This morning we set out from the hostel in the morning for a look at the German government throughout time and over different regimes. From Rosenthaler Platz, we took the tram and the S-Bahn to Friedrichstrasse, then proceeded to walk along the Spree towards the Reichstag and the current government quarter. Unfortunately, we were not able to tour the entire Reichstag building, but we were able to go up in the building’s modern dome, from which one gets a wonderful view in all directions across central Berlin. The dome was only added to the Reichstag after the reunification of Germany in 1990, when Berlin once again became the capital of Germany; indeed, the only original portion of the Reichstag building today is the façade, as the rest of the building had been destroyed between the Reichstag fire of 1933 and the Battle for Berlin in 1945. On a previous trip to Germany, I actually toured the Reichstag and was very impressed with the modernity and physical transparency of the building’s interior. The dome was intended to demonstrate the reunified German government’s desire for transparency, in comparison to past dictatorial regimes, as the dome is open at the top and allows the visitor to look down into the Bundestag chamber below. Furthermore, the dome also complements the German focus on sustainability, for the very reason that the open top of the dome allows fresh air to be channeled into the Reichstag building. In comparison to other tall buildings, such as the Fernsehturm here in Berlin, a visitor to the Reichstag dome is not shuttled up to the top in a closed elevator, but rather winds up through the dome on a ramp, allowing them to look at the sights along the way. This allowed me to look at the sights of central Berlin as I walked up, such as the Siegessäule, which just emerged above the carpet of trees of the Tiergarten; Potsdamer Platz; Alexanderplatz; the Brandenburger Tor, which I saw from an entirely new angle; and the Kurfürstendamm in the distance. Beyond the beautiful view from the Reichstag dome, I also enjoyed the puzzle that is trying to figure out what certain sights are, as Dr. Stehle and I tried to figure out if a hill in the distance could be the Humboldthain flak tower that we toured with the Berliner Unterwelten.
After leaving the Reichstag dome, we walked toward the Hauptbahnhof, past the new Chancellery building, which is also made of glass in a continuation of the transparency-in-government theme. At the Hauptbahnhof, we paused in our explorations for the day for lunch, as there are many more restaurants than one might expect in Berlin’s main train station; rather than have yet another sandwich for lunch, I had quark with strawberries, which was a new taste thrill for me, as I never really used to like quark, though I discovered today that it is quite delicious. Following lunch, the group met back up again with Dr. Stehle to travel to the former East Berlin district of Hohenschönhausen for a tour of the former Stasi prison in Berlin. In an indication of how far east this prison truly was, we rode the tram for at least a half hour from Alexanderplatz to get to Hohenschönhausen. Having been one of the far eastern districts in East Berlin, I was expecting Hohenschönhausen to be filled with Plattenbauten, the traditional apartment blocks of East Germany, especially after reading about the enormous, impersonal housing estates that were built in these districts. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that this particular part of Hohenschönhausen, at least, mainly escaped the Plattenbauten, and was mostly made up of smaller apartment buildings that looked as though they predated the East German regime by many decades. Additionally, after the safety information that the study abroad office at UT sent us, warning us to stay out of the Hohenschönhausen area, I was expecting to feel quite unsafe in the area, even during the daytime. Despite this warning, though, I did not feel uneasy in any way throughout our time in Hohenschönhausen, especially as I witnessed people in the neighborhood going about their business, which gave the area a much more “neighborhood” feeling than I was expecting.
With regard to the actual reason that we came into Hohenschönhausen, the central Stasi prison for Berlin, it ranks as one of the most interesting, and yet most terrifying, sites that we have seen so far in Berlin. Immediately after the Battle for Berlin and the initial Soviet occupation of the city, the area that became this prison was used by the NKVD, the Soviet secret police, for the thousands of Germans who were arrested as enemies of the new regime. With the establishment of the German Democratic Republic in 1949, the area came under the control of the Ministry for State Security (or Stasi) in 1951, who used the area as a prison until the reunification of Germany in 1990. As our tour guide informed us, there was an entire area around the Hohenschönhausen prison that was off-limits to anyone but Stasi personnel; ordinary citizens could only live outside of the security ring and were told only that the area was a “military complex” or a “military prison” at the most. Beyond giving us the general history of the prison, our tour guide – who I want to become someday, as she studied history at university and now conducts tours at a historical site – took us into the two halves of the prison complex: Soviet and Stasi. Amazingly, despite the inhumanity of the Stasi and the torturous psychological interrogation methods they used, they essentially came off as the “humanitarians” in comparison with the NKVD. In the old Soviet section of the prison, prisoners were crowded into group cells, in which as many as ten people could be forced to stand up all day; for further torture, prisoners could be placed in “water cells,” where they were forced to stand in several inches of cold water. Additionally, prisoners were only fed twice a day, bread and water in the morning and soup in the afternoon, and were rarely permitted to shower or change clothes; not surprisingly, one third of the unfortunates who were imprisoned by the Soviets died in prison. In contrast, the Stasi instituted new methods of hygiene, feeding the prisoners three times a day, allowing them to bathe and change their clothes more often, and eliminating the group cells. Stasi guards also looked in on the prisoners every five minutes during the day in an attempt to lower the high suicide rate of Soviet days. Furthermore, while Soviet authorities preferred physical methods of torture, the Stasi utilized psychological methods in order to not leave marks on their prisoners. For this reason, all Stasi interrogators studied “operative psychology” to learn the best methods in which to psychologically coerce their prisoners into confessing to their supposed crimes. With all of the information that our tour guide presented to us, I was busy processing the historical aspects of the prison and the added evidence that the Stasi was one of the most devious, terrifyingly-efficient security police forces of the twentieth century. However, since we left the prison, I keep returning to my personal feelings about the prison and the fact that I seriously doubt that I could have had the necessary mental strength to survive in such an environment. Overall, this was one of the best sites that I have seen in Berlin so far.
After coming back to the hostel from Hohenschönhausen, we rested for a bit before heading out to find dinner at the Kaufhof department store in Alexanderplatz before we went to the Kino (movie theater). In some ways, going to a movie in Germany was very similar to the US, as there were commercials before the previews and previews before the movie, but it was also quite different; for one, because the theater was an indie movie theater, the cinemas were quite small, barely bigger than a personal movie theater. The movie that we saw was called Hedi Schneider steckt fest, about a woman struggling with anxiety disorder and the consequences that had for her marriage; after contemplating the movie and discussing it with the rest of our group who also saw it, I am still rather conflicted about my own feelings with regard to the movie, which was a heavier movie than I normally see. If I come to anymore conclusions about the film, I will definitely post it! Tomorrow, we are going to the Deutsches Historisches Museum, which I am very much looking forward to (for obvious reasons), with an optional (not for me) visit to the DDR Museum. A day full of history? I am totally up for that!
Making the Past Present 