Berlin - The Topography of Terror

Far left: ramp for the dome of the Reichstag.

Above: the dome of the Reichstag

Left: German flag over the Reichstag.

Berlin's history is made up of the Nazi era and the Soviet era. I have tried to give a picture of the Soviet occupation and the Wall. Now I want to talk about the Nazi era, when the Nazi's came to power in the late 1930's, when they cleared the city of the Jewish inhapitants, and what the city of Berlin has done to remember and regret.

The Reichstag, a beautiful building in the 1900's, was a great threat to Hitler, so it mysteriously burned to the ground in the 1930's. Hitler never stepped inside of the building, though it was the seat of the German government. It was a heap of ruins for decades. During the time of Soviet occupation of Berlin, the West German government was located in Bon, Germany. With the reunification of Germany in 1990, the government was moved back to Berlin from Bon. The government needed a place for government rule, so they restored the original building, the Reichstag.

After lots of arguing and planning, they chose a design and agreed with British architect, Norman Foster, that the building needed a dome. He designed and built a glass dome to sit on top of the Reichstag, and now it is the center of tourism in the city. After we passed through the security, we took an elevator to the top of the building and then started walking up the ramp to the top of the dome. We could see the whole city as we walked round and round, and when we reached the top, we went outside to see the expanse of the city. This ramp is so big and wide that one does not get closed in or nervous about the height of the dome. I think that the dome looks down to the parliament hall below, so one can see the German government at work from above. The dome is really a wonderful addition to the building.

Near the Checkpoint Charlie is a museum and open area named the Topography of Terror. This actual city block, where this open-air museum is located, housed the actual government building in which the Nazi's planned and carried out their eradication of the Jews and other undesirables of the German Reich. There are several plexiglass poster boards which trace the Nazi grab of the government and its bureaucratic establishment of agencies specifically designed to strip the Jewish people of their businesses, their homes, their money, and then to send them to Poland or somewhere east for eventual imprisonment and death. It is very scary that all of this Nazi work was carefully planned and set out in documents.

The Germans are very good bureaucrats, I guess, so when the Nazis were in power, they made sure that they set up appropriate agencies and kept very detailed records of what they were doing. All of these preparations for killing more than six million people were carefully documented. That is the scary part of this whole exhibition. The Nazis were very systematic at what they were doing and how they carried out the orders of Hitler and his henchmen.

It takes a long while to see all of the museum that describes the Nazi era because there is so much to look at and think about. Touring this musem is not like visiting one which exhibits artifacts of a people: bowls and jewelry and sculpture, etc. This is a museum set up to try to explain the stripping of possessions, the expulsion to foreign lands and the eventual killing of millions of people, for the simple reason that they were Jewish. It really takes your breath away to look at the photos of the Nazis in charge, because they look like us. I am not sure if the German people will ever understand how they let such a man as Hitler take over and eventually ruin the lives of so many people.

The museum tries to explain the inability of the German government that was in power before Hitler to overcome the hardships of the first World War, and then the stock market crash of 1929, which forced even more Germans to be out of work and penniless. The people wanted stability and someone to help them feel good about themselves, and Hitler was the man that stepped in and took care of them. Once he started his reign of terror, I guess they just couldn't stop him.

Another site to see is the Jewish memorial near the Brandenburg Gate, called the Memorial to the Holocaust. Berlin wanted to build something as a memorial, but it took several years to come up with an appropriate symbol. What they built is quite impressive: it is a full city block of about 2000 plain, grey concrete coffins above the ground. Each one is different from the next; some very tall, some short. No markings on them at all. There is an underground museum which documents stories of many Jews from Berlin who were imprisioned in the well known concentration camps and then later killed. The memorial speaks for itself; as you look out on the huge expanse of stone coffins you try to take in the amount of destruction of so many people. Then when you go to the museum, you see individual people and descriptions of their lives. The six million have faces, and they looked like ordinary, happy people with their families and friends. These sights are hard to take in and understand.

I will turn to happier sights of Berlin in my next post. Stay tuned!