A Day of Memorials

On the Thursday the first thing we visited was the Memorial to Homosexuals persecuted under Nazism. For such a long name there isn't much to the actual memorial, it's very subtle and I'm sure most people don't even notice it. It's basically a box sitting at the entrance of the Tiergarten. You can walk up to it and look inside and you'll see film taken during that time of homosexuals, and things related to them, such as two people of the same sex kissing. It really didn't stand out in my mind, but it does somewhat compliment the Holocaust Memorial that Peter Eisenman built for the apx. 6million jews that died during the Holocaust, which is right across the street from it, though much larger in scale. The Holocaust Memorial is basically a bunch of different height boxes on a grid system in the middle of this plaza outside the Tiergarten, also at a slope so no one box is the same as another. When you're standing on the edges of the memorial, you have a huge view of everything but your not really connected to it. Many people sit on the boxes and jump to and from them, and many kids (and some adults) play hide-and-go-seek between the larger boxes in the middle. If you didn't know what it was, you definately wouldn't say it was a memorial. The tour guide said that building the memorial was discussed for a very long time, and there was even a contest to see who could design a memorial that fit what they wanted. They wanted a place that would be a memorial to the fallen jews, but be different than others, since it is at a sight nearby where Hitler's buncer was. They wanted the memorial in the heart of the place where the perpatrators where. Peter Eisenman's design didn't win originally but in the end it was the one built. The memorial is one of my favorites that i've ever been too, because it leaves everything up for interpretation. There are no names and no words anywhere in the memorial at all. Heres what I got from it though....

Starting from the outside edges and walking in all of the boxes are shorter and spread apart, in my mind symbolizings the jews across germany and how they were free to live anywhere. As you start getting closer the height increases making it seem more dense, which is like when they started moving jews to ghettos and confining them to certain areas, and making everyone aware of was a jew. Then in the very center they are the tallest, and somewhat overpowering and they dominate over you and block light, so it is very dark. For me this symbolized all of the horrors that the jews faced and all of the deaths that took place. As you continue to walk they start to thin out again and some spaces are empty and some are flat, those would symbolize what was left of the jews after we invaded germany and the remaining jews where free.

After wandering through we went below ground to where the museum was, and down there was some more background of the Holocaust, but also personal accounts they had gathered.  They had many postcards and letters translated that had been found in concentration camps, many describing the horrors they saw and saying goodby to loved ones. There was also some backgrounds on about 10 different families that they had traced through the concentration camps and followed the lives of the few survivors. Seeing how bad these families were destroyed was extremely sad, I couldn't imagine what they went through. It was all very sad, and a sad way to start the day, but interesting none the less....then on top of that it rained.

We spent way longer than anticipated here, because many of us found it very interesting so after we took a break and ate lunch. This time I tried currywurst pommes frites, since I heard that it was good....it was not. The ketchup here is really weird tasting and the meat was ok, but I wouldn't eat it again, on the bright side the fries were good.

Later we walked along the spree and saw the House of hte Cultures of the World, which was an interesting building and we toured around on the inside and watched some of the movies showing in little rooms on the inside.

From there we made our way to the Victory Column, and met some friends along the way.

We ended up breaking up as a group after this and all of the architect students and two tag alongs went to go see the AEG Turbine Hall by  Peter Behrens (1909), it took a while to get there and we walked through an interesting looking area, but when we finally made it there, I was very amazed. The building isn't beautiful or anything, its just huge. We see so many pictures of it in class during the year and theres nothing next to it, but today the city has grown around it and you can tell that it really industrialized that area of town. We thought it was shut down, but we saw people in it, and so we tried to get in, but that didn't quite work out.  The guard on duty did happen to direct us to a really cool car museum and rental place that was nearby and it was pretty cool. We spent a while there before finally making our way back to the apartments.