hesse and kepler stepped on these same stones on their way to class on maulbronn’s monastery (which used to be home to a seminary). it’s a striking place — from the vaulted ceilings to the tombstones that lay on the cloister’s floors.
previously on this series.
thirty nine tunnels were dug under the berlin wall, through which over 250 people escaped to the west – and almost as many were arrested by the stasi. many tunnels ended up never being used.
this one on bernauer straße was dug by hasso herschel, who helped smuggle over 1000 people to the west through tunnels, modified cars or airport exchanges.
on july 1963, herr günter climbed over the wall near a construction site, when a truck was blocking the view from the guards. bernauer straße is filled with these small memorials to the people who fled from east to west – or died trying.
buchenwald was the largest nazi concentration camp in germany: over 50,000 people died here, from all over europe. it’s a place of unspeakable horrors perched on an idyllic hilltop, in the middle of the forest. today, the area is filled with commemorative sites and this in particular is part of the jewish memorial. the sentence, translated in english, german and hebrew rises in carved stone above the gravel and reads:
“so that the generation to come might know, the children, yet to be born, that they too may rise and declare to their children.”
stark and sobering.
more from this series.
in the basement of our building there’s a door – a heavy metal door with a submarine-type locking wheel. curious as to where it would lead, one day we turned the wheel and opened the door… only to find that it was an entrance to the basement of the building next door.
my teacher once explained to the class that these were remnants from years of war and tension: the doors were there to give people an emergency exit, in case something happened and they needed to find another escape route. the buildings in berlin are often built side by side, in closed squares, with an inner courtyard – it makes sense that they’re somehow connected.
berlin is a complicated city, its history deeply fused with the wars and historical events that took place here. you can learn about it in the museums and memorials, but there are a lot of things, some big and some small, that you don’t often get to see. there’s a curious side of it that is especially hard to access: the underground world. we’ve all heard of the bunkers and tunnels that used to run below the city’s surface… but where are they? what were they used for? what did they look like?
interested in revealing the stories of these hidden worlds, a society was formed in 1997: the berliner unterwelten. they focus on discovering and recovering forgotten underground structures, and on recounting history from their perspective. so far, we’ve done a couple of their tours, and cannot recommend them enough.
one of these tours is to an intact underground bunker, which lays just next to a busy metro and railway station. as you sit in one of the airtight, low-ceiling concrete rooms listening to your guide and looking at the fluorescent stripes on the walls (that still glow in the dark), you get an unusual glimpse at the lives of frightened and exhausted berliners, sitting in this same benches 67 years ago, waiting for the air raids to stop.
i know it sounds gloomy – but that’s the history of berlin. these tours do an exceptional job at portraying it, making it less boring, and a lot more hands-on. i can’t wait to do the rest of them!