Sobering

I'm actually back in Rome, but I started this post several days ago...

"Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen."

-Heinrich Heine, 1820

I was planning on spending the day studying the German art and design, but it´s never really that simple in Berlin. It´s impossible to walk thirty feet in this place without being confronted by the wreckage of the DDR, the Berlin wall, or the Third Reich.

Earlier in the day I had asked one of Stefanie's flatmates how to get to the Guggenheim. He responded, "We have a Guggenheim?" I think that's fairly illustrative of how the daily life of a Berliner lies in stark contrast to that of a tourist. They have their entire lives to visit the 162 museums that exist here. I have to pack as much as possible into seven days. And, in a sense, their lives have shown them the many joys and sorrows I explore on gallery walls. What use to them is a museum?

But many are glad that they will be there for their children. Many want to keep the bunkers and walls as a declaration of what has been, and what could be again. My new friend Robert says there is a group that wants to remove the remainder of the Berlin wall, but he thinks that would be a tragedy. "Could we forget what happened here?"

He carefully rolls his cigarette and tells me what it was like to be alive on November 9th when the wall came down. It's something that a history book could never do justice. The pictures give it a fair shot, but I will never be able to truly relate to the emotion.

Germany is rife with passion and squalor, celebration and shame. It's history is fascinating and disturbing at the same time. The young generation laughs carelessly in the streets, but many of the elderly sit in silence with a distant look in their eyes. I can't imagine what it truly must have been like to live in such a world of secrets and heartache, meanwhile celebrating the everyday joys of children and birthdays...

I think I'm beginning to see why Christy found Germany's history so intriguing. Here is a people of such beauty and imagination - brilliant engineers and chemists - and yet so much of that was used to such diabolical ends. And yet they are REAL people. They have real hearts, hurts and wants. They had joys and sorrows like you and I. They may not have been so different.

But they found themselves broken and hungry and they needed a way out. They needed to find their dignity, something to pull themselves out of the mire. Socialism/Fascism gave them that promise, and by some sleight of hand the masses believed. Little by little the improprities grew into atrocities... I guess we all know the end result so there's no point in commenting.

The quotation I listed above is roughly translated as follows:

That was only a prelude; where they burn books, they will, in the end, also burn humans.

There are many people who want to forget Germany's past. But many, like Robert, feel it's important for the children to know where they've been. As they say, if history has taught us anything, it's that it repeats itself. Hopefully these remaining icons can steer us clear of that epitaph.

Berlin is a beautiful city - one of my favorites. It has incredible architecture and incredible art. The museums are some of the best in the world (I'm told). It's good to be a tourist and laugh with your friends in the streets. But it's also good to be sober for a moment and think of what it meant for our world history. I think there's a lot in there that challenges us to think of how we address the needs of nations - do we treat them as objects or people? What happens when a nation goes long enough without bread? Do we have any responsibilities there?

Pretty sobering.