This morning we were able to visit the art gallery, Berlinische Galerie, the museum for Modern Art. The topic of our discussion was how art plays a role in identity and whether it was a nationalistic identity or localized identity. The architecture of the Museum was a West Berlin style focusing on glass and steel which is also reflected in the architecture of the Reichstag symbolizing transparency. The art in the museum has to have a relation to West Berlin and featured art and how it has changed in the years. Some of the art was very political like the one in the picture below with the Brandenburg gate but other was abstract yet was darker. This exhibit was reflected in discussion of Craig and his perspective of Hitler’s view of art which he considered to be “too primitive to tolerate”. He believed that the art was created with a lack of skill and “unrealistic art” was gathered and burned publicly, “borrowed” from museums, and confiscated from the public.
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Today we were able to meet two refugees from Afghanistan and Iran who have moved to Germany due to the political situation in their own countries. The stories were heartbreaking to hear about. Muhammad was from Afghanistan and traveled by foot and car with very little food and clothing to make it to Germany. In the afternoon we met students at the Rutli school who come from migrant backgrounds. One of the girls I was able to meet was from Lebanon and moved here when she was 5 while the other girl from Nigeria has been here for 3 years. The Lebanese girl has lived her childhood here and considers herself to be German but notices how the Germans would like Germany to be for the Germans. The students notice how the rhetoric portrayed by Trump is similar to the AFD and have faced racism at their school but mostly outside of the town.
This morning we visited the Khadija Masjid and were able to meet with the Imam at the mosque. The masjid has a congregation of Ahmadiyya Muslims and are mostly from Pakistan. The Imam discussed how it took time for them to get the German government to trust them and they were always seen as a threat. Before the mosque was constructed there was a lot of pushback for the mosque to even be built in that area. The reasons given were traffic, Muslims shooting airplanes and countless xenophobic reasons that were used as a scapegoat against them. The Imam emphasized how the government has brought the different Muslim communities to the table and brought them together. This community considers themselves to be German while other Turkish muslims do not consider themselves to be German. In the readings we discussed how The German Muslims that have migrated here come from worker programs. Since they stayed through the programs it came up with the need to control the 'alien' workers as to not threaten Germany identity and culture which can be seen through the mosque.
Today we focused on our group excursion visiting two different parts of the city: Kreuzberg & Charlottenberg. We found very stark differences between the two. Kreuzberg seemed to be the diverse, multiethnic part of town where the schools and neighborhoods seemed to be of low-income. Much of the schools and walls in the town were covered with graffiti. The graffiti symbolized a town that is fighting racism and xenophobia. One of the things that stood out was the amount of police we saw in the area. We were able to visit the mosque that was funded by the Saudi government and was quite ornate. The three floor mosque seemed to be a central part of this town and was fitting for the high population of Muslims in this community. On the other hand Charlottenberg was very different from Kreuzberg. This was a highly capitalist society where there was not much diversity. All the stores were high-end and I noticed how I felt that I stood out in this part of town. Some of the discussions we had in class based on O’Brien’s book Beyond the Swastika proved how the two completely different areas that Berlin and Germany as a whole has recoiled into discrimination against foreigners by the division of the communities.
The past two days have been focused on a couple different topics including 1) Jewish quarter of Berlin, 2) Racism in Berlin in relation to anti antisemitism & Islamophobia, & 3) Muslims in Berlin. We explored the Jewish quarter yesterday and learned how Jewish communities are respected and protected by the state. The memorial we visited yesterday had interesting exhibits to conceptualize the pain that our Jewish brothers and sisters have faced. Today, we were able to explore the Wedding town of Berlin. This part of Berlin is near the Mitte but consists of lower-middle class immigrant families and was much more diverse than the area we are staying in. Many of these immigrant families were brought in during the time after the wall came down and there was a need for foreign labor. O’Brien’s book Beyond the Swastika discusses how Germans tried to leave their discriminatory past behind yet we have witnessed that Germans still feel there are anti Semitic and Islamophobic views still prevalent in society today.
Today’s visit was to the Holocaust Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Schneider’s article on memorializing the Holocaust discussed how Berlin today has a “less is more” approach. Schneider had discussed three different problems of the memorials: 1) Do we need a Holocaust memorial and who is the “we”? 2) Will a memorial take away attention from the concentration camps -- the actual memorials? & 3) Should the memorials be dedicated to just Jews or other victims of the Holocaust? The final project is the memorial that we visited today. It is simple and blends in with the city. Some problems we discussed were that people may be too comfortable with the memorial as there were taking engagement pictures and kids playing and some of the students including myself felt that people did not give the memorial the respect it deserves. Overall, I do believe it a powerful exhibit and really allowed me to take some time to reflect on the history of the Holocaust.
Today’s afternoon visit was to the Mauer Memorial or also known as the wall museum. This was where the wall began between the East and West in August 1961. Originally there was only barbed wire that went up on the night of August 12th. After that the construction of the wall began. The wall was not just one barrier but had many layers. There were two walls and roughly 12 layers with different obstacles on each as so people would not be able to escape. The Mauer Memorial is where a church was when the Berlin wall was and how it was in between the east and west and had to be destroyed. The memorial featured those who had died trying to escape and those who died in accidents as well. This was discussed in our class in the conversation of the movie, The lives of others. The movie had the Stasi, which were the secret police that would watch to make sure people were not planning on escaping.
For our first day in Berlin, we were able to take a morning bike to the East Side Gallery which was the Berlin Wall and I was able to conceptualize what the wall meant to the Germans. The wall is now covered in beautiful artwork that represents how Germans memorialize history which is reflected in the hand print artwork below. We were able to discuss the meaning of the Berlin Wall throughout the semester and in our readings and movies such as Goodbye Lenin. The movie showed what the sides were like when the Wall came down. One of the aspects that I found interesting about the Wall coming down was Ostalgie. Ostalgie was the nostalgia for the East and the GDR. Since Ostalgie focused on the culture of the East, one of the signs of ostalgie that we saw on our bus tour was the ampleman which is how kids learn how to walk across the street with different signs for the ampleman which is featured in the picture below.
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