Memorilizing the past

This is a difficult subject that the German people have to face with their particular history. When most people think of Germany in general they think of Nazis and the terrible things that their leader did to the rest of the world and the people that lived there. When we think of Germany we see the images of concentration camps full of Jewish people starving to death and the being gassed and burned alive! But that was only a certain time period, however recent; there have been many other things that have happened in Germany too.


So the German people have to decide what they would like to remember about their selves and what they would like for the rest of the world that comes to visit will remember when they come. I think that they have preserved all that they can of the troubled Nazi past; we visited many WWII memorials that were both sided and unbiased. They tried to display everything that had happened during and before the war. We visited Dachau, the first concentration camp, started in 1933, which was very well preserved with the barracks that the prisoners had to live in, but we also think of only the Jewish population that was held there. In fact the camps were started to hold mostly the opposition to the Nazi party. They also held homosexuals, gypsies, and yes Jews. But in Berlin we visited many memorials that were to the murdered people of the Holocaust, the memorials were not only to the Jews but to all people that were killed at the camps. I think that Germany has done a great job of helping us remember the past but also letting us remember it in a calm, more relaxed way. For example the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, by Peter Eisenman, which is just a simple formation of perfectly straight blocks protruding from the ground. This place has no pictures or writing anywhere, it is just a memorial site for peace of mind and to reflect on why this memorial is here.



the memorial by Peter Eisenman

Another even more recent part of Germany’s past is when the country was divided after the war, here we find that the whole country was split down the middle making East and West Germany. This was a rough time for the Germans when they split families, friends, and relationships between people. The westerns were usually allowed to cross the borders and visit their friends and family however the Easterners were under stricter rule and weren’t allowed to cross the borders to West Germany or to many other countries. The East was under communist rule and when we think of communism we feel the strict rule of being told what to do, what to were, and how to act. This was the way of the East but they had everything they needed to survive too. They were without a few of the luxuries of the west, such as bananas and other restricted goods. After the fall of the wall many of the Easterners came to west for a better life and to reunite with their old family and friends from before war. There can still be a tension that is felt between the two sides of the country from the older residence, but I felt that it had been mostly resolved with the reunification of the country almost 20 years ago now. They have managed to save a section of the wall with the tower and the space of “no man’s land” that is always there to remind them of an earlier time.



the section of the wall that has been preserved, picture taken from the West side.

I think that the German people have done a great job in realizing that they cannot change their past and have decided to let the rest of the world see what they have done too. There are many museums, memorials, and monuments to what has happened in this country for the past 80 years, but they have also managed to restore and rebuild many of their older castles too. This reminds us that less than 100 years ago the German people were ruled by kings and noble royalty. So for this to be such a new country is the sense of democracy, I think they have done well in preserving the past.



the Hohenzollern castle