I wrote extensively about living in Berlin in my book Echoes Amongst Us, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46195313-echoes-amongst-us?from_search=true&qid=rmt2WOS9ja&rank=1
but what isn’t in print is what I recently shared with a young teller at my local Bank.
At first impression, Berlin is an artsy city trying to reclaim its bohemian past, one that made me feel as if I were living in the 1920’s instead of the 1990’s. And of course I played the part by wearing hats and furs. But what isn’t elegant or can’t be fantasized is that it carries a horrible legacy, the Nazi regime and its atrocities followed by the Soviet annexation of half the city, and most of that tragic stain is still being cleaned up. About 80% of Berlin was destroyed in WWII.
Today I understand there is a Jewish sector. Something that didn’t exist when I lived there but I’m certain (because it’s very German to admit to your mistakes) there are plaques on buildings reminding all of what once had been Gestapo torture chambers in several places in the city.
There was a piece of the Berlin Wall that remained for the tourists, along with Checkpoint Charlie. The Gestapo headquarters was situated within a cloistered area of the city.
The Nazis were very good at documenting and photographing everything and everyone under their control for propaganda purposes, and this documentation, recovered after the war, served to damn them in a post-war world.
Kreuzberg was a neighborhood within the city, teeming with Turk migrant workers and now I hear has both an ethnic and artistic diversity, revealing the other side of the holocaust.
But Berlin is more than just the legacy of Nazism. The Tiergarten, in the heart of Berlin, is a lovely park larger and wilder than New York’s Central Park, filled with statues of dead writers and music composers, playgrounds, flower gardens, and crisscrossing paths, all converging upon the Victory Monument located in the center. The Tiergarten is a controlled wilderness; for at certain times of the day the sprinklers come on to remind you that this is still a municipal park. The city streets lead into courtyards which once housed multi-class communities; the rich at street-side, the factory workers in the middle, and the prostitutes at the rear.
The Brandenburg Gate, was eternally buzzing with tourists, and the Gropius Bau, a unique museum held the possibility for creating a better world revealed through modern art.
With orchestral music halls and entertainment venues all around, it’s top class in the performing arts. I would give it an A plus, as a city to walk in, given its circumscribed past of walls, occupation, destruction and reconstruction, many attractions are within a short distance of each other.
It was a place filled with misfits from those who fled the draft to the gay community. It was pleasurable to make friends with those from all walks of life. But mostly, it was fun to be an actor, take classes and be cast in parts because of the network I formed.
They say that Berlin is the least German city, and yet it’s the capital of the country and appears to be Germany’s most international city. The post WWII period, when the city was divided into British, American, French and Russian sectors, and filled with spies, is still within recent memory.
History has certainly left its mark, and I recall feeling as if Berlin was a city trying desperately to raise its head above a maniacal past, inviting people from all over to make it happen, whether that be in creating art and music, designing new architecture for reconstruction, or simply by living there. It is certainly a city well worth a visit.
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