Travel: Germany : Dresden, Berlin

2004-10-13 11:52:00 Dresden

German Suffering during World War

I bet very few school children in the US of A has ever heard that phrase before. Did it even exist? Yes. Surely it's not in American textbooks, or the modern preferred method of history digest, the world according to Spielberg. None of the American school-books that has been pushed in my face has ever mentioned ""German Suffering"" and what bombs really do in war. It was always photos of happy Europeans giving the thumbs up to American G.I.'s as we marched victoriously through their land.

Scenes from the other side: Dead German civilians in Dresden from Allied bombing in WW II

Two Berliners laughed with us in a friendly conversation along Unter den Linden during a street protest against the Hartz Bill (capitalist campaign to limit unemployment welfare and lower minimum wage): "You Americans think the whole world is Fox News Channel. You think all is well and that you are loved in every country. Well, you're wrong."

I informed them that they were, in fact, the ones who are wrong. "Fox News Americans end war by changing channels with their remote control."

It's not uncommon for me to hear people tell me, "well, the Germans brought it upon themselves." I have never condoned what happened in the Holocaust, but nobody ever "deserves" violence. Not all Germans supported Hitler. And if civilians were justified to be extinguished merely for being in the same race as Adolf, then would this not qualify as ethnic cleansing as well?

I think it's extremely important to develop a sense of understanding and compassion about the fact that there are many people who don't have a choice to up and move, even when they don't necessarily agree with the politicians who are running their country. A present day example would be the middle east. What we are told by the powers that be (in this case, the boob tube) is that the middle east comprises of a bunch of militant fundies bent on jihad (The equivalent would be that of an Arabic person thinking the entire United States of America is loaded with people who support Israel. How ridiculous does that now sound?) Well all this can be set straight in the time it takes to run a commercial break.

The ties between government and religion are not clearly separated in other parts of the world. A good example is a mosque, which often incorporates into it's architectural design, a theological college, a shelter for the poor, a hospital, a kitchen, a public bath, and accomodations for travellers. The zakat, one of the five pillars of Islam, requires every good Muslim to contribute a percentage of their income to be redistributed to the poor. Applying this concept then, it should become clear that some well-to-do fundamental groups can and do contribute heavily to maintain clinics, institutions and services for the benefit of the populace. This complex web may sometimes play a role in keeping the average working class Muslim from openly dissenting, even when he or she disagrees.

I am willing to intuit that Dresden during wartime (or any country during wartime, for that matter) contained a multitude of folks who had dissenting views but no ability to take action without drastic repercussions. But that's what war is. And any way you want to dress it up with rhetoric, it's often nothing but a reduction of diversity into one raging gang mentality. Either you're with us or you're not.

Walking around in Dresden landmarks, and seeing the permanent soot over all the statues and damaged churches still in restoration after SIXTY YEARS, I wondered how anyone could have justified war. True, ugly things need to be done to stop warmongers and genocide, but our media has increasingly edited and cleansed the true horrors of human-on-human violence out there, and we go on in a daily delirium, worrying only about our Dow Jones index and the price of a barrel of oil while violence continues behind the cozy comfort of a flat screen tv. Through black-and-white lenses, war may simply be about stopping madmen, but in the complete spectrum, it is also about taking the most precious qualities of a society's existence and crushing it (along with their morale) into the ground.

War is the same routine as it was a hundred, a thousand (better make that time immemorial) years ago: It destroys and it kills. All that has changed is the technology of preventing the act of clubbing someone over the head from being seen. I think we have done a grievous disservice to the education of the next generation by filtering and re-telling the history (from the perspective of the winning country) of atrocities committed against many other groups and races of people in the losing country.

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Berlin I 2004-10-14 12:51:00

At The Kit Kat Club

Within a few hours of our touchdown in Berlin on Saturday night, Dennis and I got lost in the U-subway lines of Schoneberg trying to find the Kit Kat Klub.

Finally we got there, with the help of other, less-public forms of transportation. Inside, the music was partial techno-industrial house as people alternately de-robed and re-suited. The girls at the front door warned me that the amount of clothing I was wearing would keep me from getting admitted.

"You mean you want me to take my clothes off?" I declared a little too eagerly.

"Well, no!" They answered immediately and most urgently.

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Later outside, Dennis and I had an epic ex-lovers' quarrel about our relationship. We grudgingly got into a cab and headed home. Inside the taxi as we weaved through the streets of Kreuzeberg, I lit a candle with my voice: "This is crazy. This is all wrong. It's petty. We just spent the whole day looking and reading about families who suffered in Dresden during the war. There is still suffering, pain, and inhumanity all over the world today. WHY are we here having this argument? We have this magnificent peaceful night. We are alive. It's a wonderful and lovely time to be here. We have so much. Why are we arguing over personal needs?... Over nothing?"

As our taxicab reached our destination, I asked the driver how much I owed him. In the dark, he turned around, flipped on the dome light and looked at me.

He had an iridescent halo around his head.

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Berlin II 2004-10-15 12:54:00

Lustgarten, Museum Island

Twenty minutes to midnight, and the Lustgarden courtyard in front of the Altes Museum is practically empty.

Three separate photographers periodically reposition themselves and their tripoded cameras throughout the field, snapping pictures of the Berlinder Dome at night, while a couple kiss romantically by the fountain at the center of the courtyard.

I've always thought that taking pictures of architecture as being two steps removed from creative actualization. It is art that's casually manipulated from someone else's art. Luckily in the age of postmodern sampling, the trend is unnoticeable, when compared to works by people like Hiroshi Sugimoto's reconstructions of museumed art.

But then I thought carefully about the Berlinder Dome, with its Italian Renaissance columns and neo-baroque facades, Victorian-styled interiors, and painterly stained glass. Wasn't its designer, Julius Raschoff copying someone else's work in 1905 as well?

Now I think about that couple kissing by the fountain and I ask: Without the photographs of Robert Doisneau, the whimsy of Hollywood movies, the romance novels, the glossy magazine ads, and the androidal tv commercials, would they have thought to stop and kiss by a fountain?

Take away all our influences and images on the idea of romance and I believe the answer is no.

Around a fountain at Lustgarden: Three photographers, two lovers.

I see five interpreters of manufactured art, because while loving is a need, romance has been and always will be but a construction.

I sat in the guest bedroom in the dark and thought about this.

When the sun came up, Dennis opened his eyes and I said: "I forgive you for starting a relationship with a woman while I was here battling with myself as to whether we should stay together."

Romance is of our building.
Loving is a foundation.
And loneliness, is the ground we break to contain that foundation.

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Berlin III 2004-10-16 08:29:00

The Käthe Kollwitz Museum

During this trip across Germany, I have promised myself to keep my museum visits to a minimum. After all, appreciation of living things seems to take precedence over remnants of faded glories past. (Thus my adage, No genealogists with exciting present lives need continue in their profession). So when it came time to prioritize my museum watch, I had to narrow it down to blockbuster choices that count. I was lucky enough to have picked The Käthe Kollwitz Museum. Let me say that no online galleries have been able to do justice to the collection here, so if there's one museum you may want to visit on your next trip to Berlin, make it this one.

I first heard about The Käthe (pronounced Cart-ehr) Kollwitz's lithographs when a friend told me she was performing her dissertation on this German master. In those days, all we had to go by were two rough reproduction of Kollwitz's etchings in our textbooks. One thing that I do recommend is that you view the pictures before you read her personal biography, because there's a universal theme in her works that I feel should not apply only to her life. Kollwitz herself had often mentioned that people appropriated her images for the same worn soundbites.

click on the pic for an article about Kollwitz's sculpture at The Neue Wache, a discussion of reappropriation of the semiotics of images and structures, a trend that happens quite often throughout the history of German architecture. (ie. Monument of the Battle of the Nations)

Even if one could not grasp the humanity of Kollwitz's work, there's always her fantastic command of compositional balance, tension, narrative, dramatic shading, and a figurative craft only a sculptor working in the round could fully comprehend.

It was an enriching and intensely emotional experience for me to see Kollwitz's work up close after all these years. You will not be shortchanged. I guarantee it.

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Berlin IV 2004-10-17 16:13:00

The Hunt at the Rose Bar

At the very smoky Rose Bar, Dennis, and I crammed in our last minutes in Berlin. A pretty boy sidled over and started chatting us up. The conversation was lively and I listened to him work his way towards that free strawberry daiquiri that I must have resembled when I first entered the joint.

His superlatives and flattery piled higher than a donner kebab while he flourished the cherry on top, "Oh how I wish I could go to New York City someday. It's such a lovely place!"

I reached over and let one pearl glide quietly into his ear: "When you have loveliness in your heart, anywhere you go in this world, it will be lovely."

He withdrew his pursuit of the free daiquiri and moved on to the next game across the room.

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Leaving Berlin 2004-10-18 08:57:00

Connection at Zurich: The Most Expensive Job In The World

I sometimes think about the person who sits at the airport security x-ray machine inspecting the reductions of every bag's contents all day. Not only is everything we own- including our bodies - effortlessly penetrable to him, but everything- in and of itself - is objectively seen for what it is. He sits, perched like a sentry ogre. His response is an increasing zen abstraction to each successively sentimental belonging we place before him.

A cask of finely-aged single malt whisky to us is a mere bottle to him.

Sumptuous fabrics tailored to our silhouette, cut on the bias, and lengthened to the most current hemlines by the finest couturiers within Parisian ateliers is cloth to him.

Expensive jewelry, tearful trinkets from loved ones: Shapes.

Photographs, bestsellers, writings from one's lifelong effort, rectangles.

Wife, lover, brother, child.

Bones.

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