Berlin Beckoned me Back

Berlin and it’s History

Bienvenue and welcome back to Musée Musings, your idiosyncratic guide usually to Paris and art. This week, it’s Berlin and history. Last year, Nicolas and I flew to Berlin. I hate flying. There’s no choice when I fly to and from San Francisco. But when I learned that direct trains would connect Paris and Berlin starting last December, I knew how I would be getting to Berlin this year. Yes, there were hiccups. An hour delay leaving Paris and technical problems on our return necessitated a change of trains in Frankfurt. Both trips were closer to 9 hours than 8. But the benefits definitely outweighed the inconveniences. It is quicker and cheaper getting to and from city center train stations, it’s great not worrying about luggage restrictions, it’s relaxing and it’s better for the environment.

It was quite a week to be in Berlin, with all of its history coinciding with Flag Day in America. The date on which, in 1777, the Second Continental Congress declared ”That the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.” (Fig 1)

Figure 1. American Flag accepted by Continental Congress on June 14, 1777

The idea of commemorating the U.S. flag was first proposed in 1861, to rally support for the Union during the Civil War. Nearly 90 years later, President Truman signed the holiday into law. I remember celebrating Flag Day when I was a schoolgirl. I don’t ever remember anyone suggesting that we celebrate the Army on June 14, too. Although the same congress had established the Continental Army on the same date in 1775.

Despite being advised not to go through with it, advice he accepted when he brought it up before, this time, the commander in chief wouldn’t let it go. And despite costing a lot of money at a time when funding is being cut for what many people think are essentials, the birthday boy insisted on a parade to celebrate the army and coincidentally, himself. It’s odd that someone so aware of optics would let himself get into the situation he found himself in on the afternoon of June 14, 2025. The bleachers were empty. Everybody was celebrating something else somewhere else - either the new American Pope in Chicago or the No Kings Protests in one of 2100 cities around the country. He had the sense to move his inauguration indoors this year so nobody would notice that nobody was there. Too bad there was no way to hold his parade inside (Figs 2-4)

Figure 2. Pope Leo XIV & entourage, Chicago June 14, 2025

Figure 3. No Kings Parade, Boise Idaho, June 14, 2025

Figure 4. Aerial view of parade in Washington, D.C.

For 80 years, people have speculated about Hitler’s thwarted efforts to become an artist. Would there would have been a Third Reich if Hitler had been accepted at art school? And now we are all pondering this: if Robert De Niro had let Trump join the cool kids club all those years ago, would we be going through all of this? (Figs 5, 6)

Figure 6. Robert De Niro has never hesitated to say exactly what he thinks of Trump

If we take the long view, we can find precedents for what is happening in the United States that go much farther back than the Third Reich. Because what flourishes eventually fails, the life of an empire follows the trajectory of a living creature - birth to youth to maturity to decline to decay, as Thomas Cole painted in his melancholy series, The Course of Empire. (Figs 7, 8) The 20th century was hailed as the American Century. The 20th century is over. We are now 1/4 through the 21st century. But it doesn’t look as if we are going to go gently into that good night. It looks as if we are in for a bumpy ride.

Figure 7. Consummation of Empire, Thomas Cole, 1836

Figure 8. The Destruction of Empire, Thomas Cole, 1836

None of what is happening in the United States surprises me. But I guess I thought it would take more than one angry old man, 30 former Fox employees and Hitler’s playbook to bring us to the brink. As in so many things despicable, the former BFF (best friend forever) has led the way. When speaking at a rally celebrating Trump’s inauguration, Musk twice made a salute interpreted by many as a Nazi salute. (Fig 9) He dismissed those allegations. But two weeks later, he participated by Zoom (?) in an election campaign event for Germany’s far-right party. Musk spoke about preserving German culture. “It’s good to be proud of German culture, German values, and not to lose that in some sort of multiculturalism that dilutes everything.” “Children,” Musk told his audience, “should not be guilty of the sins of their parents, let alone their great grandparents …..” Rhetoric like this is not surprising from a supporter of Apartheid who convinced his former BFF that it was the white people of South Africa who suffered discrimination.

Figure 9. Elon Musk’s Nazi Salute during celebration of his Best Friend’s victory

Telling Germans that they shouldn’t apologize for what their grandparents or great grandparents may have done represents a very selective remembering of German history. What about what happened in Germany after World War II, from 1945 to 1989?

I learned a great deal about the history of Berlin from the tours I took when I visited last year. The exhibition on the Berlin Wall at the Cité du patrimoine et de l’architecture that Nicolas and I saw the day before we left for Berlin this year was an excellent refresher course. The exhibition, entitled ‘The Berlin Wall. A World Divided,’ puts the years from 1945 to 1989 into historical as well as global perspective - beginning with the Great War, to the Great Depression and then to Nazi control of the country from 1933 until 1945. The Nazis were defeated but Germany’s nightmare lasted for another 45 years. (Figs 10-12)

Figure 10. Adolf-Hitler Strasse signs being taken down in 1945

Figure 11. Soviet Army distributing bread in Berlin, 1945

Figure 12. Strainer made from helmet, 1945

The division of Germany and especially Berlin, after WWII between the western powers - France, England, the United States and Russia is the focus of the exhibition in Paris. (Figs 13, 14) The exhibition was created by Musealia, a company that designs exhibitions to tell “powerful stories about history’s most significant events, by adapting them into exhibitions that express their universal significance and ongoing relevance.” The exhibition contextualized the past 100 years of German and world history, focusing on the years of East/West separation - something that Elon Musk would be well advised to learn.

Figure 13. Germany divided between East & West, Berlin is in East Berlin

At this moment in history, what happened in Germany and to Berlin should not be forgotten. At first, when Berlin, which was geographically in East Germany, was divided between the three western powers and Russia, people who didn’t want to live in the east, could abandon their home and walk into the west. Until 1961, thousands of people did. The Communists had to halt this mass exodus. Which they did by building a wall around West Berlin. Intended to isolate West Berlin, it imprisoned East Berliners. The first iteration of the Berlin Wall was built in 1961. The history of the wall, references to it and remnants of it, are everywhere in Berlin. That history includes people falling to their deaths as they jumped to freedom, people being shot as they ran to freedom, people being captured as they crawled along tunnels that had been painstakingly dug to freedom.

Here are the statistics. “By 1989, approximately 40,000 East German citizens had managed to breach the border fortifications, 5,000 in Berlin alone. It is estimated that 75,000 failed escapees were arrested and sentenced to prison. Between 1961 and 1989, 140 people were killed by border soldiers or suffered fatal accidents at the Wall. Together with those who died on the GDR border, those who died at the Berlin borders before the Wall was built, and those who perished while escaping across the Baltic, an estimated 650 people lost their lives as a result of the GDR border regime between 1949 and 1989.” The exhibition recounts real stories to put a human face on the statistics. (Figs 15-18)

Figure 15. Helga Kuhn and her husband decided to leave before the wall went up. They jumped out of the window with their 3 year old daughter. The next day, Helga gave birth to a healthy baby! 1961

Figure 16. Bride and Groom in West Germany looking at Bride’s parents who lived in East Germany, 1961

Figure 17. Bride’s parents looking from their window at their daughter and new son in law. 1961

Figure 18. How people living in East and West Germany tried to keep in touch with each other

One section of the exhibition examines “Everyday Life in the GDR” (German Democratic Republic, East Germany). Here we learn that after the end of the Second World War, the GDR emerged as a Soviet-style dictatorship. The Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) took control over all aspects of people's lives, from education to employment. Individuals subordinated their interests to the community, the Socialist “collective”... The SED monitored and persecuted refuseniks, dissidents and opponents.

The SED regime controlled the economic system, too. The shortcomings of a centrally planned economy became increasingly apparent. Finally, a combination of economic problems and unfulfilled promises intensified people’s desire for political change. “The peaceful revolution in the autumn of 1989 led to the opening of the border and the end of SED dictatorship.”

On our first day in Berlin, we visited a museum of daily life in communist controlled East Berlin which recounted much of what we had learned in Paris (Figs 19-22). We also visited the two museums at the Berlin Wall. (Fig 23) Ours was the perfect learning experience. We saw the exhibition in Paris with some prior knowledge. And the exhibition in Paris was excellent preparation for returning to Berlin and seeing the sites again.

Figure 19. Grocery store in East Germany

Figure 20. Nicolas checking out the available products at the same store in East Germany

Figure 21. Food that could be purchased on the Black Market with West German currency

Figure 23. The street along which we walked (Bernauer Strasse) to the Wall Memorial

It seems to me that these reminders of Germany’s triumph over the separation imposed upon it after the war enables Germans to acknowledge the older blight. It is memories and reminders of both struggles that keep people vigilant against kings (clowns) of chaos like Trump and Musk and Bannon and Boris (Johnson - England’s former Prime Minister who brought Brexit but whose partying during Covid brought him down). Forgetting past atrocities almost guarantees that they will be repeated. There is too much at stake in Berlin. Reminders of what can be lost are all around.

When Nicolas and I left Berlin last year we knew we would return. Me because I was so happy there - yes, the city is a history museum and a history lesson, but it’s a vibrant, lively one that doesn’t so much impose the past upon the present as justify the exuberant present through references to the somber past. About 10 years ago, I took Nicolas to Philadelphia where I hadn’t been for some years. There was signage on old federal buildings that wasn’t there before. We read, among other unsavory tidbits, that the Father of our Country, rotated the slaves that were with him in Philadelphia. Do you know why? I do. Because if a slave lived in a non-slave state long enough, s/he could be freed. Washington had paid good money for those human beings, he wasn’t going to let an inconvenient law get in the way of his possessions. All men are created equal.

That same year, we went to Nashville and visited Andrew Jackson’s plantation, The Hermitage. Jackson, the war hero of 1812 and 7th president of the United States, was a slave owner and slave trader who, according to Wikipedia, “demonstrated a lifelong passion for the legal ownership and exploitation of enslaved black Americans.” Jackson, unlike Washington and Jefferson, never questioned the morality of slavery. When we were there, the signage at the slave quarters explained what life was like for Jackson’s slaves.

Now that Trump & Co. has deleted all references to diversity, equality and inclusion from federal websites, is the white-washing of signage at federal monuments far behind? Has it already begun? Berlin’s acknowledgement of past atrocities and triumphs serves as a warning to contemporary Germans and to everyone who visits the city. When you refuse to acknowledge the past, history shows that you are doomed to repeat it.

I also wanted to return to Berlin because of all the art museums. But even art museums give their visitors civics lessons. Here’s the text I saw at the entrance to the Gemaldegalerie, it’s written in both German and English. “The Kaiser Friedrich Museumsverein commemorates its Jewish members who were subjected to increasing persecution during the National Socialist dictatorship (1933-1945). Because of antisemitism, many of them were forced to flee Germany or were deported and murdered. In the 1920s the majority of our members were Jewish or had Jewish ancestry. With extraordinary public commitment and patronage, they contributed tremendously to the growth of the collections we support. Honouring them all, recalling their fate, and keeping their memory alive is, and remains, our duty. Kaiser Friedrich Museumsverein, 2020.”

I was at the Gemaldegalerie to see an exhibition of European paintings entitled, 'From Odessa to Berlin’. The introduction reads in part. “Following the outbreak of the Russian war of aggression on 24 February 2022, the most important paintings from the Odesa Museum…were moved to an emergency storage facility in Ukraine for protection. As there are close links between the museum in Odesa, the Berlin Gemäldegalerie and the Alte Nationalgalerie, a project was initiated with the aim of organizing an exhibition in Berlin..… Sixty paintings from Odesa were selected.…The project is an expression of the close cultural ties between Germany and Ukraine.” (Figs 24, 25)

Figure 24. Entrance to temporary exhibition of paintings from Odessa in Berlin

Figure 25. The Berlin Wall covered with graffiti

The museum refers to the “Russian war of aggression.” Nobody in Berlin blames the war on the Ukraine, nobody calls Volodymyr Zelensky a Nazi or tries to humiliate him by asking him if he has a suit, by telling him he doesn’t have a good hand to play. In Germany, even museums give succor to embattled allies.

Nicolas was every bit as eager to return to Berlin as I was. Last year he was at a glass art conference and didn’t have as much time to appreciate the city as he would have liked. He wasn’t returning for a history lesson and he wasn’t interested in all the museums I planned to visit. What drew Nicolas to Berlin was the opportunity to enjoy a lively city that celebrates diversity. It seemed like a particularly good idea to go to Berlin because he is en route to his new life in China. The idea, which upon reflection seems completely misguided, was that he would get his fill of tolerance and then more easily adapt to whatever restrictions he might encounter in his new life.

What I mean about tolerance, in reference to my son, is graffiti. In Berlin, graffiti is everywhere. Walls, including or maybe especially the Berlin Wall, are covered with graffiti. Whether you love it or loathe it, graffiti is everywhere but nowhere is it as everywhere as it is in Berlin, where it is accepted as both a means of personal expression and as an art form. And because it is legal in so many places, there no need to wait until dark and hope no police cars pass by to confiscate your cans and take you to jail. Sure there are a few rules/requests - like when you choose a spot, respect the work of others and when you are done, take your spray cans with you. Sensible and not very onerous. Next week a review of some of the exhibitions I saw and some of the meals we ate. Gros bisous Dr. B.

Sebastião Salgado’s Amazônia

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