quidnovis61

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall....

 

But it isn't the anthropomorphic egg from 1797 that I am talking about but rather the  wall itself...and finally the fall of a fair egalitarian Utopian idea gone horribly wrong. An idealistic dream that forced on its people a concrete wall crowned by barbed wire and glass shards, tenaciously guarded by sharp shooters with a License to Kill.

 

I could write many pages on The Wall/Die Berliner Mauer...and many pages have already been written....but I am not a political journalist. Its just a blog - I write what my senses tell me....Every time I visit Berlin, I am hit to the very core of my soul... and today, as I write this, it is 9th November 2014 - the 25th anniversary of The Fall of The 155 km long Wall and its 203 military towers....

 

How I rejoice with the people of Berlin....

 

The atrocities of Nazi Germany has yet to settle on Europe although it is nearly 70 years ago. There are fewer and fewer people alive to tell the gruesome tales of the horrors of that war. But Die Berliner Mauer was/is the present times ...it was 1961...

 

How could such a thing happen?

 

When E and I visited Berlin for the first time, Berlin was celebrating the 20th anniversary of The Fall. We would go to cafés and shops and elderly people would talk to us of what they remembered. It was heart wrenching to hear their stories of oppression and brutality....and failed escapes. There is a looong list of words I would use to describe the 30 years that suddenly, one day, divided families, lives, cultures, lifestyles - and history. West Berlin & East Berlin....

 

I am glad that in 1989 history proved Kipling's first line of the poem wrong...

"Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet..."

but zoomed right into the third line....!!

"But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth....!

(although it was The Empire he was talking about. Funnily enough he wrote this in 1889.... exactly 100 years!)

 

The more films I see, books I read, documentaries I see, The Wall museum I visit, the people I talk to in Berlin, the white crosses near Brandenburg Tor I see ... the more I am aware of the appalling and senseless tragedies that befell the average common man. Just people. Just like you and me...

Gruesome.... Awful.... Monstrous....Repugnant....Frightful....Savage....Unspeakable...

Horrendous.... Repulsive.... Oh, just a few on my list....

 

The most poignant photo that I have seen of The Wall is taken in August 1961... This little boy was playing on the opposite side of the Wall from his family when barbed wire just rolled in and divided the city. The soldier helped the boy safely over the barbed wire to his family despite his stringent orders to shoot at sight.... What I think is poignant in this photo is not so much the little boy being saved but rather the soldier looking over his shoulders and hoping he is not being seen, but helping, nevertheless. There is a sense of humanity that surpasses the revolting orders issued by the then Powers-That-Be.

 

I have tried to find out more about this particular photo that has haunted me for decades but unfortunately I have not found anything about the fate of this soldier. I was happy to see it at the Haus am Checkpoint Charlie (the museum) in 2009 and took the photo.

 

 

Here are more photos on the Internet:

http://www.vintag.es/2012/05/berlin-wall-pictures-in-1961.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14515913

 

These were taken when E&I went there in 2009....

 

 

 

 

Berlin today is a fast moving city and yet has a sense of its past clinging inexorably to it - not quite comfortable with the new, not quite ready to be rid of the past. It will take many generations to shake off this veneer. The people who lived through these 50 years must grow old and die before it can all turn around. It is a long and heart wrenching process for many - to re-establish themselves socially, economically, politically and culturally on par with their West Berlin brethren.

 

I hope from my heart that the word "Re-unification" will not just be on a political level.

 

Apart from the brutal remnants of The Cold War, Berlin has its share of the remnants of WW-II as well. Beautiful modern architecture jostle and juxtapose with grand old buildings making Berlin a thoroughly exciting city for my senses, my walking shoes and my Canon.

 

Like I said, I could write any amount about Berlin - it fascinates me to no end. But the church....that is absolutely fascinating! It is called the Kaiser-WilhelmMemorialChurch (and nearly unpronounceable "Gedächtnis-Kirche" in German). It is a beautiful neo-Romanesque church built in the late 1800s and partially destroyed by Allied bombing in 1943. There is now a huge crater on the top of the steeple -"lovingly" called The Hollow Tooth. I have read that there were plans to rebuild it in the 50's but while the rest of devastated Europe painstakingly restored their cities to near pristine perfection, Berlin chose to keep it as a constant reminder of the destruction and futility of war....and instead, built a fabulous, beautiful, ultra-modern, cubistic, futuristic, octagonal monolith like structure beside it as the new church. The hall in the old church serves as a Memorial Hall with many photographs before and after the bombing.

 

Here are some old photos of the Church and below are my mine.... Enjoy!

 

 

Signing off for now!

C.S!
(Cresat Scientia)

(SORRRRYYYY... I wrote it in October and totally forgot to publish it...it was left in the "Save" file...!!)

 

Summer has given way to autumn.

 

Life has returned to a kind of somnolent normalcy after the intensive, effusive, short  Scandinavian summer... when everything happens in explosive urgency - (You see, we know what awaits around the corner - the long cold grey icy winter ready to ambush us). The colours now are so vibrant and radiant - bursting forth like a veritable van Gogh on my senses, nature's last and lovely smile of the year. L.M Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables says: "I am so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers."... I agree with her. Post-summer-Octobers are a time for retrospection and meditation.... with many flashbacks to feed my hungry soul.

 

I remember the second hand bookshops behind Park Street - (on Russell Street, Camac Street and so on) in Calcutta - where I spent many a teenage hour browsing. They are now fitted with modern shelves of light wood and are all alphabetically organised. Smartly dressed youngsters ask politely:

Any particular book you are looking for, madam?

(HEY! when did I become “Madam”? OMG...I was a girl in plaits just the other day...)

 

The musty smell of old books are now long gone, the piles on the floors where one had to be adept at Callisthenics in order to see the spines of the books are a part of my memories. Must one now have a “particular” book in mind...? The art of browsing is surely a dying one.

 

But here in Sweden (in the past 10 years or so...), my joy has returned! I go to all the Second Hand stores that have mushroomed in my town and our neighbouring towns.... They are run by volunteers from the Swedish Salvation Army, the Swedish Red Cross, Humanitarian Aid, the Free Churches. All these "shops" have a little shed outside which are always lit and the doors kept unlocked - some of them even have ramps so you may lug in heavy things like sofas etc. People leave in their clothes, shoes, books, crockery, cutlery, lamps etc that they no longer want and it is sold in these shops. The money thus earned (and often even clothes, toys etc) all go to various international aids - mostly to war-torn areas or wherever the need is.

 

Thus it is aid,  re-cycling...and pleasure! Three wonderful words....

 

Having a few minutes to spare when in town, I dive straight to the book-department.... and oh! what joys lurk in those shelves to ambush my senses... there are lovely oooold armchairs (also left there by some one) where you can sit and browse.... to my dismay, I have been so engrossed once that I forgot Time and came late to an appointment. She had a good laugh though when I told her why....and was not cross with me, thank goodness!

 

Rows and rows, shelf after shelf of books - what treasures! There are a few authors whom I just can't leave behind... James Hilton for example...(and as a result I have 3-4 copies of Good bye Mr Chips and other books by him, both in Swedish and English) A. A Milne (how can I leave poor Pooh Bear and Christopher Robin all alone on a shelf?), A. J Cronin (oh so much pleasure as I was growing up) James Herriot (such nostalgia!) ...to name but a few.....

 

And then there are books that I have wanted to read and suddenly the book is just THERE... waiting for me! At times it is a book I have read and do not have in my bookshelf and I just want to "have it". At other times I have bought a book and didn't find it to my liking - I have gone back to the shed and returned it for a re-sale - hoping it will give pleasure to someone else...the double proceeds thus helping some one in greater need in a far away war-torn country...

 

I bear these riches home triumphantly to sit in my sofa and spend many a dark Scandinavian winters day in an escapist mode - in an armchair, under a warm electric blanket, a cup of coffee (and OF COURSE...a piece of dark chocolate).

 

What an abundance of wealth for the ravenous soul.

 

Signing off for now.

C.S!
(Cresat Scientia)