Today, we went and viewed art in an art gallery that was reserved solely for artist that had a connection to Berlin. I thought this was interesting because much of the art carried some sort of significant message usually related to German society.This, in a way, related to Hitler's view of art as discussed by Craig. Hitler saw art as something that was powerful and that had the ability to carry a significant message. This is a bit like the art we saw today. It kind of told a story about Berlin and about Germany that we had yet to hear.
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Today we visited the Rütli School in Berlin. This reminded of the video we watched in class about the school. The video depicted it as a violent place where there were constantly fights, but the students seemed to think differently. They thought if it as a place where people looked out for each other and where the teachers were passionate about helping the students succeed. I mean it was clear that the students have a certain resistance to authority, but they really want to succeed. One of ours wanted to be a teacher at Rütli and the other wants to be an architect. This is really different from the video where they all seem to just be little punks. It says a lot about how the media portrays stuff and how when you actually get to know people you can learn a lot
Today we visited a mosque in east Germany and then we had a discussion with people from the young Islam conference. The mosque we visited reminded me of the movie fear eats the soul. When it was announced they they were building that mosque in the neighborhood, people were very upset about it because they were scared of Islam. This is kind of similar to how people reacted when the woman brought the man home in the film. Initially people were very skeptical. In the case of the mosque, people have been much more accepting of it once it was built. I think this is indicative of a larger trend where people fear the unknown but then one they know it better, they are less scared.
Today, my research group ventured out to far east Berlin. It was really interesting to see a part of Berlin that is outside of Mitte, and that have not been totally overrun by tourists. One stop we made on our trip that I thought pertained to the course was the Stasi Museum. This related back to the film The Lives of Others, which we watched earlier in the course. The museum gave a detailed history and outline of Stasi activities in East Berlin. It also, in great depth, discussed the effects Stasi surveillance would have on citizens. This brought it in to a more prominent light after Barbara's lecture where she seemed to down play the Stasi presence a bit.
On Thursday, we went to two shows at the Görki theatre. They were Fengyle and Female shit. I really enjoyed the first show. I thought it spoke a lot on the experiences of a gay man in Berlin. It reminded me a bit of the movie “I don’t want to be a man”. In the play, the main character struggles to find an identity for him self in a way similar to the protagonist of the movie. This seems to be somewhat of a theme for people in Berlin. Immigrants struggle to create and identity for themselves that successfully encompasses elements of their home culture while still being compatible with German Society.
Today we visited the Jewish Holocaust Memorial, Roma Memorial, and the Homosexual Memorial. I was taken aback at how lackluster the Homosexual Memorial was. It was much smaller, less set off, and given less reverence that the other memorials. This was even clearly shown in how people were acting around it. It was less somber despite the severity it still has. Schneider discusses how best to memorialize the Holocaust and I thought this was applicable. One thing that I thought was really cool about the Jewish Memorial is that it was a designed by a Jew. The homosexual one was designed by straight people and I definitely think this is important to consider in wondering why it is the way it is
Today we visited the Berlin Wall Memorial to see how the wall would have looked when it was fully constructed. It was really interesting to not only see this but to hear the history of it going up while actually being there. This made me think of the film Goodbye Lenin where the woman is in a coma and the wall falls while she is asleep. It begins to make much more sense how much of a difference the wall coming down would make when you see the total isolation it would have created. The wall would have completely isolated that so the culture shock of having it come down makes much more sense
Today was our first day in Berlin, and right off the bat, I noticed all of the political signs for the upcoming election. Many of them are for the AFD which was really interesting to me as I did my research paper primarily on the AFD and modern day German nationalism. This relates to the discussions we had surrounding German nationalism before WWII, and when we watched Triumph des Willens. It is interesting to see the new rise of nationalism that has happened around the AFD, and it is obviously very prevalent in daily life here given these political posters.
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