The Free Weekend (delayed by Blogspot issues)
By Christopher
Williams
As weekends
go, there’s a million different things to find and explore, especially in a
city as big as Berlin, and so for this weekend myself and many others decided
to find out what the city has to offer if you go out to make memories.
The first place my group and I went to after
class let out that Friday the 25
th was near the outskirts of Berlin,
the Olympiastadt.
Figures 1 and 2: The Olympic Cauldron during my visit VS the Cauldron
in 1936 (1)
The Olympiastadt
is an impressive sight, and remnants of a different time can be seen in nearly
every aspect of its construction. Built for
the 1936 Olympics, it is a collection of various different sport arenas and
fields of play, some of which still bear the scars of their history in Nazi
Germany. After I’d gotten back that
night, I looked into the history of the stadium as it really intrigued me. I learned something about the 1936 Olympics that
changed the face of the games, and it wasn’t just Jesse Owens making a name for
Black athletes. Germany, in keeping with
their flair for grandeur, was the first country to turn the lighting of the Olympic
Cauldron a national spectacle
”At the first Torch Relay, each of the 3,422 Torchbearers
traveled one kilometer following the route from the site of the ancient Olympic
Games (in) Olympia until Berlin” – Anastasia Antonopoulou, “Ένα σύμβολο ειρήνης που κατασκευάστηκε από μία
εταιρεία… πολέμου!”
Finishing this
journey, the runner ran through swastika adorned crowds up to the Cauldron,
where it was lit.
Originally meant to
connect the Nazis to some ancient power, this ceremony had such an impact that
every game since has tried to make it bigger and better.
It was truly incredible to see this very real
piece of history in person. In line with this, I noticed something else while
walking the fields: A rare instance of Nazi history that had been rarely
altered.
The Olympiastadt had five towers
around it to represent the five original Germanic tribes (more callouts to the
Aryan bloodline) and a large bell tower.
During the war the bell tower was destroyed, and the bell fell and became
cracked.
This bell was left virtually
untouched since then, except for some slight altering.
Figures 3 and 4:
Cracked Olympic Bell
As
seen in the right-hand figure, the old swastika at the bottom has a portion of filled
in. This was very interesting to notice. It seems even small symbols are considered taboo
if they are full and un-doctored. After completing
the rounds and seeing many similar pieces, we made our way back to the
apartments. After lounging for some time
after this, we decided to go to a brauhaus that had been recommended to us
through the group. On our way to it we
passed a tower of sorts, a large needle-like structure placed in the middle of
the city, and next to it was an old church.
Seeing the disparity in size and origin, I also briefly looked into
their histories. As it would turn out,
the church seen in Figure 5 is the oldest practicing congregation in the entire
city! The initial construction beginning
in the ~ 1270’s, this building, or more importantly the congregation residing
there, has an incredibly long history [2]. The TV Tower, for comparison, was finished in
1969 and was the 2nd tallest tower in the world at the time. The city and the architects responsible for
its incredible improvements are real dreamers.
Figures 5 and 6: The Berlin Radio tower and the Marienkirche
Passing the two,
we made our way to Hofbräu München, an incredible German tavern where the best beer
I’ve had in this country is served in liter sized glasses.
Amazing.
The place was packed and the live band playing at the time was
especially fond of American classic rock, which I thought odd, as all of the
other patrons there were German or foreign to America, at the very least.
Nevertheless, they knew their John Denver
just as well as they knew their Hasselhoff, which really surprised me.
The food being traditional German meat dishes
and pretzels, my main diet these past two weeks, I stuck to my
diet of wheat and barley that night.
Figure 7: Recovered photo of that night in the tavern. Blurry as the tavern looked to us at that point
The next morning
(~1100), I awoke and decided to take the day and recover. That afternoon, I took a walk on my own to
parts of the city that I’d been interested in. The first one was the American church in
Berlin. Noticing the term “American” in
a country other than America, I was immediately drawn to it. What I found was not a museum or ruins but in
fact another practicing parish, one that happened to be having some sort of meeting
or study at the time I walked in, and so most of my time was spent around the
outside, admiring the statues and the buildings use of buttresses in modern
construction (a strengthening method that has been used to support large, tall
ceilings for centuries).
Figure 8: The American Church in
Berlin (Notice the buttresses sticking out of the walls)
After the church, I grabbed
a döner wrap and made my way over to the famous Tempelhofer Feld.
This I’d known about before coming to Berlin,
but I wanted to see it in person, as I knew it was the base of an incredible feat
of logistics.
The field is a converted
airport runway, and it was used following the end of WWII to get around the
Berlin Blockade, instituted by the Soviets to stem American trains, freights,
and trucking into Berlin.
To get around the
Ruskies and help the Berliners, a General by the name of Lucius D. Clay came up
with a plan by which the US would fly in all the necessary rations every day on
cargo planes.
To do this, He used Tempelhofer
Feld.
Figure 9: Lunch on the old runways
In 1948-49, the Berlin
Airlift was in full effect, and all day and night planes were landing being unloaded
and taking off again. I learned through
some independent digging afterwards that in a one-day demonstration, 1,398
flights landed and delivered over 13,000 tons of coal without mishap (3). This is about a flight a minute, for a full
24 hours. Absolutely wild. Just the sheer volume of material coming in
is enough to make ones head spin, but to be managing it across where it needs
to go, where it was procured, how much it cost, how can this process be streamlined,
and all the other problems I can’t even imagine? Truly an awesome operation.
This is what
really gave me insight into how Berlin became the cultural icon that it is
today. Less than a decade after the
bloodiest conflict in human history, former enemies put aside differences and
did what was best for the people, showing that those conquered still had a life
to live. If I was growing up In Germany
at that time, I wouldn’t be able to imagine how much my perspective of the
Allied nations would be changed in just a few short years. Going from the Nazi propaganda films of Goebbels’
twisted mind to seeing firsthand the immense effort and care put into the
Berlin Airlift by the would-be “American Devils”. I can’t help but wonder what it must have
been like for the young people at the time.
Overall, this was
a great weekend and an eye-opening time for me.
My immersion in this culture has been (mostly) fantastic, and I hope I
can cherish the memories long after this experience ends.
Christopher Williams
Mechanical Engineering
NUCC '19
About the Author:
A prolific
online blogger (one published work) and a stay-at-home potato at heart, Chris
is into beer, brats, and Bradke.
Hailing
from the Wiesbaden-Mainz area of the Rhine river valley, he spends his days thinking
about useless trivia and the like (i.e. Water is a beverage whose flavor is its
temperature.)
References:
[2] Landesdenkmalamt
Berlin (Berlin Marker Registry):
- Obj.-Dok.-Nr.
09011280,T
- Hausnummer: 8
