Herta Heuwer is attributed with the invention of Currywurst when she obtained some ketchup, Worcestshire and curry powder from British soldiers just after WWII… it’s a staple on menus all over Berlin, so I found a recipe in German cookbook and translated it. Yale and I might have to try this out when I get home:
A spicy Currywurst Sauce that can be used for all types of dishes
2 large red or yellow onions chopped very finely 2 × 400 gm can of tomatoes with juice 250 ml ketchup 1 tablespoon mustard 2 tablespoons sugar 4 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce 1 tablespoon paprika powder 2 tablespoons curry powder 1/2 teaspoon chili powder salt and pepper to taste 1 tablespoon oil
Warm oil over medium heat Add the onions to pan and cook over medium heat until soft, 8 to 10 minutes Add curry powder, paprika powder, chili powder and continue to cook while stirring, for 1 to 2 minutes Add tomatoes and juice to pan, crush thoroughly and stir through Stirring add ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, sugar, mustard, salt and pepper to taste Bring to boil and lower to simmer, stirring occasionally until thickened. 20-25 minutes. Puree mixture in blender and strain through a sieve. The recipe makes at least 500 ml of sauce. Grill some sausages, slice and cover with warm sauce. Add to the sauce covered sausage you can add some additional Paprika powder, Salt, Pepper, Chili Powder, Curry Powder, Mustard, or finely chopped onion, to taste.
Serve with Fritten, or on a bun*
Guten Appetit!
* Quite a lot of places seem to serve their Currywurst with Asian fried shallots on top – Icelandic hotdog style!
Berlin! Some pics grabbed while out and about in Berlin – we stayed right near Alexanderplatz (at the Park Inn by Raddison), so were in and out of the square quite a bit.
Doesn’t matter what time of day it is, there is no way you can get photos around here without people in them. I tried.
The famous world clock – I really like this thing. Angus didn’t care for it much at all.
East Side Gallery – some of the artworks haven’t changed which is kinda cool. Especially nice to see the political images not being grafitti’d. When I was here last, I remember writing my name near He-Man’s loincloth, but that image seems to be gone now.
This image I remember quite well. It seems to have gotten larger and been touched up, but the style of it is memorable.
The Siegessäule Monument… or Victory Column is one of the most important national monuments in Germany and considered a ‘must see’ in Berlin (apparently… didn’t see it last time I was here as we came to the Palace via subway!). It was built in 1864 on the Konisplaz to commemoration the wars of Unification. It was moved to its current location in 1938 to be near monuments dedicated to Bismarck, Moltke and Roon – because it sounds like glorifying those sorts of people was what Nazis were into! The Victory at the top of the Column is also known as ‘The Golden Else’… not sure if Else is supposed to be a name or the English meaning of ‘else’. It’s a mystery.
On our way out of Berlin, we had an hour or so to visit Charlottenburg Palace… I have been here before, and wrote quite a bit about that visit and the history of the place. So I’m not going into that all over again, but there was an entire section of the palace that was closed last time that we managed to go into, so here’s a massive photo dump:
Started out as a nice day. Didn’t stay that way.
Mecklenberg Apartment rooms:
The Old Gallery:
Sophie’s Mirror Chamber:
I can’t believe I took this exact same picture (on the right) of the Pegasus in the ceiling without even meaning to…
Audience chambers:
The one original ceiling that survived WWII:
I also took this exact same photo on the left last time too!
And of course a bunch of pics of the Porcelain Cabinet which is still as much of an assault on the senses as it was last visit.
The Royal Chapel:
Last visit in 2018, we only managed to see the portion of the Palace as above. Today, we were able to go upstairs and see many more galleries and rooms.
Three portraits of imaginary and actual ancestress of the Hohenzollernss:
Funeral Helm (Death Helmet) of the Great Elector, Later called the “Helm of the Empire”. Unknown armourer, Berlin 1688. Copper, hammered, fire gilt.
Medallions showing portraits of Duke Albert of Prussia and his consort, Anna Maria of Brunswick. Jakob Binck, c.1555, silver, partially gilt.
Anna of Prussia, Electress of Brandenburg. Daniel Rose, c.1610. Oil on canvas.
Elector John Sigismund in Electorial Vestements. Unknown artist, c.1612, oil on canvas.
Elector Albrect Achilles, art of the Altar of the Order of the Swan, c.1484. Unknown artist. Oil on canvas.
LEFT: Crown of the Queen, unknown goldsmith, Berlin, c.1700. Gold, hammered, chased and enamel. CENTRE: Imperial Seal, Samuel Stall, c.1700. Iron, silver and gilt. RIGHT: Imperial Orb, Unknown goldsmith, Berlin, c.1700. Gold, enameled, diamonds, rubies, garnets.
Crown wooden storage box, c.1700. Timber and painted.
Brandenburg Electoral Sword. Simone do Giovanni Ghini, c.1469, reworked in 1539. Silver, engraved, gilt, enamel; partly steel, partially gilted.
Then, there was examples of the nearly 8 tonnes of silverware that Frederick I accumulated in the 1730s. So much of it and so little description of any of it. Mostly elaborate food service objects and table centrepieces – while wandering through all these cabinets of silverware, all I could think about is the poor schmucks whose jobs it would have been to, 1) keep track of it all to make sure none of it went wandering, 2) manage the team of underlings who were no doubt responsible for polishing it so it didn’t tarnish and 3) deciding which pieces were going to be used on the table each time the family sat for a meal! It’s bad enough deciding what to cook for dinner let alone laying an elaborate table every bloody meal.
So much shiny silverware! And yet, this represents only a fraction of what there was at one point – Frederick the Great and his predecessors used their fantastical table settings as a disturbingly opulent display of wealth and of course power. But they also kinda treated it like portable wealth – and twice melted down most of the royal silver to fund wars: The Second Silesian War (1744-1745) and the the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763). Each time the wars went and peace returned, he would commission replacement gold and silver table services!
I think these tall columns decked with angels connected with wreaths were probably centrepieces – and front he look of them, likely used at Christmas time with fresh cut greenery. No information on a lot of these pieces though.
Snuff Boxes collected by Frederick The Great: In the 18thC Frederick II collected richly ornamented snuffboxes with trims of precious gemstones, and made of solid stone, or precious metals. The accounts of the King how he commissioned over 200 snuff boxes, and always kept them close on hand on tables, in boxes or in cabinets at royal palaces. Made variously from red jasper, agate, gold, silver, diamonds, enamel, glass, gauche, watercolour, ivory, and other semi-precious stones and materials.
Centrepiece in the shape of an ornamental beaker, is part of the vast store of silverware presented to Prince Wilhelm and Augusta Victoria (1858-1921) by Prussian towns and provinces on their wedding in 1881. This beaker is far more Renaissance in style than Baroque.
The beautiful view from the upstairs salon down across the gardens.
We did manage to take a short walk around the gardens before the weather rolled in.
And, I promised to take Angus for lunch at Samowar – the Russian restaurant that is right near Charlottenburg Palace which is listed as one of Berlin’s best dining establishments. Though I mostly remember it for its kooky ambiance and their layered Russian honey cake.
My memory of the Russian tea-room ambiance didn’t disappoint!
And neither did the meal. I wasn’t particularly hungry so opted for a creamy mushroom soup for lunch, while Angus had the wild boar sausages served with sauerkraut and pierogi, and of course we had to have an obligatory slice of Russian honey cake – which Angus is now very disappointed about, as it is much better than what we can get at home in Brisbane! *glass shatters forever*
Berlin Bear No 1: Hotel Bear near Alexanderplatz! We are staying in the Park Inn by Radisson for a few nights in Berlin. Some work around the Eurocup infrastructure and hopefully Angus will get to see some cool stuff while we are here.
Managed to get some work done and find time to head over to Museum Island for a while. We started at the Nues Museum (which ironically holds a lot of the oldest stuff) because the Altes Museum and the Bodes Museum were closed on Monday *and* Tuesday! Le sigh… you guys are killing us!
Egyptian artefacts aren’t really my usual cup of tea, but we are here to see what we can see.
The Deceased in front of Osiris – unfortunately the plaque didn’t give me any provenance/age for this piece.
Necklace of semi-precious stones and pearls – lapis lazuli, silver, faience, cornaline. Middle Kingdom, 12th Dynasty.
Fragment of a Cult vessel with inlays. Old Kingom, 5th Dynasty, c.2490 BC, sycamore, faience, gold leaf.
Twelve antique scarabs, set as a necklace and earrings. Middle Kingdom, 12th Dynasty, c. 794BC, Egypt, steatite (glazed), glass.
Praying statue of King Amenemhet III, Middle Kingdom, 12th Dynasty, c.1800BC
LEFT: Painting from a Tomb: Representation of the deified queen Ahmose-Nefertari. RIGHT: Painting from a Tomb: Representation of the deified Pharaoh Amenhotep I. New Kingdom, 20th Dynasty, 1186-1070BC. Nile mud, stucco, painted.
Fragment of a pillar: King Seti I in front of the god Osiris. New Kingdom, 19th Dynasty, c.1290 BC
Head of a statue of Amenhotep III with nemes-scarf and double crown. New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, c.13399-1351 BC.
Book of the Dead of the Mistress Keku hieroglyphic. Ptolemaic period, c.332-330 BC.
Stela of Hor praising the god Re-Harakhte. 3rd Intermediate Period, 22nd/23rd Dynasty, c. 946-722 BC.
Funeral mask. Late period. 25th-26th Dynasty, c.750BC, Thebes West. Wood and painted.
Anthropomorphc coffin of Hatbor-Ibet, with winged goddess. Late Period – Early Ptolemaic Period, 400-200 BC, Abusir el-Meleg; wood, primed, painted
Lid and case of the coffin of the woman Hat, Ptolemaic, c.332-30 BC Akhmim; wood, stuccoed and painted.
God Anubis in the shape of a lying jackal. Middle coffin of Mentuhotep, outer surface decorated with pairs of eyes. Inner coffin of Mentuhotep, inner and outer surface decorated. Burial goods: model of rowing boat with crew; female offering bearer; bowl and three jars for beer. All Middle Kingdom, 12th Dybasty, c.1800BC, painted timber objects and pottery.
Family Burial: mummy mask of Aline and Mummies of three daughters of Aline. Roman Imperialist period, 100-200AD, Tempera painting on canvas.
Four canopic jars (jars for entrails) with lids in the style of the four sons of Horus (protective deities), 3rd Intermediate Period, 21st-24th Dynaasty, c.10th-8thC BC, limestone.
Shanti without inscription and shabti of Nefer-in-Ra-Neith from his tomb. 3rd Intermediate Period, 22nd/23rd Dynasty c.945-715 BC, & Late period 26th Dynasty, c.570-526 BC.
Crocodile with snap-action mechanism. New Kingdom, c.1540-1075 BC. Thebes, wood.
Base for a barque of the royal couple, Natakamani and Amanitore, Meroitic Period, c.1-25AD, Wad Ban Naga Isis Temple, sandstone.
Stela, King Nastasen and his mother in front of the god Amon, c.330BC, granite.
Statue of a squatting hawk, upper part modern supplemented, donated by pharaoh Amenhotep III, New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, c.1388-1351 BC.
Bracelets, earrings or hair-rings. Gold, gold plated silver, mid-3rd millenium BC. Treasure trove L.
Armrings mentioned above:
Bronze Age exhibits had zero English descriptions, so we didn’t loiter here long…
Very cool and old but more detail please!
“Berlin Golden Hat”, Gold, c.1000 BC, location unknown, probably Southern Germany, and detail:
Bust of Nefertiti, one of the most famous art treasures of ancient Egypt. Considered a masterpiece of sculpture of the Amana period. Made during the reign of Pharoah Akhenaten, New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, c.1353-1336 BC. No photos allowed, so stolen one from the internet!
The museum was large, but due to the lack of English signage, and not having a huge interest in Egyptian artefacts, we weren’t there long. Outside and off to the Berliner Dom. The cathedral is nowhere near as awesome an imposing as the Aachen and Cologne cathedrals – possible because it’s just not as large, and also because well, it’s so new… all things being relative.
The Berlin Cathedral is located at the Lustgarten end of Museum Island. IT’s a Protestant church built between 1894 and 1905, in a Neo-Renaissance/Neo-Baroque style. It is the largest Protestant church in Germany and has lots of important dead people in it.
In WWII the cathedral was severely damaged. Allied air raids on the nearby area of Burstrasse, saw all the altar windows destroyed and large cracks in the dome, and corner towers. Later in 1944, during some of the worst air raids in Berlin, the dome and its lantern were heavily damaged. A canister with liquid fuel set fire to the wooden cladding that lines the copper roof as insulation. Firefighters apparently couldn’t reach it and the entire dome fell into the cathedral, going through the floor and into the crypt below. Urban legend says that a cathedral organist Fritz Heitmann kept playing even with the dome totally destroyed and open. After the war, the cathedral was assessed to by about 25% destroyed, and then looters caused even more damage – stealing pipes form the organ etc.
There are 270 steps to the top of Berliner Dom – needless to say, these are Angus’ photos.
Reconstruction on the cathedral didn’t commence until 1975 when funds and expertise became available at a cost of some 150M Deutschmarks. At the moment, the facade of the cathedral is undergoing renovations at a cost of some €1.6M. :/
You have to admire the workmanship and dedication that has gone into rebuilding Europe to be the way it was before WWII. They could have bulldozed the lot and replaced these glorious buildings with steel and glass monstrosities – but thankfully there is an appreciation for art and history that overrules that mentality.
Check Point Charlie was our next port of call, but not before we stopped for some lunch. I had intended to introduce Angus to the Berlin Currywurst Museum – but it’s permanently closed now. C’est la vie! We found a near little tapas bar, which was the nearest place out of the rain… longing for Rabelot in Barcelona!
Check Point Charlie (for all its importance in the Cold War and to the US etc) really is the most underwhelming of Berlin sights. Complete with McDonalds and about twenty souvenirs shops, there is nothing else here but a long line of smiling and oblivious tourists waiting to have their photo taken. I’m obviously too young to remember the tense situation that existed on this site post-WWII, but I remember reading about the failed attempt of one East Berliner attempting to flee to the West. He got badly wounded – he got caught up in razor wire fencing and struggled to free himself and ended up being left to bleed to death, all the while being watched by the world’s media with neither side approaching to save him, because it might trigger an enormous international incident. Horrific things like this happened here – but let’s line up for our smiling happy snap photos with our fingers in a V for peace sign.
After wandering around there for a bit we went looking for the Jewish Musuem. This building is a research academy which holds archives, a library and is dedicated to tracking displaced persons and Jewish history.
The Jewish Musuem and directly to the right, the Holocaust Tower.
Designed by Daniel Liebeskind, the tower is deliberately filled with voids and uncomfortable angles designed to focus visitors on the impersonal genocide of over six millions Jewish people across Europe in WWII. The building is very effective as an art space – it is cold and impersonal, full of sharp angles and a jagged layout. It deliberately doesn’t ‘flow’, and is designed to feel confronting.
A wishing tree… many of the exhibits here are artistic in nature and designed to be interactive. This tree is bedecked with leave bearing the wishes for peace and prosperity of visitors from all over the world. The museum opened in 2017 and despite the pandemic has already seen 11 million visitors.
This room memorialises the important of the Sabbath – but I didn’t really get it. It was a room filled with coloure chain curtains hanging from the ceillingwith information plaques stating how important it is to not work on the Sabbath.
Listening spaces are scattered throughout this curved hallway of chained curtains. There are people offering thoughts and prayers in different languages for the murdered Jews of Europe.
A couple of formal galleries of paintings of eminent Jewish persons were also included in the permanent exhibition.
Grave markers and stones, c.1930s. Of the 100,000 Jewish soldiers who fought for Germany in WWI, 12,000 of them lost their lives. That’s right, Jewish people fought for Germany, only for Germany to turn on them a few years later. During the Napoleonic Wars and WWI, rabbis served in the military as chaplains, and wider Jewish community took this as a symbolic gesture of the wider social acceptance of their religious practices.
The Hall of Fame: this space is designed to celebrate famous Jewish people who have contributed to history, arts, sciences etc.
From when Adolf Hitler was appointed Reich Chancellor in 1933, Jews were deprived of their civil rights. Daily harassment, anti-Jewish measures and increasing violence pushed them to the margins of society. State authorities robbed Jews of their assets and drove them to emigrate. Many Jews hoped that things would change and waited ot see what would happen. However, the violence excesses of Kristallnact (the Night of Broken Glass), in November 1938, convinced many it was time to flee. With the start of the war, emigration then brace me almost impossible, and Nazi rule culiminated in the mass murder of European Jews. This installation documents the slow and inexorable removal of civil rights for Jewish people… day by day, orders were created that slowly eroded their citizenship and personhood status.
This was one of the most depressing spaces in the museum, the wall hanging lined both sides of an enormous hallway listing every single edict enacted to suppress and oppress the Jewish people. It stated from 1933 and went thought until early 1945, listing day after day the restrictions being placed on Jewish people across the Third Reich in varying countries as they became occupied territories. The frog in a boiling pot is all I can think about in this room… that and how American conservatives are currently enacting legislation across their country that is restricting the rights and freedoms of their citizenry, even as I walk though this oppressive place.
Silverware and family heirlooms taken by Nazis from Jewish families.
Jewish stars… printed en masse. :’(
Map showing the deportation of Jews out of Germany.
A wall of displaced persons after liberation.
This art installation is about the recompense that the German government was ordered to give the survivors of the Holocaust. Many Jewish people who wanted to get on with their lives, but had had all their assets stolen and had lost all connections with family, ended up stuck in a grindingly slow burn ratio nightmare waiting for compensation. Many wished for nothing more than to get out of Germany and emigrate to Israel, but with the means, they were many of them forced to stay amongst neighbours who had turned a blind eye, or were still openly hostile; sometimes for as many as two decades before their compensation claims were verified (in no small part due to the Nazi regime attempting to destroy as much paper evidence of their crimes as possible as the end became apparent).
The most famous art installation here is the ‘Shalekhet’ – the Fallen Leaves, by Israeli artist, Menashe Kadishman . It is made from 10,000 faces punched out of steel plate and scattered around the ground of an area called the Memory Void. It is the only empty voided space in the Libeskind Building that you can enter. The work is dedicated to Jews killed during the Shoah, but also to all victims of war and violence. Visitors are invited to walk on the faces and listen to the sounds create by the metal faces as they clang and clank together which echoes through the void. It’s a very evocative installation.
After this we went to the the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. I have been here before and found it very moving. Built on the former premises of the Gestapo, these stellae are grave like in their dimensions. It covers 19,000sqm and the stellae range from 1m to 4.5m in height as the ground below them undulates up and down. It’s a solemn and quiet space, though you can hear the sounds of the city in the distance.
Around the corner is the Brandenburger Tor. With the EuroCup road closures all over the place (useful to see how they have deployed the security and infrastructure etc), we were unable to get close to the Gate.
Enough walking around in the rain, we sought shelter in a local bakery only to find that it was closing, so then resorted to as Starbucks (Urgh!) only to back out when we realised we didn’t want to spend money at a Starbucks! So instead decided to call it a day and return to the hotel to get some more work done.
It’s Monday, in Europe… and you know what that means! Everything is closed!
So as much as was possible, we arranged for today to be a transit day between Hanover and Berlin with some drive through visits to a couple of small towns in the Hartz Mountain areas for a bit of a sticky beak knowing that we’d get to these villages and likely nothing would be open. All good – day of scenic driving it is.
First stop was the town of Goslar, which is mostly known for its super cute medieval altstadt (old town) and its half timber houses. There is also an Imperial Palace here with historic murals (Monday: closed) and a cool church St. Cosmas and Damian with some fragments of 13thC stained glass windows (Monday: open). The area is also known for its silver and copper mining in the Rammelsberg Mountains which have been operating for over 1000 years in the area (which does my head in, because *nothing* is that old at home!), and there’s a Mining Museum in the area (Monday: closed), and a cool underground railway with waterwheels and stuff (Monday: closed), but most of that will just have to wait until I come back and visit the area at some time in the future. Which I totally intend to, because this place must be so fairy-tale cool during December when the Christmas Markets are on.
The Altstadt was really beautiful – perfectly preserved, beautiful brick and timber buildings with slate roofing, and pretty little turret windows everywhere.
Most of these buildings are restaurants with small holiday accomodations above.
The cobblestone streets and squares are gorgeous to look at, but not a lot of fun when you’re having problems walking. Stupid fucking knee; can’t wait to get it sorted.
There’s civic art and then there is this ‘thing’. It’s right outside the tourist information office and beside the old church – but with no placard or explanation whatsoever. It seems really out of place. It is apparently called the “Goslar Nail Head” and no one is quite sure what it means, but I have a feeling it’s nothing good!
The market church in Goslar is a Protestant Parish church called, St Cosmas and Damians. It is named after those two saints who were early Christian doctors believed to have performed many miraculous healings of sick people in the Asia Minor region in the 3rdC AD. The two saints are considered to be the patron satins of the sick, as well as doctors and pharmacists. The church itself is first mentioned in historical documents from the 12thC but the construction of the existing church is predominantly 14th-15thC work.
This guy started playing the organ not long after we entered the church – it’s amazing listening to these enormous instruments filling the space as you visit.
These are apparently 12thC stained glass panels from the original church – which would be super impressive if I hadn’t just been in Saint Chapelle in Paris just a few weeks ago! I’m so lucky!
It is a very pretty little church to explore, but compared to the majestic cathedrals of most cities in Europe, it is a fairly quick visit.
I would definitely like to come back here in winter for the Christmas markets – the more you wander through the town centre, it has a really lovely atmosphere and every street has a beautiful old world medieval feel to it. It’s a gorgeous place.
I was remarking to Angus on how the Cologne Cathedral was built across a period of over 600 years with the same design and architecture, but spanning over generations of people all sticking fastidiously to the plan even though they would never be the people who would see the project completed… and I compared it to the difficulty you have these days getting even five people to agree on what a bus shelter should look like?! Well, apparently in Goslar they don’t have that problem – someone/s here have decided that a throne is integral to superior bus shelter design!
This cute little hotel is called the Romantix Hotel Alte Münze – and I took some pics of it because it is the perfect location and exact amount of quaint I will require for my next visit!
This little train runs tourists around the town to see all the old buildings… bit Disneyeque imo, but no doubt some with young children would enjoy it.
As we were getting ready to leave – there was a parade coming through the town. We have’nt been able to ascertain what exactly it was to celebrate/honour, but there was a drummer and lots of flautists and a fair bit of prideful pomp and costume.
Love me some good heraldic banners!
After this it was back on our scenic route to Berlin via Wernigerode.
We passed many ‘unsightly’ windmills that were no doubt killing birds and upsetting whales or whatever the fuck that ridiculous orange-cockwaffle keeps saying about renewable wind energy equipment. :/
We also went through loads of beautiful countryside with corn fields, wheat field and (because, Germany and beer!), fields filled with hops!
Wernigerode is another village which has a fabled timber housed old town, including a cool medieval Town Hall or ‘Rat Haus’ (Monday: closed) and a well known, leaning old Crooked House. There’s also the Wernigerode Castle (Monday: closed), and a wee musuem (Monday: closed), which has views to the town, but we didn’t drive up as everything is shut up there. You gotta be somewhere on a Monday when you’re travelling and being on a drive may as well be it, but it’s sad to be so close to lots of cool stuff and it’s shut. We did see the Drei Annen Hohne train station, where the Brockenbahn steam trains run to Mt. Brocken, and this was open, but we didn’t really have time to go tootling around on steam trains for the entire afternoon… not when we were chasing some food, having skipped breakfast, and still had to make it to Berlin (and preferably before peak hour!).
This fountain was a little hard to decipher – apparently that is the Branch of the Past which has witches and Roman gods on it (there were witch trials held in the Hartz Mountain areas, so there are witch motifs all over here and Goslar – on food labels, on souvenirs, everything), and on the other side is this weird dude who represents the future and he has a frog apparently, though Lord knows why? Might need to dig into that a bit later at some other time!
The Marktplaz… and (closed) Rat Haus.
So many restaurants to choose from – but as you get closer to them, you discover most of them are cake and coffee shops, designed to sit and watch the world go by. The ‘world going by’ was notably rather quiet today – because MONDAY!
The very empty town square which must get extremely busy in full Christmas season also.
We ended up at the Wernigerode Brauhaus for lunch – and we got a very quizzical and confused look from the publican when neither of us ordered a beer! Upon looking around, everyone was sitting in front of a large stein of something. Oh well… neither of us particularly like beer, so it’s all so thoroughly wasted on the two of us. Instead, it was schnitzels and burgers for our main meal of the day, and skipping dinner tonight I think. I can’t seem to order a meal without pommes frites so usually ended up sending back a plate full of fries.
This is the tourist information office in Wernigerode. What a cool little building.
I like these – I think Brisbane needs one. Wait, we might have one somewhere, I’d never know! Never played tourist in Brisbane because I think of it as somewhere ‘with no cool shit to see’.
The castle overlooking the town with an ominous sky… after a brief wander around and a stop for lunch we hit the road to head to BERLIN!
Berliner Dom – I’ve been here before, but it’s on the agenda for Angus to visit tomorrow.
Berlin is a very beautiful city full of gorgeous old buildings – which never fails to boggle the mind when I consider how heavily bombed the city was in WWII. The efforts and funds involved in rebuilding are phenomenal. Because we are here for three nights, have work to do while we are here, and I felt we had probably had enough of the pokiest of pokey hotel rooms in the Altstadt s for a while – I had booked us a larger room at the Radisson Park Inn. Seems to have been a good call. We have a proper desk to work at and a couch space for a change so no need to sit on the bed and work on laptops.
View front he 35th floor – very cool. This is the only really tall building around for some reason…? Tomorrow we hunt out security and infrastructure overlay information surrounding the EuroCup and then hopefully hit up a museum if we have time.
We embarked on a short one hour drive from Hanover to Bergen and a gorgeous drive it is. Through lovely verdant and cool-looking woodlands, with a bright blue and beautiful sky today; fields full of green corn stalks waving in the breeze, and people wandering through potatoes, blueberry and strawberry crops picking their own in baskets to take home. It is an outwardly peaceful and beautiful rural scene, but entering the Bergen-Belsen War Memorial, you perceptibly feel a mood shift.
Some of the images in this post are disturbing.
Bergen-Belsen has a long and complicated history compared to some of the other Nazi camps – it is primarily known as a Nazi Concentration camp in what is today, Lower Saxony in Northern Germany, but It was originally established as a Detainment camp to hold Prisoners of War. By 1943 it had morphed into a full concentration camp for slave labour, and parts of the camp were still being considered as an ‘exchange camp’ where Jewish and Russian hostages were being held with the intentions of exchanging them for German prisoners being held in other countries. The camp was later expanded to hold Jewish prisoners being transferred from other concentration camps as a Receiving and Extermination centre.
After liberation in April 1945, it became a place for Displaced Persons – a place where survivors waited and struggled to find ways to rebuild their lives, or waited for immigration permissions to other countries, or waited while they desperately tried to find lost family. The camp was primarily know for the period that it was used as a concentration camp – 1941 to 1945 – as it was during this period that almost 20,000 Soviet POWs and a further 50,000 inmates died here… died, and/or were killed depending on how you look at it. :/ There was a complete disregard for the requirements for housing of prisoners in accordance with the Geneva conventions and overcrowding, lack of food, poor sanitary conditions and at some periods, complete and utter failure to provide basic shelter caused outbreaks of tuberculosis, typhoid fever, typhus and of course dysentery – which led to a know 35,000 deaths in the first few months of 1945 alone. While these poor souls weren’t executed per se, their results were the results of systemic neglect.
When the British liberated the camp on April 15, 1945, they found 60,000 prisoners contained in the camp (despite efforts from the retreating Germans to do away with as much of the ‘evidence’ of the camp as possible), most of whom were seriously starved and extremely ill. They also found approximately 13,000 corpses laying around the camp that had not yet been buried.
The imposing and extremely solid and heavily brutalist style of the gates and the large Documentation/Education Centres are designed to immediately convey a sense of hardship, immovable weight and even cruelty through architecture – and I have to admit, it’s extremely effective.
The initial POW camp of Fallingbostel was established at the Bergen military training area as early as 1939, inside the Wermacht base. From June 1940, this camp was moved further south to be where the Bergen-Belsen would remain for the duration of the war. It was initially used as a POW detainment centre and by the summer of 1941 the Bergen-Belsen was expanded to include the Oebrle and the Wietzendorf camps to hold Soviet POWs.
The Education Centre feels like an enormous concrete bunker – unyielding, cold, sharp and impersonal.
One of the first things visitors are confronted with is the sheer size of this place. The photograph below was taken by RAAF for British Intelligence – they were aiming to get imagery of the Wermacht Military Base that was known to be just outside the City of Bergen, but unknowingly also gained imagery of the early POW Detainment Camp known as Bergen-Belsen.
From the image on the left, it looks like just an extensive military base, with notations on the right, you can see how close the city of Bergen was to the Concentration Camp, and also how close the village of Belsen was. It is actually on the way from the train station where prisoners would be dropped off and then marched in a straight 6km line directly to the Concentration camp. After the war, civilians would say they had no idea of the atrocities that were happening behind the barbed wire fences, but the camp was so close, the townsfolk could apparently see the ragged and starving people, and many of the them were hired to provide food and supplies for the SS (and presumably the prisoners meagre rations) stationed at the camp. Civilians were threatened and even arrested if they were caught interacting with prisoners, or even for the simple act of throwing food over the fence.
The layout of the camp altered over time, but it largely started out with Russian POWs housed in tents or literally sleeping outdoors regardless of weather. These prisoners were put to work building the eventual layout of the camp seen below. Courtyards were used for roll calls and ‘selection’ mustering – where people were inspected and deemed fit for work duties or selected for ‘injections’ (more on that later).
In summer of 1941, the Bergen-Belsen camp was expanded and held tens of thousands of Soviet POWs, but the spring of 1942, more then 40,000 of them had died due to insufficient food, shelter and medical care, as well as the brutal and ruthless treatment they reactive a the hands of the Wermacht. By April 1943, part of the camp was transferred to the authority of the SS – where things inevitably got worse. From September of that year, Italian military detainees were also being imprisoned at Bergen-Belsen (eventually when Germany and Italy formalised their alliance, these Italian detainees were given citizenship rights, but it didn’t improve conditions for them much at the camp). From Oct 1944, captured soldiers of the Polish Army were also being imprisoned at the Bergen-Belsen POW camp and by January 1945 the SS had commandeered most of the camp as the German Army was being pushed back by the Allied forces.
Inside the Documentation centre, the brutal architecture continues; visitors feel as if they are moving through an enormous cavernous tomb. Below are some of the identification documents belonging to detainees.
It is somewhat counterintuitive that the Nazi party was so driven to precision in their paperwork and administration given that they then were compelled to try and destroy as much of it as possible towards the end of the war. I believe this demonstrates the mindset that they truly thought they were in the ‘right’ in their persecution of the Jews, and that there would be no repercussions for the war crimes they committed at these camps… they didn’t see these documents as ‘evidence’, they certainly didn’t see their detainees as people, they merely saw the paperwork as logistical information for scheduling and resource deployment.
Front page of the office German Wehrmacht magazine of 5 November 1941. The German caption on the bottom right reads: “1000 out 657,848 – According to the Wehrmacht High Command’s report for 19 October – 657,948 prisoners were taken during the double battle of Bryansk and Vyazma. Our photograph shows prisoners being transported from reception camps.”
In April 1943, when the SS took over part of the Bergen-Belsen POW camp, they established a concentration camp for Jewish prisoners. These prisoners were to be exchanged for Germans being held abroad. From Spring 1944, the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp also served as a camp for prisoners from other camps who were no long able to work. From August 1944, female prisoners from Auschwitz were transported to Bergen-Belsen to be then transferred onto other concentration camps as slave labourers. After December 1944, Bergen-Belsen became the destination for evacuation transport for all concentration camps near the front lines – this is where the cattle cars of people and Death Marches were leading to as the Germans were retreating on various fronts.
During the final stages of WWII, Bergen-Belsen concentration camp became a site of mass deaths, as the concentration camps near the front lines were disbanded and evacuated in order to prevent the prisoners being liberated by Allied troops. Due to its location solidly inside the German Reich, Bergen-Belsen becomes one of the main destinations for these evacuation transports. It is estimated that between Dec 44 and April 45, 85,000 men, women and children were taken here on over 100 transports and Death Marches. Conditions at the camp were disastrous – hunger, thirst, overcrowding, disease, and systemic neglect saw at least 35,000 die here in those months. The number of prisoners is an estimate only as just before the liberation, the SS tried to destroy all of the camp’s records to cover up the extent of their crimes. In the final phases of transporting prisoners, lists were rarely kept and new arrivals were not registered, as they had no intention of tracking these people who they believed would soon be dead.
Photographs of Jewish prisoners: there are so many women and children in these pictures.
These photographs taken in the days immediately after liberation of the camp are crushing – thousand died *after* the British arrived due to being so far gone with disease, or being so malnutritioned that feeding them actually caused them great harm. The British were faced with the gut-wrenching job of burying the 13,000 corpses they found stewed around when they arrived as well as burying the hundreds that died each day as they were trying to save them.
Typical records following three Soviet prisoners and their tenure at Bergen-Belsen.
There are not a lot of artefacts at the Memorial, a lot of infrastructure was destroyed by retreating Germans, and the British too because conditions were so unsanitary that it was doing the people more harm than good to be living in the buildings etc. As the camp outlived its concentration camp status to become a Displaced Persons camp – most of the objects that reminded people of the appalling recent history seemed to have been destroyed during that period.
This areas image taken by the Royal Air Force on 17 September 1944 shows the ‘Star Camp’ yard where prisoners are standing on a roll call. During the roll-call, prisoners usually had to line up in rows of five, if they couldn’t stand they would be selected for extermination.
Finds from the site are mostly mundane household objects from the Displaced Persons period of the camp’s history.
Looking down from the upper gallery of the Documentation Centre, the displays are full of the photographs (several of which are in this post) as well as computer terminals where people can come to research the histories of people known to have been deported to or from Bergen-Belsen. There are also extensive immigration records of people leaving here for Israel and the US etc., after the war.
Back outside, the beautiful summer day seems in stark contrast to the bleak and desperate history of this place.
It’s easy to forget that it wasn’t just the Jewish population that were persecuted by the Nazis. This detainment/concentration camp in particular housed a LOT of Russian POWs, most of whom were Christian Orthodox. There are monuments and a small Christina chapel here to honour those of Christian religions.
Between 1941 and 1945, more than 70,000 people died in the Bergen-Belsen POW and Concentration camp. Many victims were buried in mass graves in the grounds of the former camp father the liberation in April 1945. There are currently 13 mass graves and 15 noted individual graves, and over 20,000 victims of the Bergen Belsen POW camp are buried in the Hörsten Cemetery, which is around 600m away from here.
This mound of raised earth in the image below is one such mass grave, filled with the bodies of prisoners that were killed or died of disease and/or malnutrition, at the end of the war. This mound is believed to have the remains of 800 people, and it is only one of 13 around the camp. As you walk through the complex, these burial mounds are scattered throughout in what looks like a normal peaceful parkland, but is anything but.
The Commandant of Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp – Josef Kramer (10 November 1906 – 13 December 1945). Originally Hauptstrumführer (Commandant) of Auschwitz-Birkenau from May to Nov 1944, he was transferred to Bergen-Belsen from Dec 1944 until its liberation in April 1945. He was nicknamed ‘The Beast of Belsen’ by camp inmates; having been personally responsible for gassing prisoners at Auschwitz, and actively known to have participated in selection roll calls, beating prisoners who resisted, Kramer had a vast reputation for brutality. He was most certainly directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of people.
Kramer, August 1945, awaiting trail.
After the war, many of the former SS staff were tried by the British Military at the Belsen Trials. Over the period in which Bergen-Belsen operated as a Concentration camp, as many as 480 people worked there are guards or members of the commandant’s staff – including 45 women. In Sept-Nov 1945, 45 were tried by the military tribunal in Lüneburg, including the camp’s former commandant, Joseph Kramer and 16 male SS guards, 16 female SS guards and 12 other former kapos. Eleven of the defendants were sentenced to death – including Kramer. The executions by hanging took place barely a month later in December 1945. Fourteen of the defendants were acquitted, and of the remaining 19, one was sentenced to life in prison (but was eventually executed for a different crime), and 18 were sentenced to prison for up to 15 years. By June 1955, most of those sentences were significantly reduced on appeal or plea for clemency (fuck knows how they got clemency!), and all were released. Ten other Belsen personnel were later tried in 1946 and 1948 with five of them being executed – but of the over 480 staff of the camp, most of them disappeared back into civilian life seemingly without serious repercussions for their part in perpetrating war crimes in Bergen-Belsen.
After leaving the Memorial, we decided we needed somewhere a little lighthearted to spend the remainder of the day, so we made our way back. To Hannover and went looking for a beer hall for some ciders and bratwurst maybe. So we made our way to the famous Biergarten Lister Turm.
Which was just what was needed to process and digest everything we had seen today. I’ve visited Dachau, and Auschwitz in the past, so was fully expecting today to be sombre and potentially confronting, so it was good to be able to talk over things with Angus and decompress a bit. I think he learned more about WWII atrocities today than he had in all his years of formal education.
We seemed to have happily arrived in the middle of some sort of local strawberry festival – so cider based cocktails loaded with strawberries were the offering of the day. It was super sweat but went well with some currywurst.
So instead decided to call it a day and return to the hotel to get some more work done.
