Journeys into a Bunker in a Divided City/ Last Days in Berlin

 

 

Journeys into a Bunker in a Divided City/ Last Days in Berlin

Back in town for a final weekend, we made a sort of final lap, to the clubs, dancing all afternoon, the flomarkets, exploring the relics, and to the Köpi squat Carnival of Arts, where the teenager' stuff is up in a show. They spent the previous evening there till 4 AM. 

Sunday, I spent the afternoon touring the Boros Collection, a contemporary art collection in a former bunker, with international artists' work from the 1990s onward.  When it was first made as an above ground bunker in the 1940s in a style of stripped classicism, to reflect the power of the Third Reich, thousands filled it beyond capacity, evading the bombing raids. After the allies won the ward, the Soviets took it over, turning it into a Soviet Era interrogation chamber and later a fruit storage facility, before the Fall of the Wall, and it found a new home as hardcore fetish techno club in the renegade free flowing 1990s, 40 djs playing in 120 rooms with no ventilation, and later privatized into an art space, it reflects some of the many faces of modern Berlin.

Walked out early to yoga, greeting my old yoga teachers, talking about our years, thinking about meeting at night clubs, off to Kotti for a bite with the teenager, out to the Topography of Terror show, Weimar Under Attack, thinking of the uses of political violence which undermined the fragile Republic, that the right both caused and said they could solve with more order. It's a familiar playbook that we are still seeing today, fueled by amnesia and forgetting. Toward the end of the show, one photo stood out, Berlin historians, using direct action, digging in the ground saying, let's unpack this history on Wilhelm- and Prinz-Albrecht-Straße, beneath which they found the old Gestapo, SS and Reich Security Main Office, Let's not let it lie. Let's dig it up. Let's remember. Let's learn. So much to learn here. It's been a majestic summer of thinking about the divided city, with its revolutions thwarted, its republic, its struggles between civil war and democracy, its descent into the depths. And slow unearthing of the past, rebuilding. So much to learn every day here. The constant beat of history and techno clubs... The sound, the feeling, the sense in the air.

Particularly relevant was the “Weimar Under Attack,” show, a study of the political violence, which anticipated the fall of the republic. “Germany’s first democracy began with a non-violent revolution in 1918. The empire became a republic. Only a few weeks later, however, the peaceful beginnings turned violent. Uprisings, assassinations and attempted coups by both right- and left-wing factions posed a massive threat to the young republic.” The show  traces“the facets of violence in the years 1918 to 1923. It shows how extremists and separatists brought the country to the brink of civil war, the drastic means used by the state in retaliation and how the language and literature of the time reflected the brutality of the events. At the same time, the exhibition raises the question of how lines of continuity run through Germany’s long history of political violence – from the Weimar Republic through the Nazi era to the present day.”

“The first German democracy had to defend itself from fierce attacks from the very beginning. Its founding in 1918/1919 was accompanied by violent conflicts, but later there were also attempts to eliminate the republic using weapons. Right-wing extremist forces in particular fought against democracy, there were coup attempts and assassinations of political opponents. But the republic was also attacked from the left. At the same time, however, democracy was temporarily stabilized and defended against its enemies.”

Extreme language and violent events are interconnected, over and over again, taking violence to a new level, with a hectic level of vehemence; armed groups, carrying weapons of wars, engaging in brutish behavior, with citizen militias, assassinations attempts, sowing disorder. “Civil war or Democracy” says the campaign poster from 1920, with civil war finding its way into language. Everything is a struggle, hectic defense of the cause. The enemy must be stopped, defense against threats large and wide, justifying the use of violence in times of crises. 

After the show, we walked into the afternoon sun, out for dinner, and sleep, and our final day here.

  August 2022, we spent our first Summer here, well last month of summer, finding our sea legs, figuring out the city. My first regular stop was Verwalterhaus, where nude sunbathers and art lovers rub shoulders with  drug users and devotees of Horst Wessel, the Nazi killed in 1930, and buried here, before anarchists later dug up his body and threw it in the Spree. Today, it's both a friedhof and an art space with weekly art events; it was also my first community here. The teenager and I met there, greeted the snow and spring here. And on my last full day here, we met, and had lunch there, toasting to the dead, chatting about what we've learned  from this divided city over our last  three Augusts here. Finishing lunch, they went on their way, I went another, off to meet friends for pizza and a sunset at Admiralbrucke. 

People from all over the city filled the old bridge, drinking their beer, enjoying the sun going down, after a long summer, school around the corner. 

Tschüss Berlin. 

Auf Wiedersehen.

And we're off .. beer at Brandenburg... Together apart... On our way through the adventure... Gonna miss the college kid ... Together all summer... Going our separate ways... Onward. Avanti. let's go!!!