Wednesday 23 February 2011

Berlin: History alive (part 4)

The East- West border is always wandering,


sometimes eastward, sometimes west,

and we do not know exactly where it is just now:

in Guagamela, in the Urals, or maybe in ourselves,

so that one ear, one eye, one nostril, one hand, one foot,

one lung and one testicle or one ovary

is on the one, another on the other side.Only the heart…

(by Jaan Kaplinski)                                                       The Wandering Border

And I didn’t know which side my heart was. But it was really aching. The most memorable part of our Berlin tour was the journey from west side to east. We took a s-bahn to Ostbahnof. The s-bahns are surface trains and U-bahns are underground trains. These form the main transport system of the city.

The s- bahn we took had to cross the river spree to reach the eastern part of Berlin. The journey was quite enjoyable. I remember that there was a man in the train singing with a guiter; and a very old lady was sitting beside me who compensated her overall palor with a bright red dress and very bright red lipstick.

The change of view is so obvious and striking that you need no guide to tell you that you have entered the eastern part of Berlin. It was gray. And it bore the memories of its war trodden past all over it, much more than the western part. It actually seemed a completely different country. The fields were gray, the streets looked forlorn and the houses deserted. Once outside of the Ostbahnof, the crowd in front of Hauptbahnof, the busy faces, the shops and restaurants and all the color seem to be stories from a different country. Here life seemed grim and gray.
We went on walking. The eastside gallery on Mühlenstrasse was what we came to see. It was colourful and some of the graffiti was really good and many were real works of art. Though most of it were damaged by people and weather and the paintings sure needed restoration, one could clearly see the passion of the artists who boldly spoke against the partition through their colors.The paintings actually lifted my spirit.

The reunification of Germany and the breaking of the Berlin wall has always seemed to me to be a dream story…too good to be true. I am myself from a part of the world where we have long sighed across borders but still can’t reach our brothers and sisters on the other part of the boundary. Our own ancestor’s land is a foreign country to me. I have never seen it and as a child have always hoped to see it without crossing a border. My father comes from East Bengal, present Bangladesh and I am born in modern India. But I can never forget that the country they call Bangladesh is a part of my own history. I have never seen the land where my ancestors lived, where my father spent his childhood.

So while I was looking at  East Berlin, which was not East Berlin anymore, lying there gray and sad, I was feeling an incomprehensible pain, love and a bonding with these people devastated by the whims of a few statesmen who have played with their allegiance, their future and their pasts.

Monday 7 February 2011

Berlin: History alive (part iii)

Close to the Brandenburg gate is the German parliament, Reichstag. It seemed to be one of the most visited attractions of Berlin as there was a real long queue to see the dome. I would advise anyone who visits the city to come as early as possible in the morning to avoid a very long queue if they want to have the view from the dome. The dome on the top of the Reichstag offers a 360 degree view of the city and it lets sunlight down to the Parliament floor. The construction is really impressive.

While waiting in the long queue, we talked about whether this building we were about to visit was important just as the new Parliament building or the years of history associated with its name compelled our interest more.

Reichstag

Just like the Brandenburg gate, the Reichstag building has seen several historical ups and downs and has a strange story of its own to tell. Before its construction German Parliament assembled in various smaller houses on the Leipzeiger strasse.

In 1872 an architectural contest was held to chose the architect to build the new building. Though work couldn’t begin even after 10 years when another architectural contest was held among 189 architects. The winner was the Frankfurt architect, Paul Wallot.


On 9 June 1884, the foundation stone was laid by Wilhelm I. He died in 1888 and the construction was completed in 1894, under Wilhelm II, who was against the idea of Parliament as an institution.


In 1916, the words “Dem Duestchen volke”( to the German People ) were added though it did not please the Emperor, Wilhelm II and he even tried to block the inscription. The building’s cupola built with steel and glass was a marvel of architecture of the time


On 9 November 1918, after the World War I was over Philipp Scheidemann proclaimed the “republic” of Germany from one of its balconies. It remained the seat of Parliament of the Weimar Republic till 1933.


In 1933, it was set to fire supposedly by Marinus van der Lubbe, a Dutch socialist. The Nazis then did away with Parliament altogether. The damaged building was used for military purposes during World War II and was further destructed by air raids and also became the target of the red army in the battle of Berlin in 1945.


Though it was no more the parliament , yet it was restored in 1961 after another architectural contest. After the Reunification of Germany, the official reunification ceremony was held in the Reichstag on 3 October 1990.But there was yet another architectural contest in 1992 and another reconstruction that ended in 1999.The new beautiful cupola was made and the parliament then finally moved to the Reichstag.