The sky was very grey and as we took our breakfast on the road, it started to rain… however I had with me this time the umbrella that I brought to Europe with me from home in the first place. (who knew I had enough brains to actually bring an umbrella since generally we Moberg’s regard them as being superfluous to life…) but needless to say this means that the POS umbrella did not come with us to Berlin. In fact the last picture you saw of the POS umbrella you might remember was when Alana was in Paris and Matt was displaying its shit-tastic-ness in a photo… that was the last time that the POS umbrella made an appearance in public, it is currently living out its retirement in Matt’s room next to his refrigerator because I cant stand to throw it away just yet.
But after that little aside about the ongoing (and rather ended saga of the POS umbrella) it was raining as we walked through the park that morning, making our way from out hostel to the Bauhaus museum so that I could fulfil one of my life goals which was to make a pilgrimage there to complete my experience of Mac’s first year seminar which was about modernist architecture… which was perpetuated and purported by the Bauhaus, along with other modern ideas and art and objects and chairs. Lots of chairs. The only reason that I really minded the rain on Monday was because we were dragging our bags along with us all day so as to avoid losing time and trekking all the way back across the city to pick up our bags before we had to leave for the train. I and my coat are waterproof, and my backpack is only kind of water-proof… thus I was not thrilled by the rainy day. But the park we walked through was still lovely, and it is so nice because the promise of spring is everywhere as the trees begin to turn green, and flowers are popping up everywhere left and right! I am spent several days trying to come up with the French equivalent of the saying “April Showers bring May flowers” but I just haven’t been able to do it yet… so if you Francophones out there have any suggestions… it would be much appreciated.
We found the Bauhaus museum without much trouble at all, and it was very distinctive from the moment we saw it. The building itself was designed by Walter Gropius himself who was an integral part of founding the Bauhaus after World War I.
We dropped our stuff in the lockers which all of the museums provide for free (a deposit of one euro but you get it back!) and grabbed our audio guide things. Sadly you can’t take pics in the museum at all, which made me kinda sad, but that is ok. I was thrilled to realize that I knew a lot of what the audio guide was teaching me, and I remember almost everything from my class, and I rattled off the five main concepts to be incorporated into modernist architecture to Matt like I just finished the class yesterday. Can you believe that Matt’s dad is an architect, and they live in Illinois, and he has never been to see the Farnsworth house designed by Mies van der Rohe in Illinois? Gasp! I know, you are floored. We will be going up there next semester you can bet on it. But we thoroughly enjoyed the museum, seeing all the art and pottery and metal work and architecture and all the chairs… the Bauhaus guys really liked to design chairs. And before we left I made my first purchase yet from a museum gift shop! I bought buttons for myself and my beloved Alana… because even though she couldn’t come on the pilgrimage to the museum with me, she was there in spirit I know.
But during our visit I was really struck for the first time during that day (but not the last since our next stop was the Jewish History Museum) by how very deeply the Nazi party and their fascist regime of hate injured Germany at this time. Almost all of the minds who made the Bauhaus a brilliant reality during the 1920’s were forced to leave Germany by the end of the 1930’s. Their modernist ideas were not welcome under the Nazi regime, and they either had to stop producing cutting edge everything and go back to the 18th century, or go to the place where their ideas and cutting edge minds were very welcome… the United States. Germany’s “Brain Drain” as we called it in my high school European history class was very real, as they forced out anyone who was not in keeping with their ideas…and the human resources they lost are really unimaginable. And while it doesn’t do one much good to look at history and ask the question “what if things had be different” I can’t help but wonder how Germany and Berlin would be different, if the greatest minds of the time had not taken their mental resources elsewhere.
But we left the museum there and headed across the city a little bit to go and see another (controversial) building that we studied in my Modernist architecture class—the Jewish History Museum which was designed by Daniel Libeskind Jewish American architect to commemorate all of Jewish history.
The museum itself starts in the fourth century CE and goes up to the present day (sort of, but I am getting there). So first I will talk about the architecture and what I think of the building… then what I think of what is inside the museum. The architecture of the building is definitely striking. I could only take pictures of the side of the building, but check out the wikipedia article if you want to see what it looks like from above which is probably one of the most interesting aspects of it. It is in a zigzag shape, the entire building.
Then when you go inside the shape is easy to make out when you are in the basement of the building which is divided up into three axes called the Continuity axis (I think) and then one for the exodus (out of Israel I assume it is sort of ambiguous) and then one for the Holocaust, which ends in the chamber of memory… a stark room with no heat and a hole in the ceiling which lets light in… here is my pic of it, but it doesn’t look like much because it was so dark. I think in general the building captures the spirit of the museum, of the story it is trying to tell, and that is always up for interpretation. 
But I am not so sure that I am overly fond of the narrative the museum presents in terms of Jewish History.I said this same thing freshman year when we learned about the museum and its goals in Mac’s class, but I tried to reserve total judgement until I had gone to see the museum for myself… and now I still think the same thing. I am not sure that the museum focuses on the aspects of Jewish history in the way that it should. Disclaimer here, I am not Jewish, nor am I a scholar of Jewish history, so I am not particularly qualified or justified in having this opinion. This is simply my opinion, and I would like someone to tell me otherwise so that I can change it. I just think that the museum has the attitude of “look what the world has done to us, it hates us, over and over again…” which is true, they Jews have not had an easy time of it in Europe. But it seems to me that they could have spun their larger narrative in a way that would say, “look the world has not been kind to us, but we as a people and a culture have persevered, and we are here triumphant to tell the tale toady;” Like I said I don’t get to really have an opinion on the issue, it just seems that overall this would be a more positive way for them to spin their history, and still be able to talk about the centuries of persecution they have been subject too… and overcome.
Although based on current Israeli politics, perhaps this is not actually how they feel about their history, and they do not seem to have learned from the persecution they have faced as they actively persecute the Palestinians… but this blog is not a political one… In fact the final thing that I found very interesting about the museum was that there is no display about Israel… they don’t even mention it. I feel like they could be trying to avoid the politics of it… but is no statement the same as making a statement in favour of Israeli politics? I don’t know. I just thought it was really interesting that they didn’t mention the state of Israel at all. The other thing about the museum was that for the second time during that day I was made aware again of how deeply the brain drain of the 1930’s injured Germany. Thousands of Jews and non Jews alike fled in the years preceding the Second World War, minds like Einstein and others who changed the world… but they had to do it from British or American soil. It just blows my mind.
On our way to the train station we came upon an outside exhibit and stopped to look at it briefly.
It turns out they are finally working on building a museum where the headquarters of the SS used to be… which has been neglected for so long because it happens to be located right on the border where the wall used to be, and it was sort of lost in the shuffle and the tension that surrounded the wall for so many years. In this place there is also the only part of the wall that still remains… and it was pretty torn up, but it was there just the same, which I thought was very interesting to see
.Then we headed to have dinner at a place that was almost like Casa Grande… but not quite before we got back on the train to head to Paris. Only the train ride back we had beds to sleep in rather than just seats… which made life much more comfortable, and it made Tuesday at work much more pleasant as well! Over all Berlin was wonderful, and going there helped me to ask as many questions as it answered… and I would love to go back to explore even more.
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