Layers of History
Snapshots from Berlin offer vivid reminders of its tragic and complicated past, pulsating present, and the desire to overcome the times of intolerance
First, a brief note now about the Supreme Court’s 6-3 vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. I’d like to imagine that this decision was just about the striping away of women’s constitutionally protected reproductive rights—as terrible as that is. But I think it’s just the beginning, portending further efforts to eliminate hard-fought rights and concentrate power by a right-wing minority. Moreover, it’s hard to see how this will not exacerbate division between states and trigger growing outcry to split the country. In the continuing advocacy of America, America for democracy, justice, basic human rights and the positive role that liberal government can play in the lives of individuals, June 24, 2022, was a dark day for America. We have much work ahead.
On my first full night in Berlin, my Austrian-born friend who’s had a home in the German capital for many years, succinctly summarized the city in a way that’s stuck with me. “Berlin,” he said over dinner, “is a city of many layers.”
This is not my first visit here; I came two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, and again two decades later. But both of those trips were just for a couple of days and very focused, not giving me the time or latitude to confirm or deny my friend’s proposition.
I’m staying in Mitte, the central district of Berlin, which combines portions of the former East Berlin and West Berlin. Outside my window is the Berlin Television Tower, completed in 1969, serving as both a symbol of the “modern” former German Democratic Republic (GDR) and a geographic landmark at over 1,200 feet (one of the tallest structures in Europe). My wife tells me that her childhood friend from a neighbor family in Finland kept a plastic replica of the tower on their book shelves. It still amazes me that I can be staying in the East and so close to this, given how shut off communist East Berlin was.
Walk a minute up our street, Rosa Luxemburg Strasse, you find vivid reminders of 20th century Berlin history. The Karl Liebknicht House was named for the man who co-founded the Communist Party in Germany with Rosa Luxemburg (both were murdered in 1919 and became revolutionary symbols). Built as a factory in 1912, it became the headquarters of the Central Committee until the Nazis took it over, raised the swastika flag, renamed it the Horst Wessel House, and used it to detain and torture Jews and other political opponents. After the war, it became the Karl Liebknecht House again and the East German Institute for Marxism-Leninism resided there.
I was more excited to see Volksbühne (the People’s Theater)—and even more, the Babylon movie theater, which started showing silent films with an orchestra in 1929 and has continued to show films ever since, no matter who was in power. By chance, they were showing the silent film Metropolis, along with live music from their 18-member Babylon orchestra.
But it may be the nearby Soho House that best exemplifies the many layers—the terrible layers—that can define the city, only to be redefined and remade into something new. If you didn’t know, you might just think this beautiful structure is simply a stylish restaurant, spa, cafe, hotel and club for fashionistas and other members of the globe-trotting Berlin cool crowd.
But this was once a department store, until its Jewish owner Hermann Golluber was forced by the Nazis to flee and it became the headquarters for the leader of the Hitler Youth organization. Outside its doors were held Nazi parades and rallies. Across the street, in a now largely ignored cemetery, Hitler and Joseph Goebbels came to visit the grave of their fallen martyr and propaganda tool, Horst Wessel, a 22-year-old “assault leader” for the Nazi stormtroopers, who was shot in the head in 1930. His lyrics for a march became the official anthem of the Nazi Party and later the co-national anthem of Germany.
As a memorial outside the building notes, after the war when Berlin was divided, East Berlin’s Socialist Unity Party took over the building and it became the “centre of power” for the young GDR. Here the Stalinist party model was planned and imposed. Here purges were implemented and death sentences were decided for political opponents. Here, after 1959, the Central Party kept its archives until the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany in 1990.
I mentioned a bit of this history to a new friend, a talented German photographer and filmmaker in his thirties. A politically aware person who travels widely for his work throughout the world and a Berlin resident, he hadn’t heard of Horst Wessel or was particularly conscious of the building’s background. That’s the thing: While plaques and other memorials detail the city’s history everywhere you go, providing clear reminders of the atrocities and other horrors committed, a bustling Berlin has refused to stay stuck in the tragedies of the past. That could sound like denial of this history, but my sense from the variety of progressive people I met is that it’s more a matter of acceptance and desire to be more inclusive, tolerant and positive than those that came before.
As journalist and Berlin resident Joshua Hammer writes, Berlin is “an astonishingly varied city, an urbanscape in a constant state of change,” one that “requires a constant reckoning with the past. And yet the German capital, as I long ago discovered, doesn’t allow you to linger too long over the dark side of its history.”
One last note: There were members of my family that lived in Berlin and were murdered by the Nazis. That history causes me to tread lightly in comparing current conditions in America with the Nazi era and its incomprehensible scale of death and destruction. But I think it’s important to note how many Germans I’ve met in the last few days have referenced 1930s Germany in their efforts to understand the abandonment of democracy and the attraction to demagogic, autocratic leaders by millions of Americans.
I hope you’ll consider becoming a paid subscriber to sustain this work, if you’re not already.
A fascinating perspective of Berlin, where so much of 20th Century history has been inscribed in blood. Thank you for taking the time to post your observations, Steven.
George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
🙏🏼 Thank you for the perspective from Berlin.