Horrorpallooza, part 1

In our first forty-eight hours in the capital of the Bundesrepublik, in spite of the coldest and wettest weather we have had since we came to Europe, we have set forth in search of Berlin’s most notable historical attractions and now bring you some of the finest reminders of the cavalcade of cruelty that twentieth-century Germany both inflicted and suffered.

Monday 11 April
On our first afternoon we ventured out from our Invalidenstraße base and walked through the Scheunenviertel to Unter den Linden. The Scheunenviertel is very Surry Hills, cafés, design boutiques and exhibition spaces (one currently has a Robert Mapplethorpe show). It is also the old Jewish quarter, and one of its most prominent buildings is the Neue Synagogue, a delightfully oriental-looking building with a huge blue and gold dome you can see for miles.

This area was of course DDR controlled for forty years, and didn’t they do a wonderful job looking after it. The old East Berlin has some of the most disgusting looking buildings I have seen anywhere. They weren’t so much designed as designated, were built badly and have been maintained with the same loving care ever since. We thought it hilarious that on one restored building in Humboldt University they left evidence of damage of the past, labelled ‘WWII bullet holes’, post WWII repairs’, and ‘DDR neglect’. Who said Germans don’t have a sense of humour?

When we reached Unter den Linden I was temporarily Stendahl-syndromed at being on this legendary avenue, in the middle of East Berlin, with the Brandenburg Gate at one end and the Staatsoper Unter den Linden across the road (how many performances have I heard from there?). We took a quick look at the second-hand bookstands outside the university, crossed the road and walked into the square beside the Staatsoper.

I was looking for a hole in the ground, but not just any hole. The Bebelplatz, in 1933 when it was called the Operplatz, was the location of the first book-burning by the Nazis. The hole is in fact a window, a memorial built in the 1990s. You look down and see a room full of bookshelves – no books, just bookshelves. There are plaques on either side, but the empty shelves speak louder than plaques.




On one of the plaques is a quote from Heinrich Heine which translates as ‘It was a prediction that, where man burns books, in the end he will burn people.’ Heine wrote that in 1820.

Tuesday 12 April
The next morning we finally got out of East Berlin by walking under the Brandenburg Gate. We strolled through a beautiful park to see the Reichstag building, the burning of which in 1933 was a key event in the ascent of Hitler. Then another stroll a block or two south of the Brandenburg Gate, and a field of concrete blocks emerges gradually from the road.

This is the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, or as everyone refers to it, the Holocaust Memorial: a couple of thousand concrete blocks of different heights, like sarcophagi, set in neat lines on an undulating surface. It works as a piece of art, and it’s one of the most effective memorials I’ve ever seen. What do they represent? Coffins? Individuals? Grave markers? It doesn’t matter. It’s the magnitude of the thing that counts, thousands of concrete stele covering a large city block.

The different heights, from a few centimetres up to three or four metres, break the line so that your still have a sense of scale and your eyes are not numbed by repetition. Lots of school groups, laughing and taking photos of each other amongst the blocks, before being herded into lines to go down into the documentation centre below. Some might complain about light-heartedness at such a place, but I don’t think the dead would begrudge the living for their joy.

From the south-eastern corner of the Holocaust Memorial, cross Hannah-Arendt-Straße into Gertrud-Kolmar-Straße and walk south for a block. You will come to a car park in front of a block of flats, with a large sign by the entry.

Doesn’t look much, but it’s where the Führerbunker was, or still is if you count the holes filled with rubble. (A lot of the guide books record the wrong address, or have it marked wrong on the map. It is at the corner of In den Ministergärten and Gertrud-Kolmar-Straße.) The sign deals with the history of the site from the war until the present, and usefully has a diagram showing the location of the bunker complex in relation to the present buildings and roads. The car park you’re standing in front of is the location of Hitler’s quarters. It seems such a bland setting for the hang-out of a monster, but it’s also satisfying to remember it’s where it all ended for him. Which is why it’s so fascinating – if you’re not sure you’re in the right place, look for a parked bus. (Rule of thumb in Berlin: if you see a tourist coach or a group of people gawking at something, it’s either Nazi stuff or Communist stuff.)


And the good thing is, the Jews get a magnificent memorial, where a quiet qaddish can be said, while Adolf gets a carpark, where a loud ‘Fuck you’ is more appropriate.

Wednesday 13 April
A wet, cold day, Megan sent me out of the house to cheer up while she waited for the landlord to come and inspect the broken toilet. I thought about cutting through the cemetery but instead walked down Invalidenstraße and turned into Ackerstraße. After a couple of minutes I saw a crowd of people standing around some display boards, and thought ‘Here we are.’ Across the road was a watch tower about thirty years old, and I realised, ‘That’s not just a watch tower. It’s one of those watch towers.’

On Bernauer Straße a section of the border zone has been preserved as a memorial, the Gedänkstätte Berliner Mauer. The display boards show the history of this section and how the closing of the border affected the community, especially the parish of St Sophiens, whose church and grounds (partly) were demolished to widen the border strip.

From the observation tower across Bernauer Straße you look directly over a preserved portion of the death zone – the watch tower, sand, lights, and wire. To the east of this the strip has been grassed over and opened up, with relics of the wall and memorials. You can get a sense of scale, you can see how much room they took from the cemetery and the houses and buildings they demolished.




Down on the border strip itself there are about 150 metres of the original wall. Sections removed because they are believed to have covered remains of WWII victims have been moved to the back of the area. A path takes you through interpretive displays with photos and sound recordings, memorials, and a Window of Remembrance, a wall with photos or spaces for each person killed trying to cross the border. Some enclosed sections show what’s left of the lights and wiring conduits.


Walking down Gartnerstraße to get home, I saw sections of wall still in place, and derelict buildings. The DDR isn’t just in the memorial sections, it’s all around you in this part of Berlin.