CONTEXT: A bleak artifact of the Cold War between the U.S./NATO and U.S.S.R./Warsaw Pact from about 1950 to 1990, and a focus of superpower military friction which we who lived at that time feared could spark World War III at any moment; a terrifying anxiety to constantly endure. I may repost more captions (referred to in here) about it that I wrote for my other pictures from Berlin later, on this blog.

But I include this item as one of my first blog posts, because in it I speculate that the Nazis’ beastliness could probably only be defeated by an even bigger beast, like Stalin’s U.S.S.R. A depressing, but plausible observation. The Russians overran eastern Germany and captured Berlin in Spring 1945, taking ferocious revenge on German civilians for Hitler’s unprovoked invasion of their land and the innumerable and unspeakable atrocities committed there by German armed forces. It must have seemed like the wrath of one of the warlike Norse gods the Nazis had revered (Thor?) was being visited on them. Nazism proudly lived by the sword, and – unsurprisingly – perished by it, taking much of the prior world with it in its collapse.

The Wall, mandated by pressure from that Soviet ‘bigger beast,’ was started in 1961, meant to stop the outflow of East Germans into (free) West Berlin. So it was actually, in effect a monument to the failure and dysfunction of ossified Communism to create a world most people would not flee if allowed to do so. This essay reflects on the dynamics that finally dissipated Marxism’s inflexible, sacrosanct ideology, as well as on the ultimately futile means deployed to impose and sustain it.

(As noted before, the ‘we’ mentioned in this piece is my friend Paul from Boston, who was with me for the middle part of my travels, from Salzburg to Berlin.)

This is not the same preserved Wall section I discussed in earlier posts, but one we saw from our passing tour bus. As I later learned, this is right next to the Topography of Terror, the memorial on the site of Gestapo headquarters, whose horrendous dungeons survived because the Wall’s Death Strip was later built over their ruins. In a bit of mordant irony, that Strip was one iniquity succeeding another (Gestapo HQ), until events rendered it too, unsustainable – though far less violently than the military apocalypse that subsumed the Gestapo along with all of Hitler’s other foul works.

The Berlin Wall finally fell because Mikhail Gorbachev, Soviet president in the late 1980s, had made clear to Soviet client governments in Eastern Europe that he would not use Russian armed force to keep them in power, as the U.S.S.R. had done in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. And as it became obvious that the Iron Curtain was corroding, the East German regime – though willing to kill a handful of its would-be escapees – had no stomach to slaughter its own citizens en masse. Or at least, not without Russian backing. Or perhaps they finally realized there was no way they could do so with a straight face, and maintain their obviously sham pretense of being ‘a People’s government.’

The details of how the Wall finally ceased to imprison East Germans are complex, but its abrupt opening was sudden, fast and chaotic. On November 9, 1989, after the regime made an ambiguous announcement about loosening transit restrictions at the Wall, crowds of East Berliners approached it demanding to pass into West Berlin, and – almost miraculously – its guards, unsure what their superiors had really intended, let them do so. It was like the opening of the Red Sea to Moses.

Other Ossies (Easterners), on hearing this news, dropped what they were doing and sprinted past the barriers and into the West. They feared their rulers might capriciously change their minds, clamp the gates shut again, and massacre disobedient citizens (as had happened 5 months earlier at Tienanmen Square in Beijing). Many probably had only the clothes on their backs, unsure if they could ever return home, but were willing to abandon their whole prior lives for a straight-forward chance at the liberties they knew existed beyond the Wall. Only vicious force like the Nazis would have used, without hesitation – which the East German state would not – could have crushed such a huge popular upsurge.

The Wall ultimately turned out to be a futile, feeble thing, its grip inexorably worn down by the restive, rumbling hostility of millions of Europeans and their hopes for self-actualization, instead of a Socialist straight-jacket worldview. With wondrous irony, it was almost inadvertently opened by bureaucratic fumbling between the East German regime and its security forces.

(In Moscow’s Eastern Bloc, obedience to Marxist doctrine often counted for more than practical competence. The confusion that led to a sudden lapse of restrictions may have been partly a spectacular instance of people who got critical jobs because they were loyal, rather than because they were capable.)

And the evil spell of fear and helplessness in nations where the U.S.S.R. had imposed Stalinist Communism after World War II withered over a few breathtaking weeks, crushed under newly assertive popular aspirations. If you want to see the power of collective will and spirit, find and watch film of that electrifying November night at the Wall. It was astonishing, glorious, and intoxicating to people watching it on television, as much of the world did. East Berliners standing atop the Wall, with the Brandenburg Gate in the background, bashed at it with sledgehammers charged by decades of pent-up rage. That was an image for the Ages; the atmosphere in Paris after the fall of the Bastille may have felt much the same.

Lenin, father of the Soviet Union, once said that a successful revolution is usually just ‘the kicking in of a rotten door.’ And so it was; in 1989, the ‘Annus Mirabilis’ (Year of the Miracle), the festering Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe collapsed with relatively minor ripples. The West’s dynamics of individuals’ worth and autonomy – which, rather than sullen Russian passivity were the true opposites of the Nazis’ glorification and mobilization of our worst instincts – had finally outlasted the East’s downtrodden subservience.

Such a ruthless, despotic use of Soviet power had been essential to do most of the bloody, brute work of pummeling Hitlerism to death. But whether those Western style ‘dynamics’ have triumphed forever is still unfolding now, in 2017.

(And regrettably is still ‘unfolding,’ in 2022, as of this re-posting. Demolishing the concrete of the Wall was only the start, and possibly, the easy part, of making a truly ‘Free’ world.)

CONTEXT: One of the most famous and scenic bridges in the world and a foremost sight of Prague, where we spent a single day en route from Vienna to Berlin. Its famous collection of statuary was accumulated over generations, but its fortified towers at each end are near-original, and common features of Medieval bridges. Such crossings were difficult and costly to build and maintain, so were placed at points of great strategic or commercial importance. They often also served a defensive purpose, with fortifications like this gate tower at either end to repel invaders who might cross them to attack any city in which they were located. Old London Bridge, built in the Twelfth Century, had similar construction.

Here is the fortification at the other end of this bridge, nearer the Old Town. Its roadway is now only for pedestrians, and was very lively even on a chilly day in October. On a fair day in June, it must be as crowded as St. Mark’s Square in Venice.

I’m glad so many people can now travel, a privilege once limited by poor transport and expense, although such democratization can change an ambiance drastically. Lovely and evocative of distant ages as places like this are, it is hard to contemplate the sweep of passing time when forcefully reminded of the here and now by jostling groups chattering in many languages. But personally, I am willing to accept a diminished individual experience for the benefits of living at a time when ordinary people can have the luxury of travel. That is, are not considered their leisure-class betters’ mere workhorses, who have no business expecting any of the good things of life, and who rarely get them.

Moreover: Travel enables us to learn about both the cultural variations and fraternal similarities of our neighbors on this planet. For example, the many Chinese visitors I saw in Prague probably knew very little about the place, yet some of them appeared to be on the verge of tears of joy at what fantastic, exotic sights they were seeing. That was something that I – their fellow non-Czech – could fully share with them.

Some of us may like to study in advance to understand at a deeper level what we will see in our journey. But “Wonder” is a universal language; it needs no translation or practice.

CONTEXT: This was the last of my photos of Berlin I had previously posted online from my visit there in 2016. Berlin was the nexus of my tour of Europe; no other place had played such an outsize role in global events in such a sudden and violent manner, due to its having been the epicenter of Hitler’s efforts to impose his ghastly vision on the world. Many of my posts about the city’s history and consequence focus on its Nazi era, when it was the site of bestial efforts to revive primal domination as human life’s supreme value, an effort undertaken using 20^th Century science.

But Berlin before Hitler was a place of many great achievements for humanity, not against it. It deserves better than just a litany of crimes committed there by brutish men who hated its renowned free spirits, and did their worst to replace them with evil ones. So I ended my original online discussion about the city with this reminder of its level of contribution to civilization.

I had never heard of Virchow, who was honored by this statue near Humboldt University. Like Humboldt himself, he is not well-known in the English-speaking world; surely not as much as he should be. Piqued by this grandiose memorial, I researched Virchow, and learned that its drama is not excessive for his achievements.

He was one of Germany’s greatest scientists in the 19th century, a founder of public health studies – now a field of universal significance. He also rejected many racial theories the Nazis would later espouse (he died in 1902, long before their coming), using science to advocate generous perspectives about the fundamental brotherhood of the human family. Such theories were exceptional even for his own time, the Age of Colonialism, when Europeans and Americans were going forth to co-opt and exploit other parts of the planet, taking for granted their inherent supremacy as Caucasians, and their destiny to rule.

This memorial may be a post-war replacement. In view of Virchow’s assertion of the underlying equality of human ethnicities, it seems possible the Nazis might have destroyed any remembrance of him, as they had Lessing’s statue in Vienna. In any case, it now serves as a reminder of a life, and an era, of which Berlin and Germany may be justly proud, with no need to proclaim them the acts of bogus “Supermen.” Virchow’s actual deeds honored mankind’s potential more than any marble trophy could.

In addition to its stain by Nazism, Berlin deserves to have its very substantial contributions to our collective progress reclaim their role in how the city is perceived. Virchow was just one of its residents who made our world better in a practical sense, or even expanded our understandings of the universe (as did Einstein, a long-time Berlin resident).

At first, this statue seemed to be just one more gratuitous Germanic exaltation of strength. But it isn’t; the struggling figures are evidently meant to show the progress, in which Virchow played a major role, in subduing an ogre: Epidemic.

If that is the case, then this truly is a worthy image of an epic accomplishment of reason and enterprise, not a crude effort to warn the viewer to bow to power. Not about mere domination, this portrays our contending with one of the world’s worst scourges. And as such, this dramatic imagery is supremely appropriate.

Given Virchow’s counter-evidence to what the Nazis would later preach, this monument may also suggest how Man’s better instinct can vanquish his baser one, a pestilence often more insidious than those of Nature. This goal can be achieved by great personal exertions like his, or simply by treating life as something savory and thrilling, rather than as Hitler saw it: A blood sport, in which it is the right and duty of the strong to crush the weak.

As such, Virchow’s life seems a fitting end of my postings about Berlin, a partial offset to its being bound to Nazism in the world’s imagination. Stories like his might be truer to the city’s historical essence than its short-lived plague of Fascism. The latter must never be forgotten, but it is far from being Berlin’s whole, or principal, identity.

My last comment on this city, given all the diversity and openhearted (if not exuberant) “Luft” it showed me, is a hope that it may contribute positively to human enlightenment again – even more than the role it once played in our near-run reversion to beasts.

CONTEXT: From my 2016 Europe trip, previously posted online: This image of a high-Baroque church, built in gratitude for Vienna’s deliverance from what was to be its final Plague, in 1713, has great historical implications. But in this post, I graze on issues and forces that interweave with history, but do not necessarily fit within its (presumed) logic. Or any other.

An outburst of piety expressed in paint, marble, gilding, etc. The whole interior is a carefully orchestrated riot of decorative elements, but the depiction of Saint Charles Borromeo (name saint of Austria’s ruler at the time, Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI) over the altar, in the middle of this picture, is the focal point. He is being “assumed,” bodily into Heaven – which, referencing the Old Testament, is suggested in a triangle above with the most sacred name of the God of Israel in Hebrew letters.

Historians (as I style myself) must sometimes caution against Presentism: That is, when living people judge events and artifacts from the past shorn of their context of culture and then-current events, by their own (contemporary) frame of reference. This can be quite misleading; the Karlskirche, built in roughly the same era as Saint Paul’s in London, may seem to some today a misallocation of energies (it was also an expression of imperial Hapsburg prestige). But consider: What might future generations think of Our priorities? Especially if they are trying to survive on an Earth deeply degraded by our unconsidered material self-indulgence?

When this was being built, it was not clear that humanity could or would ever be able to control the world in such a way as to vanquish terrors like Plague – that is, deflating physical phenomena to predictable, manageable processes.

People then would no doubt be glad for an end to pestilence, along with reliable sources of food, clean water, heat, light, etc., such as we in the 21^st Century enjoy. But they might have a question for us: What point does human life really have, if every facet of it can be reduced to mere mechanisms, seemingly devoid of any potentially collective (not just individual) ‘consummating’ purpose? This church – like most places of aspiration – offers a vision of a world fundamentally better than the one we can perceive, not just tidied up somewhat.