Today we visited the Rütli School in the Neukölln neighborhood of Berlin. The school is known for serving a community of largely migrant background with many students having lineage linked to Muslim countries. In speaking with the students we discussed identity, racism, and politics as a young person in Germany. I was reminded of the video we watched about the school and how many of the students were portrayed as being rebellious and violent, even criminal. The students we met were much different and seemed just like any other teenagers from anywhere else in the world. In our discussions I asked if they ever had difficulty holding on to one identity over another. Did they feel more German or more connected to their ethnic country. A girl whose family was from Lebanon said that she felt both Lebanese and German while another girl who was half Albanian and half Polish, said that Germany was more just a place she resided in and was not a part of her identity.
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Today we visited a mosque and discussed religion in the U.S and Germany with students. During our visit to the mosque we sat down with the Imam and engaged in a conversation about how German Muslims distinguish themselves from each other. The Imam spoke on how many Muslims in Germany will favor ethnicity over content provided by the mosque and treat them more so as cultural centers and less as places of worship. He also discussed the protesting that took place when the initial plans to build the mosque began but soon after its construction and opening the upset calmed down. In this specific community it seems that the mosque has become more connected to the at large German community and they feel a sense of support in their practice. This felt at contrast with the group we spoke to who felt a growing tide of anti semitism sweeping through Germany. What these two interactions illustrate is how a community can thrive while there is still unrest being felt by the Muslim population as a whole.
Today my group went to Wannsee, the site of the ‘final solution’ by the nazis, a response to the Jewish Question. It reminded me of the film we discussed in class ‘Annihilation’. Much of the information we saw in the museum backed up the point that Nazis saw their extermination as being a part of God’s will. They also discussed at length the campaigns used to signal out Jewish Germans. Using pseudoscience and bogus racial theories to rationalize their campaigns.
Much of today's visit was spent discussing the topic of diversity in Berlin and we spent a good deal of time on what it is like to be of Turkish descent in Germany. When speaking with the Fulbright class about their experiences they held the sentiment that they feel more comfortable in the metropolitan area of Berlin but have noticed racism at times. Their discussion of identity seemed to echo sentiments that had been discussed in the film Soul Kitchen. In Soul Kitchen there is this sense of postmodernism where identity is a multifaceted label that can contain multitudes. Similarly, our guide Mohamed felt that he was Lebanese and German while our first guide of the rejected the label of Turkish and German. It is interesting to note that the label of a multicultural identity can both be a sense of pride and can also make others feel hindered.
In today's visit to the Holocaust memorial we discussed the various ways in which the memorialization is interpreted. In the Schneider reading from earlier in the semester he discussed how the use of a public artwork was a more local approach in order to not create a piece that was purely the data of the slaughter and instead elicited feelings of what it was like to be Jew during the time of Nazi rule. The conversation was also furthered by the visit to the other memorials as it rose the question as to why the 3 groups of homosexuals, Roma and Sinti, and European Jews had memorials but say the mentally and physically handicapped who were killed did not. Similarly Schneider brings this point up when questioning of how best to memorialize? The less is more approach that Schneider endorses is interesting but as someone who has studied the genocide it feels that there could be more done in the way of the homosexual victim memorial as it feels less impactful than the other 2 we saw today.
Today we went to the Berlin Wall Memorial. When the wall was initially erected in 1961 it was done so quietly as not to alert the population and result in mass migration. One of the films that we saw, ‘Goodbye Lenin’ illustrates this divide and fear that the wall created in Berliners. In the film it shows a son whose mother falls into a coma and awakens after the fall of the wall. In fear of her reaction to the news of the Cold War ending, her family pretends that the wall is still in place. While the motivation for the change was in part the result of fear for their mother's health, seeing the wall up close it becomes apparent the magnitude of how the division affected daily life. From seeing how the land between the two separate walls changed the topography of the city to seeing the list of those who died attempting to flee, it becomes real.
On our first day of Berlin I was taken with how it already felt like I knew the city we were exploring. We began with an afternoon bus ride around the city where we viewed various landmarks and many sites from our study. What I was struck with was the city's ability to preserve the old and make room for the new. One connection I made from the class to the bus trip was the discussion of the Stasi. On our trip, out tour guide told of us how 1 in 10 people in East Berlin were informants for the Stasi in some way. This reminded me of the film we watched, "The Lives of Others" which depicts the constant surveillance in Berlin. Once you pass Checkpoint Charlie the magnitude of that organization can still be felt and the sheer difficulty of their motivation can be seen. With such a large city and so much hustle and bustle, their constant attempt to watch people's actions must have been a rigorous and tedious task.
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