Rathaus

In Germany’s Capitals, Cold War Memories and Imperial Ghosts:

by Alan Cowell, The New York Times, June 23, 2011

For all its glittery new buildings — the glass and steel of the Hauptbahnhof railroad station drawing the eye toward the pristine government quarter around the glass-domed Bundestag, or Parliament, and onto the high-rises of Potsdamer Platz — Berlin seems more like a work in progress, a city still striving for a heart, an identity to embrace past and present.

“Berlin is the capital of the temporary, the unfinished, the interim,” Jan Oberländerwrote in Berlin’s Tagesspiegel newspaper. “Put it up, perform, move on — that is the spirit of the city,” he said.

In tandem with its newness, Berlin has acknowledged the very worst of its history with structures such as the Holocaust memorial near the Brandenburg Gate. Yet it has airbrushed other parts of its past: the Berlin Wall is barely commemorated. And other memories, Mr. Fuhr wrote in Die Welt, seem ignored, particularly the clandestine struggle against communism before the wall fell in 1989.

“Why is this Berlin Republic incapable of sending out a positive signal of itself?” he asked. “Can the Germans find no way to articulate historical success?”

Rathaus

Bonn, Germany