The Berlin Wall Memorial, Surviving New Year’s Eve, Yorckschlösschen (and Other Wonderful Things to See & Do)
This is the first in a series of photographs from a 21-day, three country, five city winter vacation to Europe with my ladyfriend (and fellow photographer) Serena. Our stops? Berlin, Rome, Naples, Bath & London
In my previous post, I kicked off what will be a series of multiple photography posts from the European winter vacation we took back in January. Our first city was Berlin. We arrived the morning of December 29, 2024 and checked into the lovely NH Collection Berlin Mitte Friedrichstrasse in the historic center of Berlin, the capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the highest population within its city limits of any city in the European Union.
The city was built along the banks of the Spree river and was first documented in the 13th century. And after the usual raids and wars that most every other European city had to endure during the ensuing centuries, by the early 20th century, Berlin had become a fertile ground for the German Expressionist movement.
In fields such as architecture, painting and cinema, new forms of artistic styles were invented. The metropolis experienced its heyday as a major world capital and was known for its leadership roles in science, technology, arts, higher education, government, and industries. Albert Einstein rose to public prominence during his years in Berlin, being awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921.
In 1933, however, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. And you don’t need me to tell you how that all went, yes?
World War II left large parts of Berlin destroyed during the 1943–45 Allied air raids and the 1945 Battle of Berlin. And after the end of World War II in Europe, the victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to Allied-occupied Germany the sectors of the Allies of World War II (the United States, the United Kingdom, and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet Union formed East Berlin.
And you don’t need me to tell you how that all went, yes?
Fortunately, with the end of the Cold War and pressure from the East German population, the Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989 and was subsequently mostly demolished. On 18 June 1994, soldiers from the United States, France and Britain marched in a parade which was part of the ceremonies to mark the withdrawal of allied occupation troops allowing for a reunified Berlin (the last Russian troops departed on 31 August).
And although it hasn’t entirely been all shits and giggles since the Wall fell, Berlin has become a global city of culture, politics, media, architecture and science. The creative arts and entertainment business has become an important part of Berlin’s economy with more than 5,000 film and TV companies with about 48,000 employees based in the capital region generating 2.6 billion euros in revenue per year.
Over the past 10 years, real GDP in the capital has outperformed the German economy as a whole. The city is a major hub for startups and innovation, supported by a large and diverse labor market. Moreover, the city has become one of the top travel destinations in Europe and the world – not to mention being frequently named Europe’s party capital due to its legendary nightlife. And let’s not forget Kraftwerk.
Which brings us all back to Serena & I and our six-night, first stop in our 24 day excursion to Europe this past December. The historic city of Berlin. Let’s get to it then, shall we? You can map out a walking tour of the following attractions then curl your way right back to the starting point at our hotel. We’ll start with the Berlin Cathedral, just a 12 minute walk from our hotel…
Berlin Cathedral
The magnificent dome of the Berlin Cathedral (Berliner Dom) is one of the main landmarks in Berlin’s cityscape – and marks the spot of the impressive basilica housing the city’s most important Protestant church. The monumental church was intended to be Berlin’s answer to Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome and Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London.
The Cathedral Church, which dates back to the 15th century, is dominated by a monumental dome crowned by a lantern with a golden cross and flanked by four towers. With its lavish mix of ornamental mosaics, gold features and impressive statues, the interior is clearly informed by the late nineteenth century’s love of grand gestures and display.
Today, the church serves the Protestant community in Berlin and the surrounding areas. The congregation is not based on place of residence, but open through admission to all baptized Protestants in the region. More on this magnificent structure IN THIS POST
Berliner Fernsehturm
The Berlin TV Tower (Berliner Fernsehturm) on Alexanderplatz is Berlin’s most prominent landmark and the tallest building in Germany. The tower features an elevator ride up to a rotating observation deck that offers panoramic views of the entire city via a rotating observation deck (which, alas, we didn’t do). The TV Tower is located on the territory of the former East Berlin and began operations in October 1969.
Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery)
Right by the Berlin Cathedral, you’ll find the Alte Nationalgalerie, the original home of the Nationalgalerie, whose collections today are divided between the Neue Nationalgalerie, the Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin, the Friedrichswerdersche Kirche, Museum Berggruen and the Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg, part of Museum Island in the historic center of Berlin.
The gallery was built from 1862 to 1876 by the order of King Frederick William IV of Prussia according to plans by Friedrich August Stüler and Johann Heinrich Strack in Neoclassical and Renaissance Revival styles. The Alte Nationalgalerie is home to paintings and sculptures of the 19th century.
As part of the Museum Island complex, the gallery was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1999 for its outstanding architecture and its testimony to the development of museums and galleries as a cultural phenomenon in the late 19th century. More on this in a future post…
Humboldt Forum
Another five minute walk from the cathedral is the Humboldt Forum, a museum dedicated to human history, art and culture, located in the Berlin Palace on Museum Island in the historic center of Berlin. It is named in honor of the Prussian scholars Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt.
This enormous ethnographic museum is actually many museums within a museum – there’s the Ethnological Collection and Asian Art, and the Humboldt Laboratory, which engages viewers in current global problems and challenges such as climate change. In the east wing collection, presentations on North, Central and South America can be seen, while the Berlin Global exhibit examines Berlin’s impact on the world in six categories: Boundaries, Entertainment, Fashion, Interconnection, Revolution, Space, and War.
Considered the “German equivalent” of the British Museum, the Humboldt Forum, which only became accessible to the general public on July 20, 2021, extends over an area of around 30,000 square meters. The reconstructed baroque palace was designed by Italian architect Franco Stella and features a roof terrace with a restaurant, offering views of the Berlin Cathedral and Museum Island. View the full gallery below…
Berlin Wall Memorial (Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer)
A longer 35 minute walk north of the Humboldt Forum, you’ll arrive at the Berlin Wall Memorial, the central memorial site recalling German division. Located at a site fraught with history on Bernauer Strasse, a street in Berlin that was a central point of contention during the German-German postwar history, particularly during the time of the Berlin Wall. It extends along 1.4 kilometers of the former border strip.
The sealing off of the sector border starting on August 13, 1961 made dramatic changes especially in the everyday lives of the people living on Bernauer Strasse. From one day to the next, they could no longer travel freely through their own neighborhood, and neighbors, friends, and relatives were separated from one another.
For about 28 years, the Wall divided East and West Berlin, until it fell in 1989, marking the end of East German oppression and making reunification of the city possible. The memorial includes a 60-meter (200 ft) long section of the wall as it was when the Wall fell. The grounds also include the memorial recalling the divided city and the victims of communist tyranny, as well as the “Window of Remembrance”, dedicated to the 140 people who are known to have died at the wall.
The picture of the GDR soldier Conrad Schumann, who jumped over the barbed wire two days after the division of Berlin, is still famous today. View the full gallery below…
Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart
About a 22 minute walk west of the Berlin Wall Memorial is the Hamburger Bahnhof, one of Berlin’s major 19th-century terminus stations – a site of arrival, departure, and transition. The station was built to architect and railway pioneer Friedrich Neuhaus’s plans in 1846/47 as the starting point of the Berlin–Hamburg Railway. It is the only surviving terminus building in Berlin from the late neoclassical period and one of the oldest station buildings in Germany.
In the mid-1980s the Berlin entrepreneur Erich Marx offered his private collection of contemporary art to the city. The Berlin Senate decided in 1987 to establish a museum of contemporary art in the former railway station. A competition for the renovation of the station was announced by the Senate in 1989, and was won by the architect Josef Paul Kleihues.
In November 1996 the 108,000 sq ft museum was opened and today the Nationalgalerie’s Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart division is one of the largest and most significant public collections of contemporary art in the world. See the FULL GALLERY HERE.
Brandenburg Gate
About a 30 minute walk south of the Hamburger Bahnhof (and a 15 minute walk from our hotel) is the Brandenburg Gate, widely considered one of the most beautiful buildings of classicism. It was built between 1788 and 1791 based on designs by Carl Gotthard Langhans the Elder, who was strongly inspired by the Propylaea of the Athenian Acropolis. Two years after the Brandenburg Gate was completed, the so-called Quadriga – a chariot pulled by four horses – was placed on the roof of the gate.
The Goethe Monument in Berlin’s popular Tiergarten Park is a public artwork by sculptor Fritz Schaper dedicated to the influential German writer and poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It was sculpted in 1880 to commemorate Goethe’s significant contributions to German literature and culture.
New Year’s Eve
Now, after having spent New Year’s Eve in 2022 in Praça do Comércio in Lisbon and the following year at Plaça Espanya in Barcelona (both of them wonderful, accessible and without incident), I was kind of on a roll I didn’t want to break (spending NYE in a different country). And despite New Year’s Eve in Berlin not having the best reputation, Serena and I braved the streets outside the Brandenburg Gate and kept the streak alive.
Was it a bit nerve-racking? Oh, yeah. I mean, fireworks were going off all around us at all times – and not the official NYE fireworks display either. Anybody with fireworks was setting them off all over the place – some of them igniting dangerously close to us. Lots of young people and lots of alcohol was further cause for alarm. That said, most people around us were very well behaved and we managed to survive the night, although a firework spark did sting me on the cheek just below my right eye and I got a small hole burned through my jeans on my right leg from another firework being tossed in the crowd behind us and going off. And Serena? Luckily, none the worse for wear.
We hightailed it back to our hotel right after the official fireworks display (it was a short walk but it did get a bit hairy at times) and then saw on the news the following morning that there were approximately 400 arrests that evening primarily due to the illegal and dangerous use of fireworks, attacks on emergency workers, and attempted Molotov cocktail construction. The night also saw 30 police officers and one firefighter injured. We both felt even luckier that we made it back to the hotel alright that evening.
Ultimately, it was a night we’ll never forget, and it did keep my streak (and me) alive. Now it’s about figuring out where to (safely) spend NYE at the end of this year…
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
An 8 minute walk from the Brandenburg Gate will lead you to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas), Germany’s central Holocaust memorial, a place of remembrance and commemoration for the up to six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust. The monument consists of the Field of Stelae, 2,711 concrete slabs or “stelae”, to be exact, arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field.
Designed by acclaimed American architect Peter Eisenman, the memorial was inaugurated on May 10, 2005, 60 years after the end of World War II in Europe, and opened to the public two days later. It is located one block south of the Brandenburg Gate, in the Mitte neighborhood.
During the Third Reich, a part of this area was the location of Joseph Goebbels’ urban villa, with the nearby Reich Chancellery (the traditional name of the office of the Chancellor of Germany) and the Führerbunker (an air raid shelter) in the south. The cost of construction was approximately €25 million.
Public reception and criticism of the memorial have been mixed since its opening, with some critics finding the “vagueness” of the stelae disturbing and perpetuating an “obsession with the Holocaust”. Moreover, some Germans have argued the memorial is only statuary and does little to honor those murdered during the Nazi Regime, while others have claimed the presence of a memorial in Berlin is essential to remember the once-thriving Jewish community in Berlin.
Other observers have noted the memorial’s resemblance to a cemetery. And while each stone slab is approximately the size and width of a coffin, Eisenman has denied any intention to resemble any form of a burial site. Wolfgang Thierse, the president of Germany’s parliament the Bundestag, described the piece as a place where people can grasp “what loneliness, powerlessness and despair mean”. As for the photographs, I felt black and white rendering allowed the images to speak for themselves.
Yorckschlösschen
Switching gears now, if there’s one thing Berlin has got plenty of it’s live music venues – especially jazz and blues joints. I mean, Berliners really, really love American jazz and blues.
Why? Besides American jazz and blues being pretty awesome (and shaping modern music by inspiring rock ‘n’ roll, R&B, soul, and hip-hop), jazz was actually imported to Germany at the end of World War I when it already had a footing in England and France(*). When Josephine Baker visited Berlin in 1925 she fell in love with the city and the people fell in love with the music she brought with her.
Yorckschlösschen: Home of Jazz & Blues
Sadly, the Nazis issued a ban on jazz and jazz education, prohibiting jazz music on the radio until they were defeated in the mid-1940s. After World War II, jazz experienced a post-WWII revival as a symbol of freedom and democratic rehabilitation in both East and West Germany, with key figures like Louis Armstrong, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman and later Miles Davis performing regularly.
Now, Serena and I love good live music (especially with cameras in our hands) and boy did we stumble on a fabulous live music venue – Yorckschlösschen, in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district (about a 15 minute drive south of our hotel). The venue has been around for 120 years, and for more than 30 years, this rustic former corner pub has been internationally renowned as the “Home of Jazz & Blues” in Berlin.
Now the music, courtesy of Brazilian samba outfit Ajabrasil, was terrific. But the vibe in this place? Bananen!!!
A mix of folks of different ages, colors and nationalities – and every single one of them sharing our love of live music. I mean, it was the most enjoyable experience I’ve ever had in a music bar – it was like going back to the 60s, to a place frozen in time. This is a special venue, one we both felt super fortunate to have stumbled upon. I (we) can’t recommend it highly enough. One of our top experiences in Berlin. Nuff said. The photographs from the gallery below pretty much do the talking for me…
