Trev's travails

Thursday, 12 August 2010

Berlin

We travelled by train from Potsdam to Berlin - with our bikes and stayed in Berlin for two days. We wanted to allow ourselves sufficient time to see some of the key sights- which we did by bike, tube and tram.

Here are some of the places we visited

Fernsehturm – Alexanderplatz

The TV tower, known as the Fernsehturm or the Tele-spargel (toothpick) is one of the largest structures in Europe. The total length to the top of the spire is 365m or 1197 ft. It was built in 1969 by a team of architects with the help of Swedish experts. It contains a concrete shaft, a steel-cladded metal sphere and a TV antenna. The sphere contains a revolving restaurant (Telecafé) at 207m and a viewing platform at a height of 203m.

Site of Hitler's bunker

The Holocaust Memorial

In May 2005, on the 60th anniversary of the fall of the Nazi regime and the end of World War II, the city of Berlin dedicated their Holocaust Memorial, designed to commemorate the murder of six million Jews at the hands of Hitler and his forces.

The Holocaust Memorial, officially named the Monument to the Murdered Jews in Europe, can be visited at anytime – night or day. A subterranean Information Centre, located at the base of the memorial, offers stories of families and individuals who faced the wrath of the Nazi party and provides further information about the design and construction of the memorial

Occupying about 205,000 square feet (19,000 square meters) of space near the Brandenburg Gate and just a short distance from where the ruins of Hitler’s bunker is buried, the Berlin Holocaust Memorial is made up of 2,711 gray stone slabs that bear no markings, such as names or dates.

The slabs undulate in a wave-like pattern. Each is a five-sided monolith, individually unique in shape and size. Some are only ankle high while others tower over visitors. The paths that are shaped between the slabs undulate as well. Eisenman (the designer) hoped to create a feeling of groundlessness and instability; a sense of disorientation.

The Brandenburg Gate

The Brandenburg Gate was commisioned by Friedrich Wilhelm II to represent peace. The Gate was designed by Karl Gotthard Langhans, the Court Superintendent of Buildings, and the main architectural design of this landmark hasn't changed since it was first constructed in 1791

The Brandenburg Gate is located west of the city centre at the junction of Unter den Linden and Ebertstraße. It is the only remaining gate of a series through which Berlin was once entered. The Brandenburg Gate became infamous in the Cold War, it stood between East and West Germany, becoming part of the Berlin Wall.

The Reichstag, the seat of the German Parliament

The building was constructed between 1884 and 1894. In 1933 fire broke out in the building, destroying much of the Reichstag. It is to date still unclear who started the fire, but the Communists were blamed.

During Berlin's division the West German parliament assembled here once a year as a way to indicate that Bonn was only a temporary capital. After the unification the decision was soon made to move the Bundestag (Germany's Parliament) from Bonn to Berlin. This decision resulted in a renovation which started in 1995 and was completed in 1999.

The Olympiastadion (Olympic Stadium)

There have been two stadiums on the site: the present facility, and one that is called the Deutsches Stadion which was built for the aborted 1916 Summer Olympics.

The current Olympiastadion was originally built for the 1936 Summer Olympics in the southern part of the Reichssportfeld (today Olympiapark Berlin). During World War II, the area suffered little damage. After the war, the British military occupation used the northern part of the Reichssportfeld as its headquarters until 1994. From 1951 to 2005, the Olympischer Platz had a giant antenna transmitting for all the portable radios in Berlin.

Aside from its use as an Olympic stadium, it has a strong footballing tradition. Historically, it is the ground of club Hertha BSC. It was also used for 3 matches in the 1974 FIFA World Cup. It hosted six matches, including the final, in the 2006 FIFA World Cup.

Where Hockey was played in the 1936 Olympics

Check Point Charlie

The Topography of Terror

The Topography of Terror (Topographie des Terrors) is an outdoor museum in Berlin. It is located in Niederkirchnerstrasse, formerly Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, on the site of buildings which during the Nazi regime from 1933 to 1945 were the headquarters of the Gestapo and the SS, the principal instruments of repression during the Nazi era.

The buildings that housed the Gestapo and SS headquarters were largely destroyed by Allied bombing during early 1945 and the ruins demolished after the war. The boundary between the American and Soviet zones of occupation in Berlin ran along the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, so the street soon became a fortified boundary, and the Berlin Wall ran along the south side of the street, renamed Niederkirchnerstrasse, from 1961 to 1989. The wall itself was never removed from the site, and the section adjacent to the Topography of Terror site is the second-longest segment still in place.

In and around Potsdam

We camped by the side of the lake around 4 kms outside Potsdam. There was a cycle track along the lakeside to the centre of Potsdam.

Potsdam's Brandenburg Gate

Sanssouci Palace and Park

Sanssouci is the former summer palace of Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, in Potsdam, near Berlin. It is often counted among the German rivals of Versailles. While Sanssouci is in the more intimate Rococo style and is far smaller than its French Baroque counterpart, it too is notable for the numerous temples and follies in the park.

The palace was designed by Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff between 1745 and 1747 to fulfil King Frederick's need for a private residence where he could relax away from the pomp and ceremony of the Berlin court. This is emphasised by the palace's name: a French phrase ( sans souci) which translates loosely as "without worries" or "carefree" symbolising that the palace was a place for relaxation rather than a seat of power.

The palace is little more than a large single-storey villa - containing just ten principal rooms, it was built on the brow of a terraced hill at the centre of the park.

After World War II, the palace became a tourist attraction in East Germany. It was fully maintained with due respect to its historical importance, and was open to the public. Following German reunification in 1990, the final wish of Frederick came to pass: his body was finally returned to his beloved palace and buried in a new tomb overlooking the gardens he had created.

Glienicker Bridge

During the Cold War, Glienicker Bridge was one of the few places in the world where the United States and the Soviet Union stood directly opposite each other. And so “deals” could be made here without any of their allies having any say in the matter. The Soviet Union and the United States used it three times to exchange captured spies during the Cold War, and the Bridge was referred to as the Bridge of Spies by reporters.

The first prisoner exchange between the superpowers took place on February 10, 1962. The U.S. released noted Russian spy Colonel Rudolf Ivanovich Abel in exchange for pilot Francis Gary Powers captured by the USSR following the U-2 Crisis of 1960. Annette von Broecker claims that a lucky guess resulted in her being the only eyewitness to this exchange.

The next swap took place on April 1964, when Konon Molody was exchanged for Greville Wynne. On June 12, 1985, there was a hurriedly arranged swap of 23 American agents held in Eastern Europe for Polish agent Marian Zacharski and another three Soviet agents arrested in the West.

The final exchange was also the most public. On February 11, 1986 the human rights campaigner and political prisoner Anatoly Sharansky and three Western agents were exchanged for Karl Koecher and four other Eastern agents.

Potsdam Conference

The Potsdam Conference was held at Cecilienhof, the home of Crown Prince Wilhelm Hohenzollern, in Potsdam, occupied Germany, from 17 July to 2 August 1945. Participants were the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The three nations were represented by Communist Party General Secretary Joseph Stalin, Prime Ministers Winston Churchill and later Clement Attlee, and President Harry S. Truman.

Stalin, Churchill, and Truman — as well as Attlee, who participated alongside Churchill, awaited the outcome of the 1945 general election, and then replaced Churchill as Prime Minister after the Labour Party's victory over the Conservatives — gathered to decide how to administer punishment to the defeated Nazi Germany, which had agreed to unconditional surrender nine weeks earlier, on May 8 (V-E Day).

The goals of the conference also included the establishment of post-war order, peace treaties issues, and countering the effects of war.

Our trip to Berlin - the Stasi prison

Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial

It would be hard to find another site in Germany so intricately linked with the 44-year history of political persecution in the Soviet Occupation Zone and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) as the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial.

In June 1945, the Soviet Secret Police took over a former canteen block and food store in the north-east of Berlin and turned it into a detainment and transit camp called 'Special Camp No. 3'. After the camp was closed in October 1946, the cellar was converted into an underground cell section that served as the main Soviet Secret Police prison for detention and interrogation in Germany – this was known by the prisoners as the “U-Boot” or submarine.

In 1951 the East German Ministry of State Security (MfS – or “Stasi”) took over the prison, added a new prison building and, until 1989, used the site as its main remand centre. Thousands of political prisoners passed through this jail, including nearly all the prominent figures opposing the GDR regime.

The main Stasi service units responsible for prisons and criminal prosecutions were conveniently located in nearby Genslerstrasse, close to the prison: the Main Investigation Department (HA IX) and the Central Prison Department Headquarters (Dept. XIV), which reported directly to Erich Mielke, Minister of State Security. These two departments monitored and directed the work of all the investigation departments and remand prisons in the 15 local authority areas comprising the GDR. The remand prison and restricted area formed a kind of headquarters of communist repression in East Germany.

The remand prison was located within a restricted military area hermetically sealed off from the outside world. This area, which never appeared on any maps of East Berlin, was home to a number of other Stasi service units: the Operative Technical Sector (OTS), whose tasks included, for example, building bugging systems; Sector HA IX/11, responsible for a secret Nazi archive; and a part of the Espionage Data Processing Centre (HVA). Until 1974, labour camp "X" was located directly next to the prison. The labour camp used already sentenced prisoners as forced labour for the Ministry of State Security.

There are many websites which contain information and stories about the remand prison, including

http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/robsurratt/1/1258001344/tpod.html

http://www.berlin.de/orte/museum/gedenkstaette-berlin-hohenschoenhausen/index.en.php

http://kinosport.tv/photographs/seventeen-notes-on-the-stasi-remand-prison/

Here are a few photos from our tour of the prison.