week two
How have your experiences/visits – tours of Kreuzberg, Humboldt area, bunker tour, concentration camp, youth museum visit, school visit, the Stasi museum visit, Reichstag tour, Markus Heider's lecture, Rhissa's and Andre's talks, Janka's workshop, our class lectures and discussions & your own personal experiences and observations - so far made you re-think Berlin and/or German identities? You can either focus on a few of the experiences listed above or talk about them more generally a) compared to the Spring (before you came) b) in relation to the historical and architectural landscape of Berlin (as represented by Ladd in his book) c) in relation to the topics of globalization, borders, migration and the arts (from the Spring seminar)
This week in general was much busier than last week. Just looking at the list of things that happened in this week, I was surprised by how much we have done and how fast the time flies. Two weeks was like a eye blink and just past already. Before I came to Berlin, I was told that berlin is the city that has over hundred of museums; I did not really understand what this number is representing until now. We still haven’t go to Museum Island; the variety of museums that we went to was already impressive. Berlin has the historical monument/ museum like concentration camp and bunker, or more modern and up-to-date—youth museum. I really like the feeling of Berlin created for tourists through museums. Unlike many cities in both US and China, Berliners never reject the history. Even as a foreigner, I still felt the uneasiness to admit everything that had happened in history. Especially German new generation has nothing to do with this at all. Surprise, this forward and honest attitude earned a lot of people’s praises and respects. It made me think of many cities in US, I was so surprised that in history class because many concentration camps or slavery was just mentioned by one class or integrated in a class with other materials. In China as well, many history was not even admitted of their existences. Since I stayed only in these two countries for longer time period, I thought avoidance is kind of the universal attitude for the wrongfulness that our ancestors did in the past. People are always like remember the history and move on to create better history for future human beings. I thought the history was too harsh that the government most of the times just want the people to put it in the back of their heads and focus on the present to make our biggest goal—more fortune. On the other hand, the museums and monuments are greatly depends on the solely government’s attitude. Despite what the government’s wrongful education, many people from that region all hold a regretted and shameful attitude.
More about the museums, I found language seems always be a fetter for me. Going to US and using English with not so professional and systematical learning always cause me miss some of the information. This time in Germany, with another layer of fetter, I felt it was very hard to understand sometimes. With some of the speakers and guides’ not-so-fluent English, interpretations from their words sometimes can be very off from what they originally meant. Strangely enough, even some of the monuments were praised by most of our classmates, I found they have more things should have been preserved better or rebuild in a more realistic ways. It is probably because of I have seen many other monuments and found them extremely impressive even without the guide. Such as the concentration camp, I think the most well known one is Jewish holocaust camp in Poland. Although I have never been there, but just by looking at the picture and I was very surprised and sadder than physically going to this concentration camp. Not saying it was not great, I still got much information from this tour and got to know this work forced concentration camp.
Regarding the immigration problem in Germany. Coming from a non-immigration country first encountered with racism problem, etc immigration problem only four years ago. With not knowing Germany is facing the second biggest immigration problem in the world was surprising and interesting. I really do not have opinion on the American immigration problem due to the lack of knowing a lot. However, the overall attitude that people think is always welcoming and integrated communities. Listening to two refugee’s (or used to be) speeches seems to me that the transformation of German attitude of immigration is more authentic and honest. Too much of welcoming seems too fake and hiding the real problems to me. Hearing more recent of loose in immigration laws in Germany, compare to people’s share of impossibilities of immigrate in, was so delightful.