week five and six

During week five, we focused on different eras of German history in both Thorsten’s and Eric’s classes.
In Thorsten’s class, we largely focused on the readings about the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe which gave me more of a background on the history of the actual site that later became the memorial. It was interesting to me because I had visited the memorial last year when I visited Berlin for a few days but really knew nothing about it. I knew what it was a memorial to, but for a site so large it had little explanation or plaques to read so I couldn’t really get a good feeling about how I should be “experiencing” the monument unless there was a German present who could explain it to me (which there was). Revisiting the site for Thorsten’s excursion later that week made the experience a lot more meaningful because of the readings. Also, I would say that I valued the time inside the small museum underneath the memorial a lot more than even the memorial itself. The museum displayed a very detailed history of how the Holocaust came to be paired with really provocative photos from private collections. Unfortunately we did not get to spend very much time there, but the next site was almost equally as interesting—a photo exhibition about the Jewish Memorial.
This exhibition touched on a topic that I have been thinking about a lot myself between readings of Brian Ladd and other assigned readings that deal with the city and memory: As a citizen of a city, how does one treat a memorial as part of the city landscape? The city is a public place for everyone to go about their daily lives in. So where does an extremely large memorial taking up the space of several city blocks fit in? The photo exhibition showed pictures of Berliners and tourists lounging around on the blocks during their lunch breaks or just enjoying the sun, using the area of the memorial like any other area of the city. Some people believe that these memorials should be treated with the most respect and reverence—but what if the memorial is so large and has very little explanation that it actually is a memorial??? I guess these are the kinds of questions we try to investigate during our class discussions.

In Eric’s class this week, we watched the film “Berliner Romanze”, a very sweet little love story from the 1950’s…. at least, that’s what I thought right after watching it. After doing the readings about Wolfgang Kohlhaase/the film and talking to my roommates about it, I realized that this film was absolutely saturated in symbolism. I didn’t even think about the fact that the film was made with a completely East Berlin bias while watching it, so it blew my mind when we discussed all the little eastern biases together in class.
So far through the quarter, I’ve been learning to read a little more into the film while I’m watching and not after. So often, I find myself getting sucked into the story too much to realize little things that are pretty important to the social-cultural context of when the film was made or who made it.


Week six really marked a point in this study abroad for me in which I realized how precious my time here in Berlin is. I had taken a weekend trip to Franconia/Northern Bavaria that weekend so I was actively thinking about everything I have to accomplish over the next few weeks here. My assignment for Thorsten’s class was always on my mind in that I needed to start working on it as soon as possible to present to the class at the end of week seven.
This week in Thorsten’s classes, we focused in on the Topography of Terror with both our readings and our weekly excursion there. I had visited it last year on my “Berlin whirlwind” of museum-going but this year there were English translations, which obviously greatly helped my comprehension of the exhibit. What I found very interesting was that the Topography featured detailed biographies of each of the Nazi party leaders, including what happened to them after April 1945 and what they ended up doing for the rest of their lives.

This week in my film group, our goal was to research or plan out different shots and what exactly the plot will be for each of our four portions of the film. I made a sheet full of different shots I wanted to make sure that we filmed, and also ideas for where I wanted my plot to go. I really wanted my part of the film to make you think, but so far I have found it to be pretty difficult to think of something that I am satisfied enough with. I figure that during the filming of my portion, I will realize how best to end my story with the input from the rest of my group members. Next week we are planning to begin our filming with Ed’s portion. His film involves him actually getting a tattoo which he wants to do soon, so it will be nice to get off to a good start with this.

In Eric’s class this week (Halloween night!) we all ate candy and cookies and watched the film “Wings of Desire”. I went into this film feeling pretty skeptical because other people who had seen it had said things like “weird”, “bizarre”, “long”, and other semi-negative adjectives such as these. Maybe I am just used to these “weird” films because I absolutely loved it.
I think it’s because I deeply feel for films that show just this raw emotion on the part of the characters. It makes you look at life and the people around you a little differently than before.
I felt the suffering of the random characters that you see once and then never see again. I felt the pain of Marion wanting someone to love and someone to love her. I felt Damiel’s longing to be human so he can feel, experience, and just be. When Peter Falk started talking to Damiel at the Imbiss, I felt some kind of hope. The man jumping off the building! The little boy feeling lonely and isolated from the other boys.
It really just is the kind of film that makes you feel what the characters feel. Even with the characters that we see once and never see again, I thought it was perfect to get a glimpse of all of these different kinds of Berliners and what they were going through in their lives.
The way that the city was portrayed in the film was absolutely beautiful. I don’t think I would have appreciated this as much if I was not in Berlin or had not lived there for a period of time. Images of the angles on the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial church and the Victory Column made me think about these Berlin landscape icons in a different way from now on. The way in which the Berlin wall was portrayed in the film was like nothing else I had ever seen! Usually if the wall is pictured in a film, the entire story revolves around it but in this film, it was simply a fact—the wall is part of the landscape of the city that everyone is used to.
I was really excited to share thoughts on this film in class, but I honestly was bummed out that at least half of the class discussion revolved around an article written by a woman who did not like “Wings of Desire” because of its “obvious” (?) portrayal of male superiority and the dominance of the “white race”. This film does not have to do with either of these things, and I wished that didn’t have to spend a lot of time talking about one woman’s opinion instead of how beautiful this film was and the differences between this film and the ones we have seen in the past. I guess that race is an important issue to talk about but I felt another film may have been more appropriate in dealing with issues like these. To me, a story is a story and stories do not need to always be overanalyzed to death. Sometimes, films should just be taken for what they are.