Red Baron's Blog: Where to Stay in Berlin

Red Baron likes to stay in the heart of a city. This time, I chose the Arcotel John F in Berlin...

The John F

... just opposite of our AA (Auswärtiges Amt, i.e., Foreign Ministry) and vis-à-vis of the Friedrichswerder Church, now used as a sculpture museum. Just a stone's throw away, you will find Berlin's Museumsinsel and the reconstruction site of the Hohenzollern Stadtschloss (City Palace).

The AA-Block

In addition, what makes the Arcotel so interesting are the familiar-looking rocking chairs in most rooms.

E pluribus unum will ring a bell for my American friends. While rocking the chair, I surely missed a selfie stick for the first time.

While in Berlin, I visited two new museums: the Spy Museum Berlin and the Deutsches Currywurst Museum. Both museums are privately run, so entrance fees are relatively high; therefore, fellow visitors were scarce.

During the Cold War, Berlin was the capital of espionage. Naturally, the Spy Museum on Leipziger Platz focuses on this period; as you enter the building, you pass a historical display. Intelligence services and spies are as old as communities themselves.

Father Joseph was Cardinal Richelieu's chief of intelligence, who knew everything about the German emperor's commander-in-chief, Wallenstein, during the Thirty Years' War.

Joseph went to the Imperial Diet at Regensburg in 1630 and succeeded - with the help of some jealous German princes - in maneuvering the Generalissimus out of position with all the military consequences.

Father Joseph reports to his boss, Richelieu.

Joseph Fouché was the chief of Napoleon's secret police. He was so efficient that - they say - even the French emperor was sometimes afraid of him.

Joseph Fouché

Here is a dangerous document printed in Russia in 1903. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The original title is Програма завоевания мира евреями (The Jewish Programme to Conquer the World), and the text implies a global Jewish conspiracy. Today, it is generally accepted that the Russian secret police commissioned the paper blaming the Jews for the deterioration of czarist rule and order.

The Great within the Minuscule and Antichrist

It was to be expected that publishing the Protocols provoked severe anti-Jewish pogroms throughout the Russian Empire. In 1920, Henry Ford had the hoax paper translated into English and printed half a million copies while feeling a Jewish threat, "The only statement I care to make about the Protocols is that they fit in with what is going on. They are 16 years old and have fitted the world situation up to this time." Ford's statement was harmless compared with the Nazis' abuse of the forged document, taking the global Jewish conspiracy as a pretext for their genocide.

Here are some display items. The traditional place to hide material is the heels of men's and women's shoes.

A Trabbi transformed into a source of an infrared spotlight. The Trabant, made from reinforced plastic and powered by a two-stroke engine, was the GDR's Volkswagen.

The GDR served as a retreat for West German terrorists of the Red Army Faction in the 1970s.

One year ago, I blogged about Glienicker Brücke, Berlin's favorite site for exchanging spies.

The exchange of top KGB spy Rudolf Abel and U2 pilot Francis Gary Powers at the Glienicker Brücke on February 10, 1962, is of high topicality, with actors Tom Hanks and Sebastian Koch in the US-German Spielberg movie Bridge of Spies. The German title is Der Unterhändler (The Negotiator).

As an ultima ratio, secret services eliminate people. Here are two well-known persons killed by radioactivity in the form of administered alpha-emitting radionuclides. Once incorporated, there is no remedy. The moribund is wasting away to a slow and sure death.

For adult visitors' entertainment and to keep kids interested, the Spy Museum operates a Topkapi-like system of laser beams you must cross without being caught.

Needless to write: Old Red Baron failed pitifully.

On my way to the Currywurst Museum, I passed Checkpoint Charlie, a site that is now entirely "occupied" by remarkable museums and souvenir shops. The free open-air exhibition about the development of border check facilities is quite interesting.

Shortly after the border sealing between East and West Berlin on August 13, 1961, some obstacles were placed on the street, narrowing the traffic.

August 19, 1961

The facilities were upgraded until the summer of 1989, culminating in a fully roofed checkpoint, an unnecessary expense given the border opening on November 9, the same year.

May 3, 1965

May 1974

April 10, 1986

Deserted checkpoint on November 15, 1989

The Currywurst Museum is located on Schützenstraße. The entrance fee to the Currywurst Museum is partly "reimbursed" in the form of Currywurst in a cup. So, you have to earn your snack by visiting the displayed items.

Herta Heuwer, the inventor, is everywhere.

A quarrel between Hamburg and Berlin about the creator's rights ended soon ...

... granting the Hanseatic city the intellectual priority of a novella: The Discovery of the Currywurst.

Here is HM on television, interviewed by the nation's one and only late-night talk-show host, Harald Schmidt.

However, from the beginning, Dirty Harry's laudable performances were troubled by the few late viewers. Soon and not later, Germany's Letterman - as he frequently called himself - became the late latter man. Germans, who go to bed early, don't dig what is so prevalent in the States.