Tag Archives: Berlin

Disappointed Friendship

The Germans I know observed the 2016 election with particular worry compared to the other three American elections I experienced from here. Things were different in 2000 when I studied abroad; in 2008, when I immigrated here and again in 2012. It is the escalation of worry over time that became my barometer for how people reacted and what fears they had, by extension, for Germany.

My lasting impression from 2000 was ridicule as the Florida recount wound through politics and the courts. There was headshaking all around and great wonder how the United States could have such a patently weird system, from voting machines to the Electoral College. Later, Barack Obama’s election seemed to bring about a loud, collective sigh of relief. A comedian on late-night TV gleefully shouted “peace, happy, pancake!” in direct translation of a German expression (Friede, Freude, Eierkuchen!). Everybody was so pleased, they could even laugh about it and themselves. The world had been righted again. The mood was dampened in 2012 but Obama’s repeated victory reassured people that figures like Sarah Palin had been just a fluke.

This time, the sense that the United States has ridiculous politics and absurd, if not downright stupid and illogical, priorities has been strong and deep. Disappointment with what Obama was unable or unwilling to do, and collective derision about widespread, if not majority, American positions turned into something else. (They [re-]elect politicians who hate providing people with health insurance? All that climate change denial in the face of scientific expertise and abundant evidence? Mass shootings and police violence? Such dissatisfaction with an economic situation that is wealthy compared to most of the rest of the world?) Friends, acquaintances, and colleagues asked, “Tell me, what’s up with this Trump character? Does he actually stand a chance? What is this? Who are these voters?” I have never before been asked to explain the USA so frequently in a country where many people pride themselves on their knowledge of their major ally. Germany continues to face its collective historical guilt on a scale that is unique worldwide and the blatant racism and xenophobia of not only the Trump campaign, but many Republican candidates, were inexplicable here. It highlighted all the negative things from recent American history that people would rather see outweighed by the USA’s generally positive character. The fact that Bernie Sanders’s positions would seem radical drove home the point that the US is more deeply conservative than many Germans usually feel like admitting.

Brexit was unthinkable from here, but the election of Trump was an escalation of nearly unfathomable proportions. I know Germans who cried about Brexit, but Trump’s victory seemed even too much for tears. I felt others’ shocked and horrified silence, their utter speechlessness. Colleagues sent me condolence emails, carefully asking if I was okay. Many people here orient themselves and their perceptions towards the USA. The soul-searching of the American media immediately led to soul-searching in the German media. The danger of fake news influencing Germany’s upcoming elections is being examined. The electoral prospects of Germany’s populists (the AfD) were re-examined. The close attention that was paid to the primaries and the general election is now paid to the transition, but now it’s without the underlying sense that we might as well find it entertaining. People I talk to echo my own sense of dread. Everybody misses laughing at the USA’s previous election gaffes.

The press agency DPA called a prominent curator, someone who was my own mentor as I started my career, to ask for his position. He said a version of something I’ve heard often from members of the older West German generation. It goes roughly, “Never forget that the Americans were our liberators. They showed us democracy. The freedom of our dreams is embodied in this idea of America.” When Kasper said it now, though, it sounded like a valedictory instead of a reminder of why people love our country. Kasper’s reminder had another ring to it, too, of disappointed friendship and the recognition that someone has become something you always believed they weren’t at heart.

 

Emily Evans graduated in 2002 from Smith College with an Art History major and German minor. She is an art historian and editor who moved to Berlin, Germany, in 2008.

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Where Are We? Remembering Colonialism

Where am I? One way to answer this question is that I’m sitting in a room in Ihnestraße 22, Berlin, Germany. Another way, I’m sitting in a classroom in the building that houses the Political Science department at the Freie Universität Berlin. But I feel this information is not enough to inform you of the real meaning behind my first question. The inspiration for the first query may shed some light: I’ve just been told by my professor that from 1927 to 1944, a collection of human remains encompassing some 5,000 items were housed in the attic of this very building. So when I ask, “Where am I?” it is not simply a matter of physical location, but one of history and more importantly, the interconnectedness of one building’s life with colonialism and with it the first genocide of the 20th century, perpetrated thousands of miles away in what today is known as Namibia, and another, perpetrated in Germany and across Europe thirty years later.

MUNDLE.Lili.I22 Picture (1)
Front entrance of Ihnestraße 22. Copyright Lili Mundle.

Constructed in 1927, the building was home to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics, otherwise known as the KWI-A. Research conducted at this institute is infamous for legitimating racism both scientifically and politically. As a small plaque outside the front entrance informs us – Ihnestraße 22 housed Mengele’s mentor and other researchers who both scientifically legitimated the Holocaust and benefited from its atrocities. Its final line warns that scientists are responsible for the content and consequences of their research.

While this history is remembered, albeit on a small and difficult to read plaque, there is another history that has not been remembered. Let us return to the human remains in the attic, in particular 30 that had been stored there. Where were they from? At the time they had been shipped to Berlin, their colony of origin was known as German South-West Africa (DSWA). Today it is known as Namibia. From 1904 to 1908 a genocide, which to this day has not been recognized by the German government, was perpetrated against the Nama and Herero peoples. Both were nearly obliterated. One practice, documented on a postcard of the time, describes women in concentration camps – Germany’s first use of these – being forced to scrape flesh from the skulls of the murdered. The picture accompanying the text shows German soldiers packing skulls into boxes to be sent to Berlin for research. While these 30 skulls cannot for certain be traced specifically to the genocide, we know their origins were made possible by the context of colonial violence.

But it is not simply the presence of these skulls that connects Ihnestraße 22 and the research at the KWI-A to colonialism. As the plaque warns: scientists are responsible for the content and consequences of their research. However, Dr. Eugen Fischer, first director the KWI-A, most likely saw the consequences of his work being fortuitous rather than gruesome. For the reason he had been called upon to lead the institute was due to his own research in German South-West Africa in 1908. There he had studied the “Rehobother Bastards,” children of Dutch settlers and local Khoikhoi women, to determine the heredity of “race.” While in retrospect his proof was unsubstantiated, his work would inspire, among others, Dr. Wolfgang Abel, another researcher at the KWI-A. Abel’s research on the “Rhineland bastards,” children born of German women and French colonial soldiers from WWI, would lead to the forced sterilizations of 385 youth. The consequences of these men’s research are not limited to what has been written here. These descriptions are simply to give a first impression of the close relationship between colonialism, science and racism.

What does this have to do with activism? Sitting in that classroom in Ihnestraße 22, in what today is a university, and hearing my professor speak of our intimate proximity to colonialism inspired me and four other classmates – friends – to embark on a journey to remember and reveal this interconnectedness. Our method: an exhibit. Titled, “Manufacturing Race: Contemporary Memories of a Building’s Colonial Past,” this exhibit was displayed on numerous occasions in various locations, receiving positive feedback and publicity. Its contents address not only history, but the way in which this history is, or is not, remembered. Not wanting to have this knowledge lost after we graduated, we successfully applied for funding from the university to make our work permanent. Elements include an online version of the exhibit, a large memorial plaque in front of Ihnestraße 22 documenting the continuity between colonialism and KWI-A’s racist research, and finally an international conference on colonialism, science and racism in a broader context to be held in the fall of 2015.

In closing, I would like to offer the opening lines of the exhibit: “This exhibit was born from the knowledge that every site in Germany has a colonial past and the conviction that this knowledge needs to be made public. Not only did we want to know about the colonial past of Ihnestraße 22 – we want everyone to know. We hope that this research will bring others, here at the Freie Universität and beyond, to engage with the colonial reality that exists in all spaces. While we hope the knowledge we have exhibited will reach beyond the university, we specifically chose to host the exhibition at the very site where this knowledge was produced and where we are still studying today. In doing so we want to remind everyone that the so-called distant international and colonial are in fact local. We also want to remind that they are relevant to us all here, today. In doing so, we want to bring the question of ethics and research to the fore.”

As this text reveals, the hopes in creating such an exhibit are not just that history be revealed and remembered. That a website, or a plaque, or a conference be funded. But more fundamentally that we locate ourselves in the world by constantly asking: “Where are we?”

 

Lili’s intereMUNDLE.Lili SGIst in global issues and inter-cultural experiences is an inherently selfish one: having parents from two different countries and growing up in both countries herself, the aforementioned issues constitute an essential part of successfully navigating day-to-day life. Over the years these day-to-day issues have become a part of her academic interests and work, leading her to pursue a graduate degree in International Relations and work in the international arena. Underlying these academic and work activities remains her primary impulse: to continue exploring and communicating with the world around her.

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Walls Here and There

It was an especially grey, winter day in Berlin, but the chill in my bones came from more than just the humidity. There I was, standing face to face with the remaining concrete barrier of the Berlin Wall. I was blown away by the realization that what I had just been studying in my class on the history of the European Union was tangible—I touched it, and thereby I touched history.

My professor in Paris had recently described living in Berlin in 1989, while on exchange from France, and excitedly running to the Wall when it fell. She shared how she had made off with a large chunk of it, taking home her own piece of history. She has proudly displayed the graffiti-covered stone in her apartment ever since. The remaining kilometer of the Wall is now known as the East Side Gallery. The concrete that was once covered with barbed wire is now covered with murals by international artists and scrawled messages marking “I Was Here” by many who have visited.

Berlin is a city heavy with history. The divide between East and West has left a visible mark. Whether it is the architectural differences or the cultures that have sprung up on one side or the other, Berlin is still seeking to reunite its two halves. Throughout the city there are also marks of something that is missing: its Jewish community. As my friend and I toured the city, we discovered the New Synagogue, with its impressive golden dome tucked in the center of a neighborhood in Berlin. As we stood there, I was struck by the feeling that the 8,000 Jews of pre-war Berlin were standing there with us. We continued exploring the city and soon found ourselves at Checkpoint Charlie, the Allies’ old crossing between East and West Berlin, reading stories about brave Germans who tried to sneak from one side to the other to see their families. Many were killed.

All day as we continued touring, I bounced back and forth between these intense stories—between the history of the Holocaust and the history of the Wall. When we returned to our hostel at the end of the day, I was absolutely drained. We joined our fellow travelers and saw yet another world of Berlin, the underground life of nocturnal Berlin, but I couldn’t shake a thought that was in the back of my mind: there are still walls like this elsewhere.

Before coming to Paris for my year abroad, I had spent the summer in Israel with my family. I hold dual American-Israeli citizenship, my entire family on my mom’s side lives there, and it is where I feel most at home. Walking around Berlin, I felt physically torn by the knowledge that a concrete wall similar to the one I was looking at, here in Berlin, has also been built there. Seven hundred kilometers of concrete, checkpoints, fences, and trenches, separate the West Bank from Israel. I asked myself, what makes that wall different from what was once the Berlin Wall?

The wall in Israel is a continuation of a universal story about separation and oppression, framed in a rhetoric of security and protection. Dividing people, dividing sides, separation barriers do not solve problems. Rather, they reinforce the differences between “us” and “the other,” they lead to more hatred and violence, and they paint a world that is stark black and white. However, the situation in Israel is anything but black and white. It is painted in shades of grey, and the nuances of narratives create a complicated conflict.

This photo, and this trip to Berlin, highlighted those shades of grey. As we see in the photo, two stories can in fact be held in the same frame. As I walked around Berlin that day, torn between the two stories I was facing about the oppression of the Jews that led to the Holocaust and the oppression of Palestinians that has been created by the wall in Israel, I finally realized that I did not have to decide that one was true and the other was false. Narratives do not have to be mutually exclusive—there can be multiple stories and multiple truths that exist at the same time. Israel can be both the sanctuary for Jews after the Holocaust, and a country that has built a wall of separation cutting across the land and isolating Palestinians. It can be both a safe-haven for some and an occupier of others. The question now is: How do you reconcile two truths? How do you tear down the wall that divides those two worlds? How do you tear down the divisions that have been built in order to build something together? Can both sides find the bravery required to forgive?

I don’t assume to have the answers to these questions, but I remain optimistic that this wall too will fall. I hope to be present for that moment and to take home a piece of the wall as a souvenir of the past, just as my professor did. Until that day, the walls around the world continue to serve as concrete reminders to seek justice and to work for tolerance.

Photo © Sophie Schor. All rights reserved.

Sophie Schor headshotSophie Schor is originally from Denver and spent her third year abroad with Smith’s JYA program in Paris. While in Paris, she attended Spéos International School of Photography where she learned to develop film and print black and white photographs. Armed with her camera, she traveled around Europe by train and captured many images along the way. Upon graduation in May, Sophie will be pursuing a Masters degree in Middle Eastern Studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She hopes to specialize in the field of conflict-resolution.

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