Category: Berlin

“Everyone was afraid, even physically afraid, of Heydrich. Because they knew: in terms of consequence, this man with his primitive, simplistic intellectual faculties was superior to them, to Ohlendorf, Schellenberg and Six. He possessed two seemingly contradictory qualities to the final consequence: he felt hatred out of personal resentment and he was a utilitarian fanatic, unencumbered by any non-personal resentment.”

This line was written by Bernhard Wehner (1909-1995) who studied law and then joined the Nazi Party in 1931, later on becoming an SS officer. He was held in an American internment camp after the end of the Second World War and he then reinvented himself into a criminologist and journalist, writing about his experiences during the war. The whole line about someone in a position of such power being intellectually challenged seems so often why civilisations seem to go wrong, when the talented people aren’t making their way to the top. Heydrich must have had some political and organisational talents to get where he did, although perhaps his ability to get things done regardless of the morality behind them is why he got so far so quickly. Biographers seem to suggest that Heydrich was arrogant but saw himself as a competent man of action rather than as a visionary, eager to please senior members of the Nazis.

I hadn’t realised at the time that the museum has a special exhibition on Heydrich, but it’s really very good and it’s free of charge and at the museum until 10 June 2025.

I mentioned about the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich and how that killing is still celebrated today. But it’s what happened in Lidice, then located in Czechoslovakia, that remains truly shocking. The Nazis wanted revenge for the killing of one of the architects of the Holocaust and a mistaken connection to the assassins meant that Lidice was targeted. The Nazi regime, under the orders of Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, implemented a plan to completely eradicate the village. On 10 June 1942, all men over the age of 16 were rounded up and shot. The women were sent to concentration camps, and the children were either deemed “racially suitable” and sent to German families or deported to the Chełmno extermination camp. The village itself was systematically destroyed, every building was demolished, the cemetery was flattened and a river was even rerouted to remove any trace of Lidice. It was all designed to make the village an example of what would happen to anyone who questioned the Nazi regime. As is evident from the image above, the Germans wanted it literally removed from the map but they wanted the fear of what happened there to be remembered. After the war, the village was rebuilt near its original site as a memorial to the victims. It’s a location that I’d like to visit, it’s relatively near to Prague and so next time I’m in the city I’m hoping that I’ll find a way to get there.

There’s more about this at https://www.lidice-memorial.cz/en/memorial/memorial-and-reverent-area/history-of-the-village-lidice/.

Another one of my etymological posts as I’m fascinated by the development of language. I was intrigued to read that Spittelmarkt is a reference to the Saint Gertrude Hospital which once stood at this location and that in itself is the same derivative as Spitalfields in the UK, a contraction of the word ‘hospital’. The Latin word was ‘hospitale’ and it was the Germans who contracted it, which then was imported to the UK, although we still use the original Latin word of course. Although most references in the UK are to the Spitalfields in London, there is also one in Norwich.

Anyway, I digress, but I thought it was intriguing…

I’ve done the tour of the Reichstag before, but I feel the need to do it again and thought I’d go for an evening slot this time. It’s free of charge, but visitors have to submit their details in advance and then provide a number of options for what time they want.

I got there a bit early, but they said it was fine and so I went through the security process. The security guard mentioned to me that I might want to put my coat back on as I had to walk back outside to get into the building. I said that I was already wearing my coat and he commented on my bravery, which I agreed with. But, I digress. The process is a bit confused as they managed to put me and some others in a German group, although it makes little difference other than I didn’t understand the introduction they gave. But, after that, you’re on your own anyway. Actually, the management of the whole arrangement was in places hopeless, they were barking at some visitors for not standing in the right place and the toilet facilities are chaotic. However, it’s a high turnover venue and the staff probably get fed up with idiots, and since they were nice to me, I was happy.

The bit at the base contains a history of the building which was comprehensive and interesting, as it’s certainly had a fair few difficult decades during the twentieth century.

It’s a clever design where you can walk up a slope and gain some considerable height and then look down onto the building, with another slope taking you back down again.

There’s the top with extensive views over Berlin.

Once back down again from the slope, it’s then possible to go out on a viewing platform.

Looking inside the building.

Beautiful.

The Brandenburg Gate.

And when back down to ground, a final photo of the Reichstag. There was a period where it looked like the Parliament building would be in Bonn, which had been where the capital of West Germany was located, but a decision was made to bring it back to Berlin. That was surprisingly close in terms of the vote, 338 votes to 320 votes for the move. The building’s redesign into a Parliament was overseen by Norman Foster between 1995 and 1999, with the keys formally being handed over on 19 April 1999. It’s certainly worth a visit for anyone visiting Berlin, as long as they remember to book tickets in advance as they don’t allow walk-ups and I note a number of angry negative reviews about that situation.

You learn something every day…. I didn’t realise that Woolworth, although I find it hard not to write Woolworths, has such a large presence in Germany. Although I associate the name with a failed UK retailer, it seems to be a thriving and expanding discount retailer in Germany. The story of this whole arrangement begins with Frank Winfield Woolworth, who pioneered the ‘five-and-dime’ concept in the late nineteenth century in the United States. This success crossed the Atlantic in 1926, with the first German Woolworth store opening in Bremen and the chain grew rapidly, becoming a familiar presence in German towns and cities. However, the German arm diverged from its American parent company in 1998, becoming an independent entity following a management buyout. This move proved crucial to its survival, as the original F.W. Woolworth Company declared bankruptcy in 1997 and things all became a bit sub-optimal everywhere for them.

Despite this newfound and exciting independence, Woolworth Germany faced its own challenges. In 2009, the company filed for insolvency, burdened by debt and increased competition. Since then, it’s had a series of buy-outs, financial issues and corporate investors, but it has pulled through and they now have over 700 stores in Germany and are aiming for over 1,000. Since 2021, they also own the rights to the Woolworth name in the UK and Ireland, although they don’t seem particularly engaged with opening stores at the moment although they haven’t ruled it out. They are though looking to increase the number of stores in Poland, so maybe there will be a revival of the brand in the UK at some point…

For reasons I can’t recall as it’s nearly a month ago, I didn’t take a photo of the outside of this restaurant, so here’s an inside one. It’s a very well reviewed Vietnamese restaurant and I thought it would provide a suitable evening meal for me.

I ordered the Saigon Special beer as I hadn’t had it before and it was clean and easy going. I mean, it’s not a Goose Island Bourbon County Stout, but it went well with the food.

The chicken skewers in a satay sauce, with the meat being tender and the sauce being flavourful.

This main course was a little ridiculous, although it’s not really entirely evident from the photo. However, there are two large pieces of battered chicken there and a massive mound of noodles, with the whole arrangement taking me nearly half an hour to get through. The food was delicious though, the chicken was tender, the batter was crispy and the noodles had a depth of taste. I did feel for a while like it was a BeardMeatsFood type challenge, but I ploughed on through.

The cost of the whole meal came to something like £15, which I thought was excellent value. The reviews are very positive, although a few people actually complain that there’s too much food, but there’s no pleasing everyone I guess. It felt like a family run operation and the atmosphere was very laid-back, but it felt a welcoming location and everyone was polite and personable. The food has a depth of flavour so it’s recommended anyway in my view, but the size of the meal certainly makes it even better value. All really rather lovely.

And just a photo of Berlin Cathedral at night.

This reminds of something that happened when I last visited this building, something like eight years ago now. I remember there was a young girl, probably aged about 12, who wanted to use the toilets. She was sent away by the staff member for not having any money and she was visibly upset. I have remembered that and have remembered just about nothing else about the cathedral. There is an argument that a religious building should prioritise compassion and hospitality, but certainly it was a moment of unkindness that overshadowed my memory of the rest of the building.

I’ve been meaning to visit here for a while and it’s a substantial museum which is free of charge and seems very well financed. I must admit, I thought it was a pretty dreadful museum, but perhaps I was expecting something similar to the POLIN Museum of Jewish History in Warsaw, an incredible institution. This is one of few museums that I’ve left absolutely none the wiser on anything than when I went in (with one exception), which seems a sub-optimal situation, but I understand that many people have different experiences. Actually, I can’t think of any museum where I’ve been where I’ve left thinking I have no story to tell at all of my visit. This is particularly unfortunate as I try and find Jewish museums of varying sizes around the world and they’re often really impressive places. It takes around 10 minutes to get in because of the security processes that unfortunately are needed because of the nature of the museum, something which is a sad indictment of our times in itself.

The corridors were designed to give a feeling of “unease and disorientation”. Yes, that worked, it made me dislike the museum. Which struck me as the problem, for me, of the museum which is that it seemed to want to tell me things rather than show me them. I rarely knew where I was in the museum.

Some steps which are meant to cause unease I suppose. The museum refers to it as “our impressive staircase”, but it just seemed steep to me.

And a “voided void”.

There’s wasted space all over the place, but then there are pinch-points where visitors can’t see anything because people are clustered together.

I don’t really understand why a museum is built with so many unuseable areas and odd angles.

I like when museums display paintings like this so that the back can be seen, so I had a moment of thinking the curators had been careful with the design. But, no, they’d just put artworks on the back of each other, so they might as well have just put them on the wall. I’m not entirely sure why they’ve put the description of the artworks so near to the ground either.

The exception I mentioned earlier on is that I hadn’t seen much before in museums on how Jewish people lost their possessions during the war in terms of the actual sale of them. There were some interesting documents on this, showing how they were forced sales of possessions but very little money was gained.

The museum’s cafe. To add to my “unease and disorientation” I couldn’t work out how to get out as the exit door was marked as closed, so a helpful staff member showed me a rear exit so I could return to the street. I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t work out how to get out, which seems something of a basic function of any building. To be honest, this museum seemed to be a prime example of what happens when something is over-financed and has too much money. It becomes style over substance. It’s not as well reviewed as the POLIN Museum in Warsaw, but that is one of the greatest museums in the world and does an incredible job of explaining Jewish history, culture and doesn’t try and make people feel uneasy by making the building feel inaccessible. I also remember my visit to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, which I accept is telling just a certain part of the story of what Jews have faced (although obviously a big bit), but I remember the care taken into making that museum accessible, engaging and the displays made it emotive. Similarly, the Joods Historisch Museum in Amsterdam which told the story in a powerful and coherent way, although I know their positioning within a former Synagogue added somewhat to the atmosphere.

Anyway, having noted my numerous whinges, the museum is still well reviewed and although there are plenty of people who agreed with my assessment, there are far more who like what has been done here. There are hundreds of reviews which like the design and how it makes people feel uneasy, but everyone is different I suppose. I think I’m just an advocate of “show, don’t tell” and so I couldn’t connect to this museum at all and I was disappointed by the disjointed nature of the whole place. But, having noted that, it was free and so I can’t much complain. Although I evidently just have. For me, I wanted to see more about Jewish culture, community and how they had lived in Germany over the centuries, but there was very little about that in the bits of the museum I went to (which may or may not have been a comprehensive visit as I couldn’t work out where I was some of the time).