27 Mai 2011

Lieben Leute,
     Guten Abend oder guten Morgen fuer andere leute! What an incredible and full week it has been. With 12-14 hour days on top of homework each night, the intensive course has not only lived up to its name but has also made it difficult to write in the blog each day. So, I apologize for the delay! Below is a brief overview of each day:

24 Mai:
We began today with a 10 mile bikeride, Radtour, through Potsdam to the Wansee Conference House. I have to admit, although that was the longest bike ride of my life, it was one of the most enjoyable experiences I have had. What an exciting way to get around town and be able to see things. Perhaps what was more exciting was that the bike tour was an authentic German experience since many Germans ride bikes themselves. We rode by the Tiefer Sea and I had my first experience with a nudist beach. I almost ran my bike off the path trying to avert my eyes. Another authentic German experience.
The house of the Wansee Conference was a beautiful estate that overlooked the Tiefer. For those who do not know, the Wansee Conferences were a coming together of officials to begin documenting the events that were already taking place as far as collecting people and placing them in concentration camps and also to come to decisions regarding what would be done with those people in the camps-that ultimate decision being to put them in gas chambers and incinerators. It is important to note that the Conferences were not the starting point of the holocaust but rather they were a starting point for documentation. This is often mistaken. It was eerie seeing how beautiful the location was for such a devastating events.

25 Mai
     This was the most emotionally trying day I have experienced on this trip. In the morning, we went to the Gedenkstaette Deutsche Wiederstand, a museum featuring important Jewish figures that were impacted and in many cases killed by the Hitler regime. Throughout our tour, I did not see where in the museum spoke about literary figures as far as librettists, poets, and lyricists. During the Hitler regime, music became an important tool of control. Jewish composers and lyricists (for our purposes this term will encompass librettists, poets, and lyricisists) were either forced to flee the country or be put into concentration camps. Some, who were deemed entertaining enough, received a less harsher fate and were allowed to continue to compose. These composers were very closely monitored; however and they had to watch their every step. Germany lost a significant amount of its music culture during this time to other countries, mostly Italy and the USA.
     The most emotionally fatiguing part of the day was our tour through the Stasi interrogation building particularly the holding chambers in the basement. It is easy to forget just how precious our freedom of speech is and because this freedom is such a large part of our culture, it is hard to fathom the terror that would come in a world where the Stasi existed. People could not say anything for fear of being arrested. Even if they were not saying negative things, the Stasi could very well arrest them and use them as incentive for another criminal. You never knew when a family member would just go missing, and you never knew when you would see that family member, or if you would see that family member again. The tour guide spoke about the process used to brain wash those being held in order to get them to admit to crimes they had never committed. Because the history is disturbing and somewhat gruesome, I will not go into details. Regardless, I said a thank you to God that I am lucky enough to live in the country I do without constant fear.
     The evening concluded with a trip to the play by Max Frisch Biederman und die Brandstifter performed by the Berliner ensemble. What a wonderful experience! The playhouse was a smaller more intimate setting. The audience walked through the stage to sit in chairs facing the doorway and windows. The actors and actresses were often in the rows of the crowd acting. The play also used the tradition of early Greek and Italianate plays featuring music at the beginning, in the middle during the most "heavy" part of story, mostly as a comic relief. The play itself is well worth watching, and I would highly recommend it.

Mai 26:
     This morning, our class had a Literature Fruehstuck, a literary breakfest at the home/store of a literary bookhandler. He spoke to us about German literature and explained a bit of the German mindset when it comes to books. In Germany, there is a set price for books and hard copies of books in general are more valuable to Germans than they are to the average American.
     In the afternoon, our professor left the class to find our way through Berlin to the Pergamon Museum. An incredible sight to behold, the Pergamon prides itself in using ancient pieces of buildings to reconstruct the original building. For instance, the first room in the Pergamon features a life size entrance and steps to an alter in ancient Mesopotamia. People can sit on the steps to the alter.  It was quite incredible. The most fascinating part of the museum for me was the reconstruction with original pieces of Nebekenezer's palace and parts of the tower of Babylon. Having heard the stories in church so often, it had a huge impact on me to be able to see an actual part to the building. Wow!  The museum also featured ancient Ottoman and Turkish artifacts. My German partner and I took many pictures to use within our presentation. We were very intrigued to see that many of the patterns in the Ottoman/Turkish artwork can be seen prolifically in older German buildings as well.
     The last part of our day was a tour of the Film und Fernsehen Museum, Film and TV Museum in the famous Potsdamer Platz, the German equivalent to Time Square. There was a section of the museum, towards the later half of German film and tv history that featured movies that were German stereotypes of Turkish people. Like the movie we saw earlier in the trip, Almanya, the guide described this era as having particularly strong German views of Turkish stereotypes based on Turkish people living in Germany.

Mai 26:
     Today we had one activity before our Frei Wochenende, free weekend, began-a trip to the Berlin Wall. What a heart wrenching experience. There was a new exhibit up that not even our professor had seen, which was a miniature wall featuring pictures of those who were killed attempting to cross the wall. Many people were there looking for specific pictures and placing roses by them. The park had reconstructed what the wall would have looked like, complete with the dead  zone between the two walls. It was eerie peering through the wholes in one wall, looking across the dead zone and seeing the other wall. As one student commented when the tour guide asked us how it felt to look into the holes, "it seems to close, yet it is so far away." For those who are not aware, the Berliner Mauer, Berlin Wall, was actually two walls, an open area in between belonging to the DDR with guard towers in the open area. Parts of the original wall are still stand in the park; however,  the government is allowing greenery to grow over these walls in a symbolic attempt to show earth taking back the wall. Perhaps the most moving aspect of the wall is not in the reconstructions or original pieces but rather in the bricked areas on the ground tracing the whole wall throughout Berlin. This retracing stands as the most important  reminder of a time divided and of the cost of that division