Well, I made it to Berlin around mid-day and had a pretty productive afternoon and evening. Namely, I re-familiarized myself with the surroundings – there are always new things going on, and then I went exploring. This year there are several new large (10 story +) buildings going up around Alexanderplatz – and the station itself is under construction. You can still reach the platform to use the station and you can still buy rail tickets, but all of the commercial businesses under the station are closed and empty. Quick and diverse foods will not be quite as quick and diverse this year, I suppose. But, that’s nothing that can’t be worked around fairly easily.

A sentence or two about the two memorials or markers I hunted down. One was the only plaque that I’m aware of, at least in Germany, honoring the life and death of conscientious objector, Franz Jägerstätter. It’s in the Charlottenburg district of Berlin, attached to the outer gate of a former Reich Military Court, where Jägerstätter was tried for repeatedly refusing to report to the Wehrmacht unit into which he was drafted. He chose instead to take the punishment of the state – which was beheading by guillotine. It’s a small plaque that is easily missed. It’s quite a parallel. His life and death was, at the time, obscure and his sacrifice seemed pointless to most anyone who knew anything about it, included many people within his Catholic faith, including more than one priest and bishop. But his writings (including his letters to his wife, kids and extended family, as well as his position statements) are powerful – and his actions alone should make him someone all of us are aware of. (If you’re interested, take a look at the life of Austrian peasant farmer, Franz Jägerstätter. His writings and letters from prison is a good place to start.

I also found a little hidden and out-of-the-way memorial in an industrial part of the Mitte District to another deportation point – one where 30,000 of Berlin’s Jews were systematically deported to places like Auschwitz and Theresienstat (a camp that is now in the Czech Republic). Although Jägerstätter’s memorial is in a neighborhood, neither of these markers look like they are noticed much these days by passers-by, and I’d be surprised if they are intentionally sought out by more than a handful of people each year. I find it provocative, but also perhaps inevitable, the degree to which the mere passage of time (maybe aided by a desire to forget or to not know in the first place) swallows up the stories that some people at one point went to great length to leave behind permanent and dramatic testimony to those of us in the future. What would those who pushed and fought for those memorials say to us if they could see how oblivious we are to them today… Maybe textbooks are enough…a lot can be learned through careful, summative semiotic description, but might there be something left out in a survey treatment that can only be found in the more granular stories, especially those grounded with tactile and other sensory components?

This leads me to my last point. On Christian’s insistence, we met up this evening for a bite to eat; yes, to catch up, but even more so, to prepare for our time together with the students on Thursday and Friday. (He picked a great restaurant in Nikolaiplatz, just a few blocks away from my hotel, one working out of with a building from the 13th century. I’m not up-to-speed on my photo-snapping skills yet; sorry, missed that one!) One added feature this year is a guided walking tour led by Christian through his own neighborhood to explore the culture of memory and the culture of forgetting that is evolving, and which typical Berliner’s contend with on a daily basis. I’m really looking forward to learning more about what can be gained by going into these more private and residential off-the-beaten-path spaces.

I’m hoping my post tomorrow will report that all of the students made it to Berlin without a hitch. 🙂

Some pictures from the day with captions are below. (Tomorrow there will be people in them!)