Prague Journal

Thursday, March 3, 2005.

This morning’s presentations were at the Rotes Rathaus, the Berlin City Hall. The first was a lecture on “Development and Change in German Higher Education,” by the secretary general for German Education; followed by a discussion on “Berlin Today,” that was supposed to have been given by Klaus Wowereit, the current mayor of Berlin, but was instead given by his deputy, Andreas Schmidt. Schmidt gave very brief introductory remarks about Berlin’s economy before opening the floor to diverse and pointed questions. The reception that followed consisted of pastries and pizzas and soft drinks, juice, and wine.
The second session of research presentations was scheduled at 2:00-4:30pm. This was an interesting collage of activities ranging from history and culture to environment and immigration to engineering education and hospice care. The first session, which I did not attend on Monday, had topics ranging from political science and postwar reconstruction, to technology and science, to literature and philosophy. It was interesting to hear about some of the grantees’ projects, despite the fact that only five minutes were allotted per person, and that only 32 scholars had chosen to give presentations.
I rushed to the hotel lobby to join Nick’s fans for his afternoon tour of “Red Berlin.” Twenty people had tickets to this tour, but despite the weather, there were over thirty of us in the group, to the organizers’ dismay. This tour took us to the main Communist buildings and through a history of the Cold War’s birth and death. Berlin was the headquarters of 80 different spy organizations, and acted as the Cold War’s “Schaufenster,” the city in which communism and Western capitalism showed themselves off for the world to see. We went to the Stasi museum, which showed only a few of the surveillance instruments and documents of the MfS, the “shield and sword of the party,” who enforced the communist dictatorship in East Germany. The 91,000 full-time Stasi employees and 180,000 unofficial collaborators ensured the blanket surveillance of the population, roughly one Stasi spy for every 6 citizens! Thousands of people offering resistance were banished to one of the 17 MfS remand prisons, which were overseen from the headquarter in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen.
Dinner at the hotel was at 7pm so we could board our last chartered bus for our last official event, the Farewell Party at the Alte Kantine in the Kulturbrauerei, a 19th century brewery compound that has been redeveloped as a cultural center, which has become a hub of nightlife for the hipsters of Prenzlauer Berg. A cobblestone pedestrian way courses through the center of the complex, whose 25,000 square meters is filled with bars, restaurants, clubs, galleries and a cinema. The only thing you won’t find is freshly brewed beer; Schultheiss shut down production in 1967. Alte Kantine hosts anything from readings to theater to live bands. We had a DJ, not live music, but the music was loud, which made conversation difficult. We drank and danced a bit, but didn’t stick around too long. Instead went with Myron and Nancy for a walk around the Prenzlauer Berg toward the hotel.
Broad sidewalk cafes, Berlin’s oldest beer garden, and the boutiques between restaurants and bars make the former working class district of Prenzlauer Berg one of the most desirable places to live among artsy singles and young couples. Since German reunification, half of the façades have been restored and brightly painted – the rare few by landlords who have reclaimed the properties their families lost when fleeing Nazi Germany, but the punks have been pushed out by rent hikes. Drawn by factory work, Prenzlauer Berg residents multiplied to 350,000 by the 1920s, making the area one of the most cramped in Europe. In 1927, less than half of the households had electricity. The post-1990 gentrification of Prenzlauer Berg began around Kollwitzplatz,which is named after the artist and sculptor Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945). She lived on Knaackstr. from 1891 to 1943, and in 1919 was the first woman inducted into the Prussian Art Academy. Her most prominent sculpture is the one in the Neue Wache on Unter den Linden, Germany’s national war memorial. Her artwork mostly depicts the hunger, poverty, and hoped-for revolution of the people who had become the waste of the Industrial Revolution and war. There is a Käthe-Kollwitz-Museum in Charlottenburg, but Kollwitz’s plain but solid likeness is represented by a sculpture in the square across from her former home. We passed the Rykestraße Synagogue and the 100-foot-tall, round redbrick Wasserturm (water tower) built in 1877. Lace curtains in its windows prove that there is a market for pie-shaped apartments. The synagogue was built in 1904 and is hardly noticeable in the back courtyard. This position in a residential area probably saved it from being burned during Kristallnacht on November 9, 1938. We stopped at a small café for tea before heading back to the hotel, shortly after midnight.

posted by JWinn @ 10:00 PM