EXPEDITIONS
Beyond the charm there is a tinge of sadness at how things came to pass
The new government of a unified Germany wanted to turn this city of the Wall into a city of the world. But in creating a new Berlin for a new Germany, they have curated and cherished the past. This has not always been easy. Potsdam, for example, the barracks-city of the kaisers and the home of enlightened despotism, makes some Germans ambivalent. Can citizens of a progressive republic rightly make pilgrimages to the home of Frederick the Great when he arguably set Germany on its ‘Sonderweg’ – its war-mongering march into modernity? The German people have chosen not to airbrush inconvenient truths from their history. They may not see their past as a badge to wear with pride, but how they choose to remember and portray it shows more strength of character than any patriotic march or song. Sachsenhausen camp, where Mr Smith took us on the sobering, final day of our trip, was not cordoned off. The whole site, a scene of humanity’s most depraved moments, is probably the most poignant reminder of tyranny’s threat we could ever see. No guiding arrows to follow; no sea of plaques or interactive displays. Just walls, fences, foundations. The rubble of the crematorium. A wall, with details of the lives and torture and deaths of thousands of prisoners. Berlin contains multitudes. But perhaps its many pasts do speak of a common theme: they all call us to solemn self-reflection.
Striking, too, is the Soviet war memorial that sits awkwardly at the junction of Albert Speer’s east-west highway; it is within sight of the colossal Victory Column, built to commemorate Bismarck’s wars of unification and expansion. The communist regime may have fallen on the scrapheap of history, but its spectre haunts the city still in the wide avenues and endless miles of concrete obelisks, prescribed by the 16 Urban Principles of Design set down by Stalinist control-freakery. The contradictions are often funny. The Alexanderplatz, for instance – the central square of communist East Berlin – was named after a Romanov Tsar, whose dynasty Bolshevism destroyed. But beyond the charm there is a tinge of sadness at how things came to pass. So often, the prevailing political force attempted to construct one ‘true’ Berlin. The Communists were particularly busy in this. From the royal barracks and chapels in Potsdam to the Reich Chancellery on the Voßstraße: down went the marble and the Grecian facades; up went the people’s material, the moulded concrete and the modular tenements. We can understand why this is when we look around the Treptower Grand Cemetery, home of the Soviet war dead. Its murals in socialist realist style recall the sacrifices of the Great Patriotic War. Its gates are guarded by gargantuan statues of Soviet heroes – metal monsters that blasted their way into the city in the final, dark days of the Third Reich. Thankfully for us, the Soviet juggernaut didn’t bring everything down in a fire of ideological fury. Now, a modern city springs up from the ruins of the GDR. Berlin, rushing to make up for lost years of division, is a hive of construction and a sea of skyscrapers. The gleam of the new shines across the whole metropolis, reflected on the glass dome of the Reichstag building, a symbol of the Republic’s commitment to transparent democracy.
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