...and my First Experiences in Berlin
Seattle has the space needle, a symbol of the city’s future-oriented, technological ingenuity. London has Buckingham Palace, embodying Britain’s history of monarchy and imperialism. While Berlin…has a wall. The Berlin Wall, symbol of the taut conflict between the East and West, was torn down a long time ago. But the cultural significance of the wall remains.
On an August morning in Berlin, I visited the largest remaining fragment of the wall, at the East Side Gallery and museum. Although the Wall Museum feels overtly touristy, it provided helpful historical context. The remaining fragment of the wall, along the bank of the Spree river, has been covered with murals and graffiti. My favorite mural by far, is also the most famous one. It’s called “My God, Help me to Survive this Deadly Love,” by Dmitri Vrubel, and features a passionate smooch between the Soviet Leader and the President of East Germany.
The mural is a satire of the ‘fraternal kiss’ that celebrated the establishment of the Republic of East Germany under the Soviet Union. It draws attention to the irony of a kiss, an act of unity, used to celebrate the separation of East and West Berlin, and ultimately, the global division between the East and West.
This simple image of a kiss, painted on the face of wall, juxtaposes love and enmity, unity and division, East and West.
The East Side Gallery murals reveal how the wall impacted the lives and psyches of the artists who decorated it. It got me thinking about how the wall has often appeared in art and pop culture as a symbol of human isolation and division.
A room in the Wall Museum was dedicated to the famous live performance of Pink Floyd’s The Wall in Berlin, in which a giant wall was torn down on stage. In their concept album, the wall can be viewed as a symbol of the isolation caused by mental illness and societal alienation.
In the cult rock musical, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, the German intersex protagonist compares herself to the Berlin Wall, as she exists along the divide between male and female. Her very existence destroys the divisive power of the wall, as she embodies two seemingly separate identities.
I found Berlin to be a very transgressive place, appropriate for a city that proudly exhibits the ruins of a torn-down wall. At the Hamburger Bahnhof museum, I found art exhibitions that were so contemporary I didn’t understand them at all. One of these took the form of a massive indoor sand dune with a woman very slowly rolling down towards the floor.
Similarly, the Jewish Museum broke the boundaries of a traditional museum experience. It was the most uniquely designed museum I had ever visited. Architecture and art installations created an immersive experience that conveyed the fear and oppression faced by Jewish people during the Nazi regime better than any plaques and photographs could have done.
The museum also had a special exhibition titled “Jewish Positions on Sex Throughout History,” about how queer and feminist Jewish people have reimagined the orthodox ideas around sex.
If you’ve seen the musical Cabaret, you will know that Berlin has always been known for its sexually liberated nightlife scene, which survived underground even during the Nazi regime. Today, Berlin is still famous for its extremely intense and exclusive nightclubs.
My friends and I were eager to experience this scene for ourselves, and dressed up in black outfits with edgy eyeliner. Right away, our night did not go as planned. In the underground station, my friend dealt with a sudden relationship crisis, leaving us all rattled. Then a drug dealer approached and tried to sell to us. When we finally made it to the famous Kit Kat club, almost everyone in the line in front of us was turned away at the door, so we knew we didn’t stand much chance.
Lucy held a brief exchange with the bouncer in German. Then he examined Antonia and I from head to foot, and shook his head. He had likely identified us as foreigners, or decided we looked too young and corruptible.
“Sorry,” he sneered, “but the boss says no.”
Rejected, we resigned ourselves to a less exclusive club nearby, called Tresor. We were examined by a bouncer again, and finally waved through. It was a dark, foggy techno club inside what looked like a concrete bunker, with multiple rooms. It was no Kit Kat, but it was a good taste of the Berlin techno scene. We didn’t make it back home until early in the morning, like true Berliners.
On my final day in Berlin, I ventured to the Schöneberg neighborhood, which was the home of one of my favorite authors, Christopher Isherwood. He lived in Berlin in the early 30’s, as the Nazis began to come into power, and wrote the novel which Cabaret is based on.
There is a popular walking tour in Berlin called “Christopher Isherwood’s Neighborhood,” but I failed to reserve a space in time, and was forced to settle for a self-directed tour. On Nollendorfstrasse, I found a plaque marking the apartment where Isherwood lived. He chose to live in Berlin because it was a hub of progressive politics, art, and queer sexuality.
Modern day Schöneberg is a nice neighborhood with cute cafes and bookshops. It is also, quite clearly, still the epicenter of Berlin’s queer culture. Close to Isherwood’s apartment are several gay bars and fetish and sex shops. I was also excited to find a queer bookshop with an extensive collection of books by queer authors. There was also a back room with all the gay porn you could possibly want (not that I was looking for that, of course!)
The queer and artistic atmosphere that I discovered in Berlin was fascinating to observe in a city famous for a symbol of Cold War division and enmity. As the endless political tensions that led to the construction of the wall rise again, Berlin provides constant reminders of how to tear down the walls that keep people apart. It displays the ruins of a wall, triumphantly decorated in colorful graffiti.
My Berlin Itinerary
Day 1:
Arrive midday
Explore museum island and Brandenburg Gate
Nap
Hit the clubs
Day 2:
Come back from the club
Sleep
The Jewish Museum
The Deutschland Museum
Day 3:
Eastside Gallery and Wall Museum
Explore the Schöneberg neighborhood
The Topography of Terror memorial
Bar crawl on the East Side
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