January, 2020

Pictures

In 1989, by sheer happenstance, I was new to Germany just as the wall, (built starting in 1961 by the USSR, as a way of preventing mass emigration by people opposed to communist oppression) which physically separated East and West Berlin, and virtually separated all of Eastern Europe with Western Europe, was “coming down” as they say. I visited Berlin in Nov (with Sheila) and Dec 1989 (with Arlene), and was riveted by experiencing history in the moment. I ran the Berlin Marathon in September 1990, which was noted for being the first time the race would be run through the “new” Berlin (comprised of the old East Berlin and the modern West Berlin).
 
Today Berlin, with about 3.7 million residents, is the second most populous city of the European Union after London.

Some historical cheat notes, to bring us up to speed.

Prussia was a German kingdom between 1701 (due to Frederick III upgrading Prussia from a duchy to a kingdom, crowning himself King Frederick I) and 1918 (end of WWI) and was the driving force behind the unification of Germany in 1871 . Although it took its name from the region called Prussia, it was based in the Margraviate of Brandenburg, where its capital was Berlin.

The Holy Roman Empire (loosely considered the first Reich) was effectively dissolved when Emperor Francis II abdicated (6 August 1806) during the War of the Third Coalition. In 1814–15 after the Napoleonic Wars the Congress of Vienna endorsed Austrian dominance in Central Europe. The negotiators at Vienna took no account of Prussia’s growing strength within and among the German states and so failed to foresee that Prussia would rise to challenge Austria for leadership of the German peoples. Thus German dualism (the problem of unification): Kleindeutsche Lösung, the small Germany solution (Germany without Austria), or Großdeutsche Lösung, the greater Germany solution (Germany with Austria).

Specific to Berlin, the Brandenburg gate was commissioned by Frederick William II of Prussia and built between 1788 and 1791. The Victory Column was intended to commemorate the Prussian victory in the Danish-Prussian War, but by the time it was inaugurated on 2 September 1873 Prussia had also defeated Austria in the Austro-Prussian War (1866) and France in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71). The unification of Germany into a nation state (loosely considered the second or Deutsches Reich) officially occurred on 18 January 1871 at the Palace of Versailles. Princes of the German states, excluding Austria-Hungary, gathered there to proclaim William I of Prussia as German Emperor after the French capitulation in the Franco-Prussian War.

The German revolutions of 1848–49 the opening phase of which was also called the March Revolution, were initially part of the Revolutions of 1848 that broke out in many European countries. They were a series of loosely coordinated protests and rebellions in the states of the German Confederation, including the Austrian Empire. The revolutions, which stressed pan-Germanism, demonstrated popular discontent with the traditional, largely autocratic political structure of the thirty-nine independent states of the Confederation that inherited the German territory of the former Holy Roman Empire. This process began in the mid 1840’s. The middle-class elements were committed to liberal principles, while the working class sought radical improvements to their working and living conditions. As the middle class and working class components of the Revolution split, the conservative aristocracy defeated it. Liberals were forced into exile to escape political persecution, where they became known as Forty-Eighters. Many emigrated to the United States, settling from Wisconsin to Texas.

The Dual Alliance in October 1879 was a defensive alliance between Germany and Austria-Hungary, as part of Bismarck’s system of alliances to prevent or limit war. The two powers promised each other support in case of attack by Russia. When Austria stumbled into WW1, Germany obligingly followed.

After WWI the republic became known as the Weimar Republic (1918 to 1933); the name derives from the city of Weimar, where its constitutional assembly first took place. The Weimar Republic faced numerous problems, including hyperinflation, political extremism as well as contentious relationships with the victors of the First World War. Resentment in Germany towards the Treaty of Versailles was strong especially on the political right. The Weimar Republic fulfilled most of the requirements of the Treaty of Versailles and accepted the western borders of the country by abandoning irredentist claims on France and Belgium, but continued to dispute the eastern borders and sought to persuade Austria to join Germany as one of Germany’s states. The Great Depression, exacerbated by Chancellor Heinrich Brüning’s policy of deflation, led to a surge in unemployment. In 1933 President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor with the Nazi Party being part of a coalition government. The Nazis held two out of the remaining ten cabinet seats. Chancellor Franz von Papen was intended to be the “éminence grise” who would keep Hitler under control, using his close personal connection to Hindenburg. Within months, the Reichstag Fire Decree and the Enabling Act of 1933 had brought about a state of emergency: it wiped out constitutional governance and civil liberties. Hitler’s seizure of power (Machtergreifung) was permissive of government by decree without legislative participation. These events brought the republic to an end—as democracy collapsed, the founding of a single-party state began the dictatorship of the Nazi era.

The formal abolition of Prussia, carried out on 25 February 1947 by the fiat of the Allied Control Council referred to an alleged tradition of the kingdom as a bearer of militarism and reaction, and made way for the current setup of the German states. However, the Free State of Prussia (Freistaat Preußen), which followed the abolition of the Kingdom of Prussia in the aftermath of World War I, was a major democratic force in Weimar Germany until the nationalist coup of 1932 known as the Preußenschlag.

My thoughts.
 
While much of Eastern Europe has century long tales of subjugation by Monarchies and Aristocracies, Religion, or horrific dictator’s, Berlin has the added distinction of hosting the worst of human impulses – namely the Third Reich, from 1933-1945. Hitler’s failed (but still disastrous) attempts at growth (real estate acquisition by force), dictatorial petulance (purging all political dissent [people, newspapers, community and business organizations] as well as persecution of religious super-minorities like the Quakers, by having them all removed to what ultimately became concentration camps), and genetic purification (by euthanizing the mentally and physically handicapped; exterminating homosexuals, gypsies, and of course Jews from all across Europe) are all numbing.
 
After enduring a front row seat to the worst that humanity has to offer in the goriest of details, it’s no wonder that about 60% of Berliners have no religious affiliation (Berlin, like Prague, is considered one of the most atheist enclaves of Europe, with the largest religious groups being Protestants (19%) followed by Roman Catholics (9%)).
 
While Berlin enjoyed some European dominance and stature by the usual custom of war mongering during the German (then Prussia) years (mostly 18th and 19th centuries, kicking a little Danish, Austrian, and French butt along the way), it was their (in hindsight) ill conceived alliance with Austria (a defensive move against Russian aggression) that catapulted Germany into World War I. In the end, having lost a battle against the same foes that Germany (Prussia) had vanquished in wars past, these vindictive foes (France amongst them) sought vengeance at the Treaty of Versailles, taking Germany out at the knees. After WWI and 15 subsequent years of hyperinflation, high unemployment and political extremism, the German people were eager to support an extreme demagogue (Hitler) who preyed on their populist desire for the return to a strong national identity (I’m being very simplistic here, but anyway). The implications were immediate (emphasis on immediate).
  
This 2020 trip to Berlin, unlike 1989, was removed from any immediate import and instead allowed me to look in the historical rear view mirror, aghast at all the atrocities. From 1933-1945 Berlin was home to the gold standard of a colossal race to the bottom in terms of ethics and morality and humanity and decency and…I was reminded of this during a sober tour of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp (http://lifeofannika.com/year/16/images/Salzburg/Papa/Berlin/Sachsenhausen), just outside of Berlin, as well as a tour of the Topography of Terror museum (http://lifeofannika.com/year/16/images/Salzburg/Papa/Berlin/WWII). Then from 1945-1989 Berlin was front and center for uninvited Communist hosts, who short of employing concentration camps still leveraged many of the tools available to paranoid sophisticated barbarians (http://lifeofannika.com/year/16/images/Salzburg/Papa/Berlin/ColdWar).
 
So I’ll grant a pass to the atheist (or at least agnostic) Berliners, who have first hand experience to doubt the potential of mankind, despite their new government building (http://lifeofannika.com/year/16/images/Salzburg/Papa/Berlin/Reichstag) which is meant to demonstrate transparency of the elected. Who knows what tomorrow brings…