Red Baron has lost count of the number of times he has been to the birthplace of
his father. I have visited Berlin either as part of a group or alone.
Already in Genesis
2,18, you read, "It is not good for man to travel
alone." So we enjoyed Berlin in the golden sunlight of late October just
as
we had enjoyed Paris in early September.
With a little delay, it took us nearly seven hours on the ICE
(InterCity Express) from Freiburg to Berlin. This time, the B-minor of this trip
was not broken toilets, but worse, the two coffee machines on board did not
work.
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The Eiffel Tower and Saint Basil's Cathedral on Red Square symbolize
the name of the restaurant Paris-Moskau.
The
photomontaged vintage car in the foreground is possibly a Horch, a
precursor to today's Audis.
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For dinner, we went to a cozy place near our hotel. An old, half-timbered house
stood lost in the midst of massive concrete blocks.
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On the way to the restroom, an original train directional sign was
on display.
Such signs were hung on the outside of express
train cars.
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While the ambiance of the restaurant was top, the food was a flop.
The agenda for our visit to Berlin included a trip to Potsdam, visits to
relatives and friends, and the hunt for a particular painting at the Altes
Museum on the Museumsinsel.
Watch out for detailed future blogs. Here, I will share some photos
I took during our walk from the Intercity Hotel near Berlin's Central
Station to the Brandenburg Gate.
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Looking back: Between the new buildings on the left side and the
glass cube
on the right side, you see the upper deck of
Berlin's Central Station
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The area north of the Reichstag is bordered by a large loop of the Spree
River. We crossed Moltkebrücke to enter the
Spreebogen.
An aerial photo of the Spreebogen from 1960 shows that there are no buildings.
The Moltke Bridge enters from the lower left corner, while the Reichstag
building can be seen at the upper right edge. The white cube at nine o'clock
is the Swiss Embassy.
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| ©Hajo Dietz |
The image above is an aerial view of the same site around 2020. The gray
landscape of rubble has been transformed into the
Spreebogenpark. Right
in the middle stands the enlarged Swiss Embassy building.
In front of it lies the alliterative "
Band des Bundes (Ribbon of the
Federation)" stretching from East to West Berlin. It connects the Chancellery
on the left with the
Paul Löbe
House on the right, housing the offices of the members of the German Bundestag
(parliament). The ribbon is intended to symbolize Willy Brandt's words on
overcoming the division of Germany: "
Es wächst zusammen, was zusammen gehört
(What belongs together will grow together.)"
From his non-oval office on the top floor, the chancellor looks out onto the
Reichstag building, where the Bundestag meets. This reminds him daily of the
sovereign and the separation of powers in a democracy: "Alle Macht geht vom Volke aus
(All power comes from the people.)"
On the Spree River, there is busy boat traffic carrying tourists past Berlin's
sights.
The trees in the foreground beyond Berlin's Gate to Brandenburg are those of
the north rim of the Tiergarten (deer garden), the former
hunting grounds of the Prussian Kings.
In the upper right-hand corner is the dark building of Berlin's
Central Station. Further to the right, the block with the white roof was our
Intercity Hotel, offering a "real" Trump shower. No dripping, but an
overabundant water flow.
To the lower left-hand of the photo, you distinguish the roof of the
House of Cultures, affectionately referred to by Berliners as schwangere Auster (pregnant oyster).
Having crossed the reddish Moltke Bridge, we entered the Spreebogenpark and approached the Swiss Embassy.
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The Swiss Embassy. A historical building with its new annex
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Main entrance to the Federal Chancellery
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Memorial for the murdered Sinti and Roma in the Holocaust with a view of the
south-east corner of the Reichstag* building.
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| ©RA |
We walked through the
Brandenburg Gate and took the "sightseeing bus" 100, which runs from Alexanderplatz station
in East Berlin to the Bahnhof Zoo in the west. Tourists love this line for
it provides, along its route, the time-stressed visitor with an overview
of many of Berlin's sights.
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Upgraded ruins at high noon
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We stepped off the bus at Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche.
The old nave, which had been destroyed in the war, was demolished. Opposite the
former entrance, Prof.
Egon Eiermann
created an impressive place of worship made of concrete and blue glass.
To the Protestant martyrs of the years 1933–1945:
This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith (1 John
5,4).
Christmas 1942. A mighty-in-faith charcoal drawing of St. Mary with her Child
from the Stalingrad pocket (Kessel), where the German Sixth Army was
trapped.
Light, life, love: a symbol of hope at the time of darkness, death, and
hatred.
The artist is
Kurt Reuber, a surgeon, Protestant pastor, and a visual artist. For him and the other
trapped soldiers, the hopeless battle ended with their surrender on February
2, 1943. Of the 90,000 Germans who were taken prisoner by the Red Army,
only 6000 returned home. Kurt was not among them.
The old entrance hall of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church now serves as a
museum, where the mosaics glorifying the Prussian royal family are still
preserved. These mosaics were created by
Fritz Geiges, an artist from Freiburg.
Preußens Glanz und Gloria (splendor and glory) from the left and not in
historical order:
Frederick I
(1657-1713) and his wife, Louise. As Elector of Brandenburg, he crowned
himself King in Prussia (and not of Prussia) in Königsberg on January 18,
1701.
Joachim II Hector (1505-1517), Elector of Brandenburg, his
mother
Elizabeth of Denmark, and Joachim's younger brother
John, Margrave of Brandenburg-Küstrin. Joachim adopted the Eucharist in both
forms and subsequently introduced not only the Lutheran Reformation but also
the sovereign's ecclesiastical law in Brandenburg.
Albert
(1490-1568) was the 37th Grand Master of the
Teutonic Knights.
After he converted to Lutheranism in 1515, Albert became the first ruler of
the Duchy of Prussia.
John Sigismund
(1572-1619), Elector of Brandenburg, converted from Lutheranism to Calvinism
on Christmas Day 1613 to secure the support of the Calvinist Netherlands for
his inheritance claims to the Lower Rhine duchies of Jülich, Kleve, and Berg,
He celebrated Holy Communion in Berlin Cathedral
without papal additions, in the manner customary in the time of the
apostles and in the Reformed Protestant churches.
Frederick Wilhelm (1620-1688), Great Elector of Brandenburg, generously granted the
Huguenot refugees from France the right of asylum with the Edict of Potsdam in
1685: "We are moved by righteous compassion, which we must have for our
beleaguered and oppressed fellow believers, to offer them a safe retreat in all
our lands."
And here is the right side of the mosaic. The Prussian rulers from left to
right are:
Queen
Louise and her husband, King
Frederick William III. While her husband was a softie, Louise was the driving force against
Napoleon, calling him a monster and an undignified, despicable murderer.
Tsar Alexander, one of her admirers, wrote, "
The charm of her angelic face, with its regular and delicate features, radiated friendliness and kindness; the beauty of her figure, her neck,
her arms, and the dazzling freshness of her complexion - she surpassed
everything one could ever imagine to be particularly enchanting." After her untimely death, the people venerated her as a German
Joan of Arc.
King
Frederick William IV brutally suppressed the 1848 Revolution.
Read the whole story here in German.
Emperor
Wilhelm I was known in his youth as
the
Kartätschenprinz (Prince of Canister Shots),
later as the founder of the Second German Empire, also called Wilhelm
der Große.
Emperor
Frederick III was Germany's hope for more liberalism, but reigned in 1888,
the year of the three
emperors, for only 99 days. He is
known as the 100-Day Kaiser.
Crown Prince
Wilhelm
and his wife,
Cecilie. Initially, Wilhelm supported Hitler's rise to power, but when the crown prince realised that the dictator
had no intention of restoring the monarchy, their relationship cooled.
And where is
Frederick the Great? That probably has to do with his distant attitude toward religion. For
him, "
all religions were equal and good, as long as the people who profess
them are honest people, and if Turks and pagans came and wanted to
populate the land, we would build them mosques and churches."
And here is a special tribute to the founder of the empire. The
senex imperator sits flanked by his son, Frederick, and his
grandson, Wilhelm, as he accepts the homage of the German people. On the
right stands a norn with her head covered, holding a tablet with the
fateful Year of the Three Emperors in her hands.
In the evening, we went to the
Deutsches Theater
and saw the dyke greeve "Hauke Haien's Death," a play based on a modern
novel that was inspired by the famous novella by the North German poet
Theodor Storm, "The Rider on the White Horse." This sounds complicated, and indeed, I
spare you my attempt at describing the bizarre theater plot.
The many stuffed animals were probably intended to give viewers the
creeps. A white horse, a white mouse, a scratching cat, a howling wolf, a
screaming seagull, and on the far left, Heike Hauen's puppet.
The only one who fell to it was the actor playing Hauke Haien. It happened
on the open stage during the curtain call.
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A classic, often copied, never equaled (©Borchardt)
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Lagniappe: The other night we dined at
Borchardt's. On our way, we passed the Gendarmenmarkt. I took some night photos of the
Deutscher Dom (left) for the German Reformed and Lutheran congregations. The
term "Dom" does not refer to a bishop's church but originates from the
French word
dôme (meaning cupola).
Konzerthaus Berlin (center) - former
königliches Schauspielhaus (Royal Theater) - with
Friedrich Schiller's statue in front,
Französischer Dom for the Reformed religious refugees from France, the
Huguenots, who found asylum in Prussia,
and of a pun at the entrance to a restaurant in an annex of the
Französischer Dom operated by Hugo & Notte.
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