The Day of the Deutschland Museum

I wrote my prior post on an early Wednesday morning, instinctively guarding the mental space of the day before. I don't have an absolute political affiliation. I vote for the Greens in Australia because they are the left-of-centre party with the most influence over Labour, in what is a relatively centrist country. Sometimes socialism makes sense to me, particularly in the light of potential global collaboration over climate change mitigation. But I know for sure that democratic socialism is alive and well in the Nordic countries, and that is a system I can rely on to work for most people, most of the time. Socialism (with free elections) in a rich country like Spain or Australia is as yet an unknown. 

Anyway, I finished my post and descended to the reception area before any other customer. The two workers on the night shift were both women, and were enjoying a cigarette break outside the hotel in the pitch dark of 5am. I worried about their safety, unsure whether the relative isolation of the hotel made things better of worse, but eventually they came back in and started playing the dance music I had been hoping they would. 

Breakfast was of the high standard I'd come to expect from an Ibis. I would be taking the S-bahn into Alexanderplatz and changing for Potsdamer Platz a couple of hours later. I was glad I took a stroll along the River Spree the day before, while the weather had been good, for today's forecast was mostly rain. Indeed: I found the café I was after, not far from the station, just as the drops made their appearance. 

Maxim's was a glitzy, modernist affair decked out in bright orange and more subdued browns. I had found a space I could simply 'be' in, in this busy, upmarket suburb, and while the people-watching was disappointing due to umbrellas blocking people's faces outside, and the more businessperson vibe of the place, I did enjoy a slice of Red Velvet cake while I waited for my designated time to enter the Deutschland Museum. 

Eventually I walked a block to the site, and found Berlin's Korean Cultural Centre almost right beside it. (In Vienna, too, I spotted the Austrian version: it was as if the Sydney site had alerted the European ones to my presence and made sure they would stand out to me. Something relatable and at the same time posing a new question: what sort of identity is forged between German-speaking Europe and Korea?)

Anyway, the museum involved fun and educational moments. I thought I knew plenty about Germany's history, but there was a lot of new information to absorb, sometimes presented with humour, always with interactive elements, and the many rooms we passed through were works of art in themselves. From cavernous, wooden, floor-to-ceiling décor evoking the Middle Ages, to the inside of an U-bahn carriage (the trains that connect Berlin proper) replete with videos playing where the windows should be, the Deutschland Museum earned the right to call itself immersive. 

I learnt the following:

- The earliest form of German writing was in the form of runes

- In addition to being the root language of Dutch, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian, it also provided the root for Frisian

- The Protestant ideas of Martin Luther coincided with the popularisation of the printing press - perhaps the first form of mass media. This allowed his work to be influential without precedent 

- In and around the Thirty Years' War between Catholics and Protestants, people belonging to what is today Sweden, Denmark and France entered the conflict. France fought for the Catholics, and the Nordic countries for the Protestants

- There was a lot of opposition, for a long time, to Germany becoming a distinct nation, as opposed to a collection of independent communities

- The three colours of the German flag, black, yellow and red, have no meaning

- Hitler's soldiers used crystal meth while fighting

- The average wait time for a new Trabant car in the DDR was 12 years

- In Medieval times, Jews were invited into the lands that comprise modern Germany only to be severely restricted in what jobs they could undertake. One of those jobs was moneylending, and the majority developed a hatred of them over a perception of their high interest rates. There was antisemitic violence in those days, too. 

Perhaps the most fun moment was when I constructed a song with lyrics chosen by multiple choice on their interactive computer. Apparently I was successful enough at thinking like a white, heterosexual man trying to woo a lady, for '[I did] not get a basket' - i.e. I was not rejected. Instead, a woman, high in a tower, pulled 'me' up through a basket attached to a rope, evidently swayed by my poetic efforts. Her animated hair was long and blonde. 

In a quiz on the Enlightenment period, though, I scored 2 out of 8, and the program told me 'the fire of the Enlightenment does not burn bright with you' - a bit harsh, perhaps, but at I appreciated the humour of its metaphor. 

I'm glad I had this time to enjoy a carefully thought through and meticulously designed museum, even if my time in Berlin felt rushed for the most part. 

I would gladly return to this city, where people watching is rewarding, and I'll never run out of things to do. 

A Matter of Framing

Depending on where you go, when, you can experience a very different Berlin. From the subculture hotspot of Kreuzberg to the moneyed classes in Kurfurstendamm, there are many neighbourhoods rewarding to the wanderer.

Yesterday I found myself, like so many a ferry, by the River Spree, navigating a popular tourist attraction named the DDR Museum. Holding a space for the former East German dictatorship (1945-1989), which once reshaped Berlin, I was prepared for controversial themes and strong emotions. I got these, but not quite in the way I expected.

For a start, the museum made little attempt to be objective. Any success of the DDR or progressive credential was undermined. When describing international recognition for its excellence in sports, the final word on this phenomenon was that we currently have no idea just how much the East Germans used performance enhancing drugs. 

There was a missed opportunity for learning from the social engineering of the ruling elites. Policies such as making the health benefits and morale raising of physical activity widely known, and making it easy for the regular citizen to join in, could be reinterpreted for today’s democratic nudges. I was impressed that you could access sporting teams through your workplace, though not so much about associating them with patriotism. (I don’t like patriotism.) As someone who has looked for free or low cost physical activity groups to join in Sydney and found little there, I think Australia could do with more accessible pathways in that direction, and certainly, if all of your friends and colleagues are participating in sport, you are more likely to do it too. But did it occur to the creators of the museum that this was something that actually transformed people for the better?

Another example of this black and white mindset, where capitalist democracy is good, and Communism is evil, was the attitude towards nude beaches. Even though public nudity was illegal, the government turned a blind eye to the many Baltic Sea beaches where people would indulge in it communally. (The Baltic Sea was a popular destination for affordable holidays.) This was more progressive than Western Germany, however the Museum claimed - to paraphrase - that this small freedom only drew attention to all the ways the people lacked *real* freedom. This kind of bias was not acknowledged as opinion, but represented as the truth, as only a piece of explanatory text in a museum can do. 

My view is that there were a lot of things in the DDR worth criticising, but there are also things worth incorporating into contemporary capitalist democracies such as Germany and Australia. We should be critical of attempts to discredit and dismiss worthwhile achievements. In the case of strides towards gender equality where Western Germany was behind, such as women’s participation in the workforce, and abortion rights, the museum had little to say.

So while I learnt interesting details about the former Communist government, I was open to learning in a way that wasn’t catered for. My German friend explained that the dominant ideology in Berlin is that capitalist democracy is ‘The Better Way and The Only Way’… this may not be clear to everyone who enters the DDR Museum with an open mind. I wish it were.