There has not been a foreign invasion of the continental United States since the Battle of New Orleans was fought January 8, 1815. At least if you don't count the Mexican-Texan ones, but Texas wasn't a part of the U.S. then. And for 220 years we have had one government. So going to Germany in general and Berlin in particular is quite a contrast. We've been pretty fortunate.
A person born in Berlin on January 6,1920 (my father's birthday) would have been born into a country which had just six months earlier signed the Versailles Peace Treaty formally ending World War I. This treaty, among other things, obliged Germany to pay reparations, give up territory on all sides, and ironically (since the treaty was signed exactly 5 years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria) forced to accept sole responsibility for causing the war.
The Germany of that era was very weak and disorganized, with communists battling Freikorps in several cities, strikes by labor and military, attempted coups by communists and Nazis, and unemployment high. By 1924 inflation was ridiculously high -- million mark notes used for wallpaper and all that. Even so, the Weimar Republic managed to last until January 1933 when Hitler was appointed the 13th and last Weimar Chancellor. Then 12 years of National Socialism, a misnomer if there ever was one. Then the post-war gradual descent into east and west. Only the last 20 years have seen a united, wall-less Germany, but the scars linger. Germany in the summer of 1945 was a mass of rubble, and over the last 65 years much has been rebuilt/restored. After 20 years of reunification there is still a significant difference between east and west Berlin, but the gap is narrowing.
A map of the Berlin wall in the old part of the city. We rented an apartment in old East Berlin, Planckstrasse, about equidistant from the Brandenburg Gate, Unter den Linden, and Museum Island, so walking was the locomotion of choice, even with the daytime temperature hovering around freezing. Max Planck was a theoretical physicist and was one of the few who recognized Einstein's theories as belonging in the important category, as opposed to the crackpot category.
Checkpoint Charlie from the old American Sector looking into the Russian Sector. This little guard shack is a reproduction; the original is in a local museum. The Wall was in front of the new buildings.
Looking from the Reichstag toward the Brandenburg Gate. The double row of bricks going straight down the street marks the location of the Wall. The Tiergarten is on the right, and the new American Embassy is next to the Gate, right by the Gate. Thanks to Fox News manufacturing/reporting/leaking a supposed terrorist threat, the Reichstag was closed and I didn't get to go inside. Top of the list for my next trip.
Bebelplatz from Unter den Linden. (All of you German speakers will be interested to know that according to the Michelin guide, the street was named for the lime trees which grew along it. Wonder how that made it by the editor. Or how the lime trees made it through the winter.)
Anyway, this was Opernplatz before the end of WWII, no doubt because the opera forms one side of the square. (Opera on the east, Humboldt University building on the west, St. Hedwig's Cathedral in the rear left corner behind the opera -- not in the picture). The main campus buildings of Humbolt University are across Unter den Linder from the square. Einstein taught there for 20 years before leaving Berlin for the U. S. in 1933. Bebelplatz is a fairly normal European square, but my interest in it was because it was the site of the book burning orchestrated by Joseph Goebbels, and held here in 1933. Some 20,000 books written by Jews, Communists, and others not liked by the Nazis were burned. Many of the books came from the library at Humbolt.
Fahrenheit 451
The memorial for the book burning -- empty shelves, supposedly enough to hold 20,000 volumes. "In the middle of this square on May 10, 1933, National Socialist students burned the works of hundreds of free-lance writers, journalists, philosphers, and scientists." Also at the memorial, the words of Heinrich Heine: "Where they burn books, they will also burn humans in the end."
Remember this before you go burn your Harry Potter book.
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