Berlin: "A New City Coming to Terms with Its Past"

I like the theme that Berlin has always been a new city just trying to figure out where to go. As sociology major, I find it fitting to begin with Karl Marx who is considered one of the fathers of my field of study. There’s an interesting juxtaposition which they touch on in the film. On the one hand, Marx’s ideas were where the conflict in Berlin began. He laid down the principles for communism, urged rebellion against the elite. Yet there are streets named after him, monuments idolizing him and can be connected to the reason the wall fell. I wish they would have gone more in depth on Marx’s influence and what his exact teachings were in the film, but they did hit the main points. He wanted a “Red Berlin” and urged the proletariat or working class to rebel against those above them. Hitler forced his way in to power that way, and the government post-WWI had to work very hard to keep the people from protesting as well. But in the end, it is Marx’s idea of the lower class overcoming the upper class that caused the fall of the GDR and the wall. It began with the government losing its grip on the people as they emphasized in the last part of the film, and then the people finally rising up against their leaders and reclaiming their community. So perhaps it is not ironic after all that they memorialize Marx for being such a beginner of war and as well as the initiator of freedom.

The women’s role in Berlin was also especially interesting. I did not realize they really were the ones that held down the fort in all the bad times. When the city was bombed, of course they were the only ones around while the men fought to protect them. Therefore they were left to clean up and try to maintain the sense of community in a city that wasn’t more than a pile of bricks and dust. Yet in spite of being heroes of their city, they were also victims of war crimes. I was surprised at the brutality of the Russians in their acts of rape but then again, it was war, wasn’t it? The story that touched me the most was the man who spent his life thinking he was American and when he finally set out to find his father found out his mother was raped by a group of Russian soldiers. No longer did he feel like the son of a hero but the son of the criminal. Yet his mother gave him up in an effort to continue her own life with the shame of the war. It absolutely amazes me that these women could go through such horrible day to day fear and violence and continue to work to try to make some normalcy in their lives.

The relationship between the East and the West compared to modern day Berlin is strange and ironic. The film mentioned that the West did not exist according to the East, yet they built a wall around it. They destroyed any remains that were reflections of the ideals of the West which basically is admitting that it is there. Then after the wall the West destroyed the structures of the East. I think it is just a little funny that the goal of the Nazis in the East was to make everything huge and better than anything else around it. The airport that is now deserted is one of the biggest buildings in Europe. The TV tower loomed over everything else in the state. Doesn’t this sound a little like America? “Everything is bigger in Texas!” supersize French fries, enormous mansions, obesity! Things we in America are all used to and look for in our TVs, homes, and cars. Now that does not make us like the Nazis but it sure sounds like we are trying to be better than everyone else just as they were. When it comes to East Berlin though, I think the most interesting question was posed by Matt Frei, can we appreciate the buildings and art left by the Nazis? Should we? I think Berlin may be past the wall and the Nazi regime but after all these years they still are trying to answer that question. I expect we will see these all over the city when we are there.