Berlin Blog Question One

A memorial says a lot more than just what is carved in its plaque. It shows progression, yet remains fixed in a time and culture that have passed. Every civilization has left a part of themselves--the pantheon, the parthonon, the pyramids--and there may be no better city than Berlin to know the importance of memorials.
Berlin has the unfathomable task of not only having the roots of Nazism and electing Adolf Hitler to power, but remembering that fact every day for decades. The entire state of Germany and the city of Berlin serve as places associating with World War Two and The Holocaust. Not only is that connection found in the minds of individuals and lines in text books, but are throughout the city, physical reminders are apparent for all to see. As much as I hate to admit I listen in classes, the "burden of history" is unmistakable and omnipotent in Berlin.
Simply, the "burden of history" isolates Germany's memorials in a way completely different from every nation I have been to otherwise. England, a one-time hegemonic power, looks upon their memorials to dynasties, soldiers, wars with pride. Every site worth seeing in England is a declaration to its past and current strength. France is similar; although, I know more than a few people that argue there is nothing to be proud of anyway. France holds its history in high regard, but hold their individuality, their unbending nature that has stood up to the British, American, and any other way of life that they didn't want within their true French Culture.
The biggest difference is between Berlin and America. I feel our memorials are shallow and watered-down, especially since being in Berlin. Part of the reason is every war we celebrate didn't take place on our own soil. The exception, the American Revolution, has become an evening to drink, declare how great we are, and watch pretty fire in the sky. America is a FAR more individual-driven nation. We make memorials to people, hoping spectators remember the wondrous things they have done. From Thomas Jefferson to Franklin Roosevelt, our presidents are memorialized. We say "Remember the Alamo!" while the majority of Americans probably don't even know its significance.
Yet here there is a quiet dignity and a subtle warning behind the statues, the burned-out buildings. Genocide can happen anywhere, as Sudan, Rwanda, and Bosnia show us. It happened here and that is the one persistant thought you cannot escape in Berlin. I traveled to the 1936 Olympic Stadium and eventually had to leave because, while I know Hitler was usually in Berlin, I knew for a fact that he had been there, that he had hoped his rhetoric of racial superiority would play out within those walls and nothing aggravated me more.
Berlin has done an amazing job. Their progress of unification and remembering is a hard line to walk, but they've done it. The bad is, hopefully, in the past; the best thing Berliners have recognized is they anchored their future with the past. "The German Question" is lived out within Berlin. They have created magnificent buildings while including the old, like the Kaiser Willhelm Memorial Church. The Berliner Dom was bombed out and only the walls remained, but the walls hold a new hope within them. While the Berlin Wall is torn down, physically and mentally, a small reminder
of how this fantastically lively city was once a shadow of itself ghostly runs through Berlin.
History and culture are intertwined everywhere, but the dark cloud of Berlin's history will never clear up. Instead they have embraced it, remembered the good and the bad, and became a cultural center point. Americans could learn the darker side of our history and I feel we would remain just as stubbornly proud as we are now; we should just look to Berlin as our example.