Germany: Cinema The White Ribbon & (T)Raumschiff Surprise

‘The White Ribbon’ won its share of awards, and I suppose, as a film, it was interesting enough. Like many European films I have seen, however, I got to the end and still was puzzled - what was it all about?

There's a reason the ‘Hollywood Ending’ is called a Hollywood ending. It seems American audiences demand that their movies have an end - preferably a happy end. I have read that studios will sometimes assemble focus groups and show them their films with different endings, to test out which one will be the most successful – pointing, of course, towards commercial success.  I don't think Europeans do that. Often the film ends and the audience is left to puzzle - okay what was that all about? ‘The White Ribbon’ fits comfortably into this model.

It is set in a German village on the eve of World War I. I was looking forward to seeing what today's Germans make of that era. From what I have read about prewar Germany, in history and fiction, I get the sense that today's Germans may as well be from a different planet. That part did come through.  The old Germany was portrayed as cold, cruel and repressive - quite distant from today's ambience. Consistent with what you might expect from people who hate their past.

‘(T)raumshiff Surprise’ was something completely different.  Yes, about as wacky as what you might expect from Monty Python. It was a spoof of Star Trek, born on television and expanded for the big screen. If you can imagine a German ‘Spaceballs’, you pretty much have this film. What was interesting was the choices of what to spoof.  The lead characters are gay and for some reason they end up in the Wild West. Germans have a fascination with that time and place. I guess it all makes sense…

Germany: Dresden traces of the GDR

When trying to decide where we should go in Germany to get that second look I need for comparison, the decision was not really all that hard. I was anxious to see what had happened over the last 20 years in the old east Germany. In Dresden I would have some basis for comparison, having visited the city in 1979.  A hint of some of the changes we would see, we had already had in Berlin. Half of that city had been in the GDR, but it would take a pretty keen eye to be able to visually distinguish between Berlin neighborhoods today. There really is not much difference between East and West Berlin.

In Dresden, the changes have been a bit slower in coming. As you know from previous posts, there has been a lot of reconstruction of the historic buildings.  That part of town looks more like 1890 than 1990 (the year the wall came down). In the other parts of town the legacy of the GDR is not fading so rapidly into the past. In many parts of the city you still find the excessively wide streets that have far more capacity than is needed for current traffic loads, but were needed for May Day tank parades. It appears that the bulk of the residents still live in the massive block structure apartment complexes preferred for both economic and ideological reasons throughout the Soviet bloc.

If you remember, when we were in Moscow we stayed in just such a building. You can cram a bunch of people into a small space, but it creates an odd cityscape. Huge buildings separated by huge empty spaces. Possible only where land has little value and people have little choice.

Slowly, it seems some of these structures are coming down and being redeveloped but it is a slow process. Kind of like the Socialist mural on the side of the city's theater complex, it seems they are allowing the old GDR to fade away slowly on its own through benign neglect. Someday, when it gets bad enough they will replace it.

Transit to Dresden

Woman, waiting for a train in the cold

Not just efficient, they're pretty

I love German trains. As a matter of course, if you asked me my preferred mode of travel, I would say it is by train - but that's because when I think of train travel, I think of German trains. If you reminded me of experiences with Italian or American trains, I might reconsider that preference but nothing beats travel by German train.

What's so good? Well it starts with the departure - which will happen pretty much exactly when they say it will happen. Even with the difficult weather Northern Europe has been experiencing, for the most part the trains kept rolling and if they were delayed (as some we used were) they kept you in informed of the delays and delivered accurate information about them. Compare that to an airport experience.

But they are not just reliable.  They are also pretty comfortable and reasonably priced. MC and I traveled on what is called 'Schönes Wochenende' fare (nice weekend) that cost us only €39 and allowed us to go anywhere in Germany we wanted to go. In fact it would've allowed us to transport five people on that trip. Pretty reasonable - anywhere you want, about eight euros per person. We, of course under utilized ours. It seems we were not aggressive enough about finding partners. Some folks go to stations and try to find someone with extra room on their ticket to share the fare. The person sitting across from us had done exactly that. Did not even sit with her "group".

No reason to hurry

There is a catch. You have to ride the slow trains. On the Berlin-Paris stretch that might make a big difference, but on our route it only cost us less than one hour, in comparison. We used that hour to read, chat and have lunch on the way. At the end of the trip we stepped off our train in the heart of the city rather than 30 min. outside which seems to be a minimum for the airports we have used.

Germany: Explore Dresden

I wonder for what Dresden is better known for - what was built or for what was destroyed?

Make no mistake over the centuries wondrous things were created in the capital of the Saxon kingdom. The surrounding territory was rich in gems and mineral deposits and this wealth became the foundation for a very prosperous city where sculpture and porcelain arts flourished. It also made the Kings very wealthy and as wealthy kings often do, they built palaces and cathedrals. Dresden was a wonderful place.

Until that night in February 1945 when, for whatever reason, bombs rained down on the city.  The bombing has long been controversial.  Was it revenge or a legitimate military target? To Dresdeners it did not really matter. The allies sent their bombers and nearly erased the city from this earth. Dresden, of course, was not unique in that respect. The pictures of Coventry or Cologne after the war show a scene not all that different to what you would have seen in Dresden. The war over, in Cologne they began the building.

What makes Dresden interesting is that after the war, that same rebuilding was not undertaken.  In part, it was a simple lack of resources. East Germany did not get Marshall Plan aid. Part of it was ideological, "should a Workers State rebuild palaces and churches?" The answer was no. I always thought that perspective was short sighted. There's money in tourism - but then tourism is a pretty bourgeois activity.

Nonetheless, as of 1979 when I first visited Dresden, little of the prewar grandeur had been restored. Some of the ruins, in particular the Frauenkirche (see next post) had been intentionally preserved as a ruined pile of rubble - the fruits of fascism. They had just begun to work on the Zwinger Palace, though this was already 35 years after the end of the war.

Now 20 years later and with a change in the political regime, what would Dresden be like?

Well as you can see from the pictures, Dresden's architectural treasures have been reclaimed. Today the city is an interesting blend of three eras; the Royal; the communist; and the capitalist. The city bears all the marks of its somewhat rocky road to the present.

Germany: School

Our Neighborhood's School

On the Berufsschule curriculum

You hear stories about parents in Manhattan that stress over whether their kids will get into the right preschool. Apparently, if they screw that up, the kid is toast. You can kiss the Ivy League and future success goodbye. It's a good story, I don't know whether it is true.

There is some truth in the fact that preparation at one level of an educational system opens doors to the next. The obverse is also true. The absence of preparation closes doors. Students on one track tend to end up where that track leads. On a different track? You are probably headed to a different destination.

Tracking is not a big part of the American public education system. If you are in the public system you are in the same boat as the overwhelming majority of fellow students. There are many tracks that branch off the public high school system.

That is not true in Germany. Germany students may all start off in the same boat at the primary level of education, but after that they separate into groups and start heading in different directions. The top students head off to the Gymnasium on their way to the university. For those students, the path is pretty sweet. German universities are almost free and at the end of the road, you have an elite education that sets you apart from the other 90% of your student cohort . Your prospects are good.

What they teach, where

And what about the other 90%? It may seem pretty cold to slam the university door closed on students just barely in their teens. And that is pretty much what happens. It is possible to get to the university without going to Gymnasium, but it is not at all common. So what becomes of them? Well, some of them receive a basic education and then technical apprenticeships and working-class jobs. Others will go to Berufsschule and professional training - again leading to a career.

With low unemployment, generous benefits, vacation allowances that make US norms seem pitiful and decent wages (wage disparity is half - top to bottom - what it is in the US) the economic consequences of the educational tracking are nowhere near as great as those confronting Manhattan toddlers. All tracks can lead to a decent life.

Museum, Art: German Museum of Film and TV

So one of my elements is to visit an art museum, the idea being that a society's relationship to art is an expression of how they see the world, and how they see themselves in the world.

The challenge in each place is not to find the museum but to decide which of the museums I want to write about. On this trip to Germany, we visited five very different art museums, from ancient to modern, each was impressive in someway. So, it is a surprise to me that I am writing about the film museum. At the outset it was not even on my list. But one day we found ourselves at Potsdamer Platz with a couple of hours to kill. We had gone to see the impressive redevelopment of the ‘platz’ itself (Sony dropped a few billion on it) only to get there and discover it pretty much closed (it was a Sunday and Boxing Day no less) You could wander around outdoors, but it was about -10° C - not very inviting. We needed a place to go and the film museum just happened to be there, open and heated. It turned out to be a lucky happenstance. The Museum is both fascinating and eye-opening. Today, when you think ‘film’, you think Hollywood. That's where the films come from. And that means an American perspective dominates the vision of world cinema.  As true as that is, it was not always so. And maybe did not need to turn out that way.

The museum chronicles the early years of the development of cinema as an art form.  It displays the technology and the finished product. At the beginning there was an exceptionally strong German presence in both. Landmark films like the ‘Cabinet of Dr. Caligari’ and ‘Metropolis’ and global stars like Marlene Dietrich are testament to the German product and potential.

And then something happened. The Nazi era destroyed nearly everything that had been built by German film before it. It chased its best technicians and talent, mostly to Hollywood. What it did not chase it completely discredited.  The brilliance of Leni Reifenstahl (Olympia and Triumph of the Will) is impossible to separate from the depravity of the Nazi movement.
The rest as they say, is history. Hollywood became the center of the film universe and German film, though it still exists, toils mostly in obscurity. Germany's favorite films? Not German. One wonders what might have been.

Germany: Dresden and the Frauenkirche

WiT?  J-K ;-)

Standing in the square in front of the Frauenkirche is a statue of Martin Luther, the survivor. That statue was a part of the church which like almost everything else, was destroyed in the 1945 bombing. The statute remains and was moved to the square - standing watch over a pile of rubble that once was a church described as the protestant’s St. Peter's.

In its day, the Frauenkirche had been a center of Protestant theology and a showpiece, boasting the largest dome north of the Alps – in other words, in the Protestant world. It was a glorious structure and an impressive display of engineering know how. It said to the Catholic world “we are your equal”

And of course, in the bombing, it all came crashing down. The initial response of Dresdeners was to rebuild it. The preference of the East German communists was to leave it as it was - the ruins being a reminder of the consequences of war. The symbolism of Luther’s church lying in ruins was also no doubt appealing to the GDR's official atheists.

And so for decades that is how it sat. That is how we saw it in 1979. A pile of rubble. In 1990, with the Communists now lying in the ash bin of history, Dresdeners once again raised the idea of reconstruction. They put out an international appeal for aid ($) and their call was answered. Locally, the rebuilding sparked some controversy. Some felt preserving the ruin, like the Berlin Gedächniskirche, was required to preserve the memory of the destructiveness of war. The church community's response was to build the memorial into the reconstruction itself. Whenever possible, the original bricks were used and where they were used they bear the marks of the bombing. Those black stones contrast with the new Sandstone and send a powerful message. It is a message you see communicated almost where ever you look in the old city. Why are those buildings so black? War.

Playing WiT?  There's a new clue...

Germany: Religion

The old joke about religion in Europe, like any good joke, has humor because there is an element of truth. "At times Europe can be terribly crowded.  If you want to be alone, where can you go? Try a church on Sunday morning."

Or Christmas Eve, as it turns out. As we were in Berlin for Christmas, we decided to visit Berlin's iconic Gedächniskirche.  We were in the neighborhood the day before so we stopped by and checked the board to see what was going on. Christmas Eve they had a service at seven and at nine something listed as an organ concert. We decided on the Christmas Eve concert and showed up about 20 minutes til, knowing how things are at our church on Christmas.  Show up on time and you won't get a seat. We had no problem. As a matter of fact, the church - which probably seats 400 may have had a dozen people in it. But then, we were there 20 minutes early.

By the time the concert started there may have been 60 people there. Yes, that would be concert - not service. Despite the fact that it was Christmas Eve there was no religious element to the evening whatsoever. In fact there was almost no speaking, whatsoever. There was the introduction of organist and description of his musical choices and a note that financial support on your way out would be welcome.

I was in a church on Christmas Eve but it wasn't like going to church. Now, from an academic perspective you could say I learned a lot from my experience but I was personally unsatisfied.  So the following Sunday morning we went back for the real thing. This time there was a service but they're still weren't many people there. Maybe there were about 50, again spread around a pretty big church. Each group sat by themselves. Where we sat there was no one in either the row in front,  nor the row behind. We could not reach out and touch another person, even if they were reaching for us. We were alone.

The service was nice.  Having grown up Lutheran, it was very familiar. The sermon was about evangelism - spreading the good word. Why we believe, and a call to consider those who have never been introduced to religion. In Berlin that is a salient message.  Between the general secularization of postwar Western society and the aggressive atheism of East Germany, there is now an irreligious majority in Berlin and its surrounding state of Brandenberg. That may explain the Christmas Eve program. How do you get the non-religious to come to the church on Christmas? Offer a free concert and perhaps there is a spark?

Germany: Exploring the Capital

Me & the Bahns

What is Berlin like? Well, first off it is a massive city. Like any other European city of import, that means it will have a thorough and reliable system of mass transit. Berlin does not disappoint on that question. The system here is so extensive that printed maps are of little use to my 50 year old eyes. In order to squeeze its totality onto an 8 1/2 x 11 page they have to resort to what looks like a four point typeface to list what must be more than 200 stations, strung upon two dozen separate lines. (I did not stop to count). You can cover a lot of ground and you can do it relatively economically at about eight dollars for an unlimited day pass without any discount or monthly purchase.


But then Berlin needs a massive infrastructure because it is, of course, two cities merged only recently. East Berlin was a European capital in its own right and needed all of the accoutrements of that status. Museums, operas, theaters and the like, in addition to the government buildings. West Berlin was not just a capital in waiting but a show piece. It

Pergamon Museum Ishtar Gate

had to out shine it's twin. Then, the wall separating the two came down and the reason for the duplication disappeared. But all of those resources did not. Berlin is an extraordinarily cultured city.

It has more than 60 museums and even though that list includes the “German Curry Wurst” museum (did not visit) it also includes the sum of the cultural heritage of two great cities and competing political regimes.

Today, without knowing, you would be hard pressed to tell where capitalist Berlin left off and socialist Berlin began. The fall of the wall created extraordinary opportunities for urban redevelopment and corporations (like Sony at Potsdamer Platz) have stepped in and entirely remade the landscape. Today there is just one Berlin – modern, vibrant and efficient.

Germany: Daily Periodical Review

The purpose for this project, the daily review of periodicals is kind of like the purpose of a medical technician taking a person's pulse. That pulse tells you something about the subject at a given moment. It doesn't tell you a lot about the past and it is not really a great predictor of the future. But it is a snapshot of the present.

When I did the daily periodical review for Russia, I was very aware that my view may have been skewed. I don't read Russian and so I really don't know what Russians were seeing in their papers. Only what the English language Russian press was saying. That made me uncomfortable.

In Germany I had no such problem. Speaking the language of the place dramatically improves one's ability to observe directly without filters. Reading German papers for two weeks gave me a pretty good sense of where Germans are right now.

So, what are they thinking about? As you know, our stay in Germany coincided with a severe winter storm. Of course the papers were full of those stories - that's just current events. I was somewhat taken aback by their sense that they were coping well. Having lived in Canada, where it really snows, my sense is Germany responded poorly.

The more serious and long-term concerns that recurred were about immigration and Germany's demographic “problem”. Not enough German-Germans being born. Germany's challenge will be integrating people whose native culture is not German. They know this and are worried about it.

They also worry about the EU. Germany is the pillar on which the EU rests. Yes, pillar, singular. Germany may be holding things together, on its own. Without their support, it would collapse. Lots of stories reflect the centrality of Germany in European politics and of European politics to Germany. EU governance stories seemed more prominent than internal German politics stories. Kind of the way DC politics overshadows state politics in the US.

WiT? Clue:  Can't post a statue of Ché.  That would be too easy.  So we have this guy, a kindred spirit in some ways...

Germany: Cultural - ‘Linie 1’

What does it say when a theater production is still running 25 years after its Premier? I think it says the piece has struck a chord with the audience. It must be offering something you can't get at home on your TV or even in the cinema. Something unique.

In Berlin we were fortunate to be able to experience such a performance. We saw a play called ‘Linie 1’.  It is a musical, set in the 1980s, which plays out over the course of the subway journey from one end of ‘Linie 1’ to the other.

It is the story of a star struck young girl who comes to Berlin to follow a rocker who hads paid her some attention and created some hopes, before moving on. She arrives in Berlin to look for him, and the first encounter she has with the city is in the infamous Bahnhof Zoo. Back in the day, Bahnhof Zoo was kind of the end of the line and

Conductors, Not what you think...

populated by the kind of people you might expect to meet at the ‘end of the line’. From there she rides the U-Bahn across Berlin and then back, along the way meeting a cross-section of the city’s inhabitants.

Why has ‘Linie 1’ been so successful? It is Germany's most frequently performed musical with only one exception. That would be  Bertold Brecht’s classic ‘Three Penny Opera’.  I think it is because it captures so well, those inhabitants. As you watch, you recognize characters

The Subway & Me

that you know. In 1986 you saw them every day. In 2011 most of them are gone from everywhere but the memory. There is something of nostalgia in the piece, but also a satisfaction in knowing that many of the ‘types’ and ‘behaviors’ captured in ‘Linie 1’ are now part of the past.


I am sure its success can also be attributed to the very catchy score and can't be hurt by low ticket prices ($22 a seat) made possible by a local government subsidy. ‘Linie 1’ has become an institution - well worth a visit.

Germany: Commerce

30 years ago in Berlin, KaDeWe (Kah, Day, Vay) was the ultimate shopping experience. Even its name spoke to its special status.  It was the Kaufhaus des Westen, the West’s market. An entire city block and sixth floors of almost everything you can imagine. Even by Western standards, it was an incredible place. Before August 1961 (the building of the wall) it must've been mind-boggling for Germans living in Soviet Zone to stop in on a visit to West Berlin. The difference between what was available at KaDeWe and in the East would have been enourmous. There was a difference between KaDeWe and other stores even in West Berlin. It really was unique.

30 years later, KaDeWe is still there and it still has almost everything, but it is no longer unique. In Berlin we saw several stores that could match KaDeWe‘s inventory and even its style. It is not all that surprising. West Germany and then all of Germany has been a prosperous country

The Media Giant in the shadow of the DGR's Fernsehturm

for decades. Plenty of time for consumers to develop the demand and for retailers to respond to fill that demand. Today it is hard to imagine what might you might want that you couldn't find at your average department store, whether it be in Dresden, Munich or even a small town. A trip to KaDeWe in Berlin does not astound anymore.

Shopping in Germany was not exactly like shopping in the US, however. There was a noticeable difference in the grocery stores. It seems the German chains target market niches much more than the ones were used to in California. In our neighborhood in Berlin

You can get anything at KaDeWe

(Kreuzberg: working-class, immigrant) there were two chains near our flat. Both of them seem to be geared toward the budget end of the market. In terms of product diversity they had pretty much everything you want, but unlike Safeway, they did not have a choice in terms of quality within the product category. It was budget-brand this or budget-brand that. Not a brand-name in sight.  Not even in the important product categories where you might want a bit of luxury - like chocolate or (for Germans, gasp!) beer.

Still playing WiT9?  Racking your brain?  I bet you could use a stiff drink.  This would be your go-to guy!

Germany: History

Five Germanies I Have Known, by Fritz Stern

For a history about Germany, I started by looking for a book that fit my predilection - the biography of a great leader. When I teach American government, I always ask the students to consider America without George Washington. Take that one person out of the equation in the country and its history is quite different. For Russia, Lenin was the obvious choice and for Germany? We all know the obvious choice. Hitler. So why not read a biography of Hitler? Well first I already have. In grad school we had a course in totalitarianism and the reading was biographies of Hitler, Stalin and Mao, among others. I think I know as much as I care to about the Führer. So if not him, who else?  Having thought about German history I considered the options (Bismark, Adenauer, Brandt) I was still unsatisfied and searched Amazon for books on German history. Immediately one jumped out at me: Five Germanies I Have Known. The idea was spot on.  There have been at least five distinct Germany's and the author seemed to have a great vantage point from which to consider them.

The book was written by Fritz Stern, an eminent historian from Columbia University. It is a blend of autobiography and history written by a person who not only became renowned for his study of German history but who had the ability to enhance his scholarly treatment of the subject with his intimate experience of events and personalities. Spanning from unification (1870) through disaster and division (1933-1945) and finally to reconstruction and reunification (1990+) He really had seen it all.

GDR's Free German Youth

So what are the five Germany's?  Actually, there are six. Stern writes about them all but, the first disappears before he is born and is introduced through the stories of his grandparents, converted Jews living in Breslau under the Kaiserreich. World War I and German defeat wash that away and in its place comes the ill-fated Weimar Replublic. Hitler's Germany is Sterns second from personal experience and the last that he experiences directly as a citizen. For the Nazis baptism was meaningless. Jewishness is a racial quality that a dab of water could not erase. Hence Stern was Jewish and his family subject to Nazi oppression. His family was lucky. They had foresight and means and escaped. Stern finished growing up and was educated in war time in America. After the war Stern became a leading historian of the early 20th century Germany. As such, he addressed the burning question of the day: how could this (Nazism) happen? Because of the centrality of this question, and Stern’s prestigious position (Columbia University) he was thrust into the center of making sense of the 30s as a prelude to reconstruction and then developing the Germany's of the postwar era. Those would be Germany's #3 and #4, The Federal Republic (West) and its communist twin the GDR (German Democratic Republic, East).

Stern was there, commenting and at times getting sucked into the trials and tribulations of those times. His perspective as an “expellee” - oddly drawn to the task of restoring Germany to the community of Nations - presents a fascinating narrative, both personal and historical, which leads us directly to the present moment – Stern’s Fifth Germany, the one we know today – unified, strong, confident and at the center of European life. In 1940, that might have been a terrifying prospect.  Today it seems normal. A story with a happy ending.

Germany: Court

Walking around Berlin, one of the things that might occur to you is that they must have different liability laws in Germany as compared to the United States. Walking in the city this week has been nothing less than treacherous. When we arrived it was snowing and about -4°C. Naturally there was snow on the ground making the sidewalks a challenge. In the days since, the temperature has risen and fallen, occupying boths sides of 0°C, the freezing point. That's a bad thing, especially if they don't clear the walks, which they don’t. The snow melts and refreezes and you have ice. It creates a real hazard for pedestrians and in the US this means it creates a significant liability risk for property owners. In the US you would hustle out and clean up (a.k.a. mitigate the hazard) lest someone slip and end up owning your business.

That's not how the law works here. Their system has a very different perspective and that reality shapes life a many ways. In the US we use liability law to intimidate and punish and in the case of an action each side sets its legal team loose in search of the most advantageous (for them) settlement possible. No one seeks justice - justice is supposed to be the result of the clash of self-interest adversaries and neutral judges.

It works very differently in Germany it seems. The other night I had the good fortune to dine with a pair of attorneys who explained to me how they see their work. The first practices labor law and the second trained as an attorney but works as a judge. His career path has been quite interesting. He was recruited right out of school for his judicial position, which he understands to be administrative in nature. His appointment did not require, first years of service as an attorney, then the development of political ties to facilitate nomination. He is a judge. He hears the facts as presented by the litigants, consults the law and the others on his team and together they seek an equitable solution to the issue, under the law. In the US this process most closely resembles binding arbitration which is commonly used in disputes to stay out of court. In Germany this happens under the auspices of the court.

The goal is justice and does not seem to produce dramatic winners and losers. If you slipped and fell and broke your arm today at the Sony Center at Potsdamer Platz* you would not end up owning a big piece of Sony. They would figure out what your losses were and they cut you a check.– it won't be much, everybody has health insurance. (more on that later)   Because the eventual payday is small,  the impulse to sue is also.  I fear the same goes for the impulse to clean the streets.  Pluses and minuses to everything.

* Odds of slipping at Sony Center?  Pretty high.  The flooring seems prone to slips and they don’t clear snow.

Germany: Government Center - Reichstag, Berlin

It is probably no surprise that someone who does political science for a living would have a long-standing fascination with national parliaments. I still remember the first one I ever visited in Ottawa, while a student at McGill. We arrived without appointment and still got a tour and even got to sit in for Question Time.

In my mind, that is the way it should be in a democracy.   The government works out in the open and the boss (the people)
can show up whenever they want to check up on them. I guess that is why my experience in Moscow was such a shock. They pretend to be a democracy but the charade does not extend to public access to the legislature.

The Reichstag in Berlin is perhaps the other extreme.  The German government is so committed to openness that they actually have advertisements to entice you to come and see the workplace. They want you to come and visit and learn.  It is their chance to demonstrate how far they have come.

What I find most interesting about these seats of government is the extraordinary attention to detail given to every aspect of the space and symbolism that attaches to what might otherwise be ordinary objects. The Woolsack in the UK representing wool as the foundation of the empire - and the Russian graffiti covers the walls of the Reichstag.

At the end of World War II it was the Russians who conquered Berlin, fighting fierce resistance and advancing block by block. Taking the Reichstag, which ironically* was an important symbolic victory, signified the end of the war and the defeat of Nazism. Having accomplished this, Russian soldiers celebrated by tagging what was left of the structure.  *The irony was that the Reichstag meant nothing to the Nazis.  Hitler probably hated it more than the Russians.

For decades after, the Reichstag was little more than a shell. Nothing really important happened there. The government was in Bonn.  The Reichstag was in mothballs, waiting.

Until 1990, the collapse of the Berlin Wall and then of the GDR, and the resulting reunification. Berlin would once again be the capital and the Reichstag would once again be its home.

Obviously there was work to do to prepare for the moment. The building had not seated a legislature since the famous fire in 1933. Would the renovations include removing the graffiti from the walls? It would not. The graffiti is a reminder to the legislature of the potential consequences of their actions. They are an eternal part of German history, chemically preserved and legally protected.

But the Reichstag does not just look backwards.
In many respects it is perhaps the most innovative and forward looking parliament building in the world. The building is designed to use as little energy as possible, employing solar panels reflective mirrors and sun shades to harness the sun to power, illuminate and cool the chambers.  The central column of the dome sends a powerful message to the thousands who visit every week that great efforts are being made to be environmentally friendly.

And then there is the dome itself. It is transparent and from the top you can look right down on the floor of the legislature itself.  This legislature wants to be open - to the people and to the heavens.

Made it to the end?  Here's a WiT? Clue:Continuing the 'Father of his Country' theme.  He may not have been that but he was the first of 'his kind'.

Germany Novel: Die Unvollendete by Reinhard Jirgl

When I think about it, I always find it somewhat strange that I am much better versed in German literature than I am in American or English language literature, generally. (Way) back in the day, I was a German major. I actually have a BA in German and with that comes reading a lot of German lit.

It is that experience that made me think it was important to include literature as one of my “25 Things”. When I was reading modern German literature in the 1970s they were processing the trauma most of the authors had just experienced: Nazism and World War II. Their writing provided a human perspective that illuminated the cold histories I was reading for the political science classes. It still does.

Only now the focus is a different trauma: the experience of communism and life in the GDR. I chose Jirgl’s book because of the perspective it offered on the lives of the “other Germans”. The fact that the author has been awarded leading prizes for German literature is telling. He's speaking to Germans in a way that resonates with them.

“The Unfinished” is the English title given the book, which is the story of three women forced to flee Czechoslovakia during the ethnic cleansing of Germans after World War II. They have the bad luck to be driven out of the frying pan (Czechoslovakia) into the fire (Soviet Occupation Zone - GDR)  Their life is one of longing, driven by deprivation and the absence of a sense of belonging. There is no happy ending. They are born and they die without ever having had an opportunity to live.

Why does this strike a chord? I think it speaks to feelings I heard expressed in Germany. Germans seem to realize that there is still a debt to pay, even today, some 65 years after the end of World War II. Immediately after the war that debt would have been obvious, but now? What do today's Germans owe? An 80 -year-old German today would have been born in 1930 and would have been just 15, at the war's end. What would they owe? And to whom?

I think Germans recognize a debt to their countrymen who endured the GDR. After World War II, West Germans experienced a speedy return to prosperity and a comfortable life. They were not required to pay a high price for Nazism.  That debt fell to the Germans in the east. Soviet occupation and imprisonment in East Germany was a price only paid by some.

Germans knew it at the time and I think they still do. In the book, the women have an old friend who was also exiled from the “homeland” (Sudetenland) after the war. She ended up in the west and enjoyed prosperity. Every year she would send a Christmas package of items impossible to find in the GDR. Slowly, her feelings of obligation to the less fortunate wane, eventually leading to an abrupt end. At that end, the reader does not sympathize with the “Westie”, condemned to subsidize. Rather, the break underlines the continuing debt West Germans have to the East Germans who went there – where, but for the grace of God, go I.

Germany: Medical

One of the goals of my comparative politics class is an attempt to understand how a society actually functions.  To get to that understanding requires a two-part examination. Of course, it is important to know what they do - but I think it is equally important to understand why they do it the way they do.

I don't think it is just the centrality of the “health care debate” to American politics that makes me think healthcare is an important element in understanding any given society. Rather, the centrality of issues of one's personal health to a person's general quality of life makes it perhaps the central element of politics almost everywhere. Without your health, what matters?

Insurance Ad - They'll take anyone - no extra fee

In the US. We are debating whether healthcare is the government’s business. In Germany, that debate ended more than a century ago. Germany has the oldest Universal Health system in Europe (I suppose that means in the world but I'm not sure). It was the product of Bismarck crafting the German state. He was looking for a way to tie the public to the regime and win their support for what were monumental changes to German life and politics. It also made sense to the conservative, paternalistic, business-friendly, autocrat that healthy workers were a boon to an industrial society. He imposed an “individual mandate”.

Today, the overwhelming majority of Germans have government-subsidized “basic” insurance provided by private insurers. The services to be provided and the costs of these policies are stipulated by law. The cost structure is progressive in that low-wage workers pay little and premiums increase with income (not age or health status). You can opt out of the public system and acquire a private policy (government regulated) if what you want (and can afford) is not part of the public package.

The system seems to work pretty well. I visited a hospital in a working-class/immigrant neighborhood of Berlin (Kreutzberg). The people visiting the hospital are not wealthy but their economic status could not be discerned by the medical facility they enjoyed. The building was modern, comfortable and not terribly crowded. The services available were what you would expect at a first-class hospital. The facility was taking care of its community, it seemed. It really looked like the system works.

I can't help but compare that to hospitals in low income neighborhoods in the Bay Area. Couldn't we adopt their system? Do we have to reinvent the wheel?

Well, there are trade-offs. You have to be comfortable with government involvement in the system, something German Conservatives will accept. Isn't it ruining their lives? Their economy? Check their balance of trade against ours. They are doing OK. I did not hear Germans complaining about government oppression.  In fact, they have trouble understanding why a society would not do what they do.

WiT? Clue: Love him or hate him?  Which would he prefer?

Berlin: 2nd Site- Potsdam

For most of its history Potsdam was not part of Berlin. In fact, Potsdam's raison d’etre is that it was not Berlin. It was a place where the Prussian ruling family could go to escape the capital. It was here that they would build their castles. Yes, castles plural. That is one of the things that jumps out at you on a visit to Potsdam. These people, the Hohenzollern, sure have a lot of castles. In Potsdam we visited two of them and from the garden of one looked up the path at a third. Why would anyone need that many palaces? Obviously part of the answer was that they built them

simply because they could. Still there does seem to be a developing pattern in places I have visited between conspicuous consumption and revolution. Wall Street might want to pay some attention.

Even so Potsdam is an extraordinary place. Before unification it was separated from West Berlin and hard currency tourism on the other side of the famous spy bridge where East and West met to exchange prisoners. Driving through Potsdam one can still make out the occasional East German structure, but they stand out because of their rarity. Potsdam has caught up.

Sans Soucis

Today, it is an upscale tourist haunt, home of Frederick the Great’s version of Versailles and another palace, the last Crown Prince’s Cecelian Hof, home of the famous Potsdam conference, that last meeting of victorious allies at which

Plenty O' Soucis

they contemplated the fate of postwar Germany. There is a great contrast between the two structures. Frederick’s San Souci is rococo. Cecelian Hof is much more sedate as befits a structure built while Germany is fighting World War I.  Still, one wonders who builds a palace in the middle of a war, especially when there are two others just a stone's throw away?  Uh, people about to be deposed?