. Only on one of the six columns are the orange remnants of the color attack of the Last Generation almost completely removed, on the others they are still clearly visible. TikToks are also taken here, which are professionals with tripod and ring light. That the Day of German Unity will soon take place here, no one can see at the Brandenburg Gate at the moment.
Tour guides try to keep their groups together with colorful flags, because there is a lot going on here: Three boys in lederhosen dance for tour groups - is the jumping jack a Bavarian dance? Next to them, a man sells henna tattoos. But most of the attention on this day goes to a gentleman in a dark brown latex horse mask, drumming on pots, buckets and serving trays. A cluster forms around him.
However, a discreet but very effective experience reveals itself in the subway station between Adlon and Starbucks. At the opening, then Governing Mayor Klaus Wowereit had said, "We hope that people will also visit the place who don't want to use a mode of transportation." On the escalator down to the tracks, tourists take pictures of the historical quotes on the walls. "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" said Ronald Reagan. Willy Brandt said, "Don't shoot your own countrymen!" Even in 1989, Erich Honecker said, "The Wall will still be there in 50 years or in 100 years."
At the intersection of Bernauer Strasse and Brunnenstrasse, people repeatedly stop in front of a house wall, their heads craned back. On the house wall is the world-famous snapshot of the border police jumping over barbed wire - huge. You can tell they are touched, by the place and the image. Rusting steel bars indicate the course of the wall, but no longer restrict visibility, mobility, and so much more. One woman to her partner, "Now we can just walk through here."
The 1.3-kilometer memorial is busy, even on weekdays. The freshly mowed lawn is full of people, with cyclists on a guided bike tour passing by left and right. An information board does say that "cycling in the area of the memorial is to be avoided," but this is still Berlin here. For some, the feeling of the Wall is depicted too abstractly. For others, the outdoor area of the Berlin Wall Memorial appeals precisely because of its simplicity.
Near Nordbahnhof, visitors can look directly at the death strip through gaps in the former Hinterland wall. In the death strip stands a watchtower and a lonely electricity box, inside: a beer bottle of a craft beer brand. The view is even better from the viewing platform of the Documentation Center opposite.
A few floors below, in the Documentation Center's exhibition, a large group sits around the screen showing footage of November 9. They watch several replays of the footage, see the people at the Bornholmer Strasse border crossing, and hear their shouts grow louder: "Open the gate!"
Someone who witnessed that night is Jens Blankennagel, editor of the Berliner Zeitung. In his reportage "The Night of Nights," he recalls that night, the opening of the Wall and the new opportunities. Like photographer Frank Thiel, he would have liked a place that makes history tangible. "A kind of Checkpoint Charlie Disneyland, but in a positive sense." Surely one of these places could or: should have existed at least 33 years later?
Visit to one last place where this opportunity was missed: at the former Bornholmer Strasse border crossing. Here, an information pillar in eight languages could tell the story of that one night. The column has eight buttons, but none of them work. Even the texts and maps are barely recognizable under stickers and graffiti. Ah, Berlin.
At the Platz des 9. November 1989, on the other side of the streetcar tracks, there are four more information boards. Some people stop and read, they don't stay long. There it is written down somewhat uncharitably what happened here that night. But if you are looking for the big emotion, you have to look at a plain, half-high memorial stone. On this plaque are two sentences whose force will have lost none of its impact even in the year 2089. It says: "At the Bornholmer Strasse bridge, on the night of November 9-10, 1989, the Wall opened for the first time since August 13, 1961. Berliners came together again."
source:
Gedenkorte der deutschen Einheit: „Wie, die Mauer ging durch GANZ Berlin?“Translated with
www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
He who does not submit to the laws, must leave the area where they apply. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
