The Way Things Were

When historians want to discuss the issue of what it is possible to learn about the past through research, they will often use Leopold von Ranke's (1795-1886) (in)famous phrase "wie es eigentlich gewesen"--the way things really were. I say the phrase is "infamous" because it is actually grammatically incorrect; it should read "wie es eigentlich gewesen ist." Nobody is sure why it was published like that. Anyway, I thought of it while composing this entry on "the way things were" in East Germany during the Deutsche Demokratische Republic (DDR). I do not directly study this period in Germany history, but I try to learn a little bit here and there: 1) so I know how events in the period I research ended up playing out, and 2) so I can teach it. I've kept my eyes open, and here are two of reminders of the "old" Germany I've come across.

Last week I visited a small photography exhibit by Helmut Schulze to promote a new edition of his book with Gregor Kunz, Bilder von Dresden (Pictures of Dresden). Most of the photos are from the 5 years right after die Wende (the "turn"--ie. the 1989 revolution), and they show mixtures of the old and the new, decay and revitalization. You can see an example of this at the link above, which shows a line of old cars and an old yellow street car--and on the poles on the sidewalk are  posters for a political party that was illegal during the DDR.

Schulze's photographs captured a world that largely no longer exists, with a few exceptions. One of  those is a quirky feature of old-Eastern German streets, the  Ampelmenschen ("traffic light men") with their little hats. There was a public outcry when public officials planned to remove the little figures after 1989, so they've stayed, and you can still whether you are in old-East or -West Berlin by the lights at the crosswalks, and of course they're all over here in Saxony. There's one in the foreground in the photo on the left. I was surprised, however, to discover that at my local tram stop, Bahnhof-Mitte, there are Ampelmädchen ("traffic light girls") with two braided pigtails! They are the idea of Petra Bossinger, who lives outside Cologne. Unsurprisingly, the Ampelmenschen have been commercialized: you can buy their likenesses on postcards, t-shirts, magnets (I have two), tote bags, etc. It's only a matter of time before the Ämpelmädchen become commodified kitsch as well.

Speaking of the ultimate stereotypical East-German material culture meets stereotyped West-German consumer culture, around the block from me you can rent a refurbished Trabant ("Trabi") to take a tour of the city in. Never mind that East Germans used  to wait years for one of these "cardboard boxes on wheels," you now have the opportunity to take a Trabi-Safari! (The pink one is advertising the Kirchentag (Church Day), an "Evangelical" (read: Protestant) faith conference that will be taking place here in June. I hear 100,000 
people from around the world are expected!)




p.s.--I thought I might add a short cultural note. Perhaps you are aware of Germans' stereotypical preference for order? This extends to traffic-pedestrian interactions--namely, that everyone should obey all the traffic laws all the time. Americans are exhorted not to jaywalk: "think of the children!" (who would otherwise learn dangerous habits). For instance, my roommate's father, down from Berlin for his granddaughter's sixth birthday party back in early December, reproached us for crossing the street from the tram stop to the sidewalk despite the red Ampelmensch--even though it was only one lane and there were no on-coming cars. "Do Dresdners always cross against the light?" he asked, "Or only on weekends?" More recently, I overheard a young boy of maybe 5 explaining the crosswalk rules to his father: "You must not go on red, but on green you must go, you must!" he exclaimed. So very "German." That's the way things were--and sometimes still are.

13. February

What is the first thing you think of when you hear “Dresden”?

Probably not August the Strong, or steamboats on the Elbe River, or art in the Zwinger. Perhaps the Semperoper? (Gram!) Or maybe the Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady), the enormous (Protestant) church that the East German government left in ruins while rebuilding the rest of the city? Just a few years ago the church’s reconstruction was completed and it was opened to the public; you can see its dome in the photo above. For decades it symbolized the destructiveness of the Second World War, destruction unleashed by the Nazis and brought to this capital city near the border with the Czechoslovakia and Poland by Allied bombers following the orders of military and political commanders heedless of the historical treasures and the thousands of westward-fleeing refugees alike. Probably when you hear “Dresden,” you think of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s, semi-autobiograhical Slaughterhouse-Five and the fire-bombing that took place the night of 13-14 February, 1945.

The anniversary of the destruction of the “Florence of the Elbe” is a major event every year, even 66 years later managing to overshadow the commercial hype of the saint’s feast celebrated the next day. This is because what happened that Shrove Tuesday night is a matter not just of historical debate but of active, contested, collective memory. For decades the Communists maintained that the air raid by more than 1000 planes of the Royal and United States Air Forces killed 100,000 people, mostly innocent refugees, a number inflated by Cold War politics. Most historians today postulate at least 25,000, although due to the confused movements of masses of people in what turned out to be the last months of the war, it will never be possible to deduce the actual number of lives snuffed out. 4,500+ tons of explosives and incendiary devices destroyed 13 square miles of a city that most were sure would never be bombed—a city that was reduced to ashes by the dawning of Ash Wednesday, 1945. It is precisely the suffering of Dresdners on 13 February that has made it a rallying cry for Neo-Nazis, who for some years now have staged a rally in the city on the anniversary.

One of the longest words new students of German learn is Vergangenheitsbewältigung. It translates as “the process of coming to terms with the past,” and it means the memory work Germans (first East and West, and since 1989 togther) have done to try to fathom how it is that their parents or their grandparents could have lived through the Third Reich, possibly done nothing to hinder the Holocaust, maybe even participated. It is also the process whereby Germans who have no personal connection with that time and its crimes—such as the children and grandchildren of the Gastarbeiter (guest workers) who came after the war and revived the economy—attempt to assimilate this knowledge into their understanding of what it means to be German.

For many years after the war, Germans nursed a particularly bitter form of victimhood, one that remembered the Allied bombings, the shame of a second war defeat inside of two decades, the frustration of the occupation and division of their country, large parts of which were now Poland. The Germans were sorry for what had happened to the Jews, because of what had happened to the Germans in response. Whatever their ambivalence about the Jews, most Germans have and had rejected fascism. In fact, it was the public disavowal of Nazism that allowed post-war West Germany to put itself back together as a (more or less) functioning country, in that many many former Party-members and –sympathizers were allowed to maintain their public lives and offices. The National Sozialistische Demokratische Arbeiter Partei (NSDAP, or National Socialist Democratic Workers’ Party) and its paraphanelia like flags with the swastika are illegal in Germany. It is illegal to print Mein Kampf (although not to own a copy, as all the libraries do).

 

But what to do about the Neo-Nazis who still exist? The young skinheads who spout hate against “non-Aryans,” and who have committed violence against foreigners? I discovered this fall that they often signal their presence with the old imperial flag of the Second Empire (Kaiserriech) or the Confederate flag (hanging in a window in the building across the street from my old apartment—bigots of the world, unite?). Other cities in Germany have refused to let them meet publicly. But for several years they have (legally) held a march in Dresden on 13 February. Not wanting to encourage this sort of thing, many left-leaning Dresdners began turning out to counter-protest, last year even putting up such a physical (and nearly violent) resistance to the fascist funeral parade that it was canceled. This year there was much discussion in public, in the mayor’s office, and in the Saxon courts about whether the Neo-Nazis should be allowed to meet, whether there should be a counter-protest, and what contact if any should be allowed between the two.

Such discussions in the United States would undoubtedly revolve around the First Amendment: the KKK fascists have the right to what is often referred to as "hate speech" (as long as it doesn’t lead to violence) and should be allowed to freely assemble. But likewise, defenders of democracy have the right to disagree and to disapprove. It was finally decided that the right extremists could meet later behind the Neustadt Bahnhof and the peaceful counter-demonstrators earlier in the Altstadt across the river. After a speech in memory of the bombing victims and in favor of peace and democracy, the assembled crowd fanned out to form a Menschenkette (a human chain) from the Rathouse across the Altmarkt (where many of the bodies were piled up and burned because they couldn’t be buried quickly enough), past the synagogue, and over the Carola and Albert Bridges to the very edge of the Neustadt, symbolically protecting the Altstadt from both bombs and Neo-Nazis. Nie wieder Krieg. "Never again war."

I stood on the steps from the Albertbrücke to the Elbe path on the Neustadt side. When the bells of the churches in the Altstadt began to toll at 2pm, I held hands with Susan and Julie. Many of us were wearing white silk or real roses on our labels. There were so many people (17,000 according to the radio the next morning—we stood 3- and 4- deep before we joined hands), that the line zig-zagged back and forth. Some participants who had come with friends or familiy chatted for the 5 or 10 minutes that we kept watch, which I found rather crass. When the bells finally stopped, I introduced myself to my partners and thanked them. And then we dispersed.

Nazis? No thanks!

Police had come in from around the country to ensure there would be no violence this year, which there wasn’t. I don’t know what happened with the Neo-Nazi march. I didn’t see it, and so to me it is as if didn’t happen. It’s one of those uncertain situations where you don’t want to give the group and its message any attention, but to act as if they didn’t exist at all would be irresponsible—criminal, even. Unfortunately, there is an even larger Neo-Nazi rally planned for next weekend that will be hard to ignore. What attention Dresdners have given them is universally unwelcoming, as this small collection of signs from around the city suggests:

Our Dresden: No place for Nazis!

Sunday night, at 9:51pm, the church bells went off again, just as they did that night, 66 years ago, to warn the city of the approaching enemy airplanes. The Nazi commissioner of the city, Gauleiter Martin Mutschmann, had insisted the city was prepared enough for an air raid that wasn't going to happen anyway, so there weren’t enough shelters—even without the influx of refugees. But he had underground concrete bunkers built at both his office and his residence. He survived—only to be captured by the Soviets after the war, tried in Moscow, and hung on 14. February 1947. In his enormous tome, Dresden: Tuesday 13 February 1945 (2004), noted Nazi historian Frederick Taylor argues that Dresden was as legitimate a target as any other in Germany, being not only a beautiful cultural capital but also an active contributor to the Nazi war effort. Whether the inevitable civilian casualties were justifiable in a time of "total war" he leaves up to the reader.

"Dresden" is many things to me: a center for my research, the place where I learned to live and speak comfortably in German/y, home for 7 months. And one of the many places in the world marked by both violence and dialog. Thankfully the good people far outnumbered the bad this weekend, by at least 20:1.

All aboard!

One of you asked me to take pictures of the trains in Germany, but I've done one better and compiled a small sample of the trains and trams, and also the wonderful travel-themed murals at my closest transit/train stop, Dresden Bahnhof Mitte (literally, Dresden's Middle Train Station).



On the right is an ICE--Inter-City Express--the fastest and nicest of the Deutsche Bahn trains. Sleek and rounded, they are of course also the most expensive. On the left is some sort of newer S-Bahn, I think. The old S-Bahns are big, red, and angular, with two levels of seating. We took such a one when we camped in the sandstone formations for Christmas.








This blue one is an IC--Inter-City--still nice and fast, but not quite as costly as the ICE. That's just the engine you see there; the passenger cars are usually white like the ICE, but more angular.







This is either a Regional Bahn (RB) or Regional Express (RE), although there is nothing "express" about these trains. They are old, can be uncomfortable, and stop at every town of any size--but they are quite cheap.

Can you tell what kind of train this is?

Finally, here are some of the wonderful transportation-themed murals painted on the walls of the raised tracks of the Bahnhof-Mitte.

The murals depict regions or towns of Saxony, various kinds of trains and trams, and even space travel is represented!

p.s.--That's a car train passing on the other side of the platform!

The Raclettes

Last Friday, an American friend in town invited me to a Girls’ Night In at her apartment. The main event would be melted cheese, or rather, raclette. Raclette is a fatty Swiss cheese that melts easily, tastes good on pretty much everything, and has evolved from a goatherd’s tasty dinner-to-go to a group meal centered around a two-level grill for leisurely eating with more individuality than with cheese fondue. It’s fun for dinner parties or family gatherings like Second Christmas (December 26).

Here’s how it works: the top surface of the grill is for cooking a variety of meats, like ground beef patties and Greek-spiced chicken. The underside of the grill is very hot and conducive to melting. Either you can load up what looks like a sand shovel with veggies, meat, potatoes, etc. + a slice of cheese and lay this under the heat to melt; or you can melt the cheese by itself and then scrape it (with a handily provided scraper, of course) over your collection of veggies, meat, potatoes, etc. Whole recipe books exist which detail what to serve for various themes, but our table was laden with a variety of yummy things to eat: tomatoes, corn, onion, pickles olives, red pepper, mushrooms, tuna fish, tsiziki, potatoes, rice, noodles, flat bread, 3 or 4 kinds of cheese, and ham and pineapple for a Hawai’ian-themed dessert. It looked delicious and tasted even better. The downside to raclette is that because most of what you eat is prepared in little batches, it is difficult to gauge how much you have eaten. So afterwards we played Wii to burn off some of the calories!

This was my first creation: tuna fish, onion, red pepper, and raclette cheese.

Lost in Translation

This was too good to pass up...

I recently returned to Germany from a 10-day trip to the United States.  When I got to the airport in Frankfurt for my flight across the Atlantic, I switched from German to speaking English, and I found this freeing.  My German is sufficient but not proficient; I especially understand more of what I read and hear than I can express fluently.  For the duration of my trip to the East Coast, I didn’t have to think about what I wanted say before I opened my mouth: whether I knew all the words I wanted to use, had them in the right order, or needed to beat around the bush to get my point across.  Sometimes I don’t say anything at all in German, if I don’t know the right phrase.  As a historian, I work with words, and I am used being able to say what I want to say, how I want to say it.  Living in a foreign country has been a linguistically humbling experience.  In recognition of this, I offer an entry about how sometimes meaning can be lost, even after translation.

My reading German is pretty good, but I still use a dictionary, usually LingoPad, which I downloaded onto my laptop before I came over.  Sometimes I recognize a word but can’t remember its definition.  Sometimes I come across completely new German words for me.  And sometimes I need help puzzling out something hand-written, so I start entering letters into the search box to see what the likely possibilites are for some chicken scratch of a word.  (This dictionary only searches vorwärts, or forward, which can make finding words tricky if I can read the prefix and suffix, but not what comes in between.)  It has other quirks, too.  For instance, there seems to be an entire bird watcher’s guide book of ornithological names.  And then sometimes even my English fails me, because this is a translation dictionary and not a definition dictionary.  So for instance, the entry for überschüttete is “to whelm.”  …?

When this happens I have to wait until I get home at the end of my day at the archive and use Miriam-Webster’s online dictionary to figure out what’s being talked about.  Here are some of the more interesting, amusing, or just plain confusing translations LingoPad has offered me.  

Pasch = doublets? snakes eyes? all fours?  boxcars?

Drachenschlucht = dragon ravine?

das Grummet = foggage, or after-grass (?)   

Schleie = tench (that's a kind of fish, if you're wondering)

Pfändungen = seizure distraints?

Teichmönch = pond monk??  actually, it's a convex tile

inkommodiere = incommode  well, yeas...

Schiebungen = wangles? wth? ...turns out it means "profiteering"

Rummel = shivaree (later I found out this is a hype or shindig, hype, shivaree)

Of course you have to watch out for cognates: Giebel = gable, Gabel = fork.  Zapfen are most commonly pine cones, but apparently the word also means gudgeon, spigot, trunnion, tenon, peg, and stud!

And then there are entries like the following.  I’m looking up the saying, “Lügen haben kurze Beine.” (Lies have short legs, or The truth will get out.)  I type “Beine” into the search box and scroll down.  Second to last is the sentence “Man kann sich die Beine abfrieren vor Kälte,” which translates more or less literally to „It’s cold enough to freeze one's legs off.“  Rather than offer something tame like that, however, LingoPad offers this gem: “It’s cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.”  I’m sure I’ve heard that before, but it was so unexpected that I nearly snorted out loud, there in the middle of the Main Saxon Archive.  Meanwhile, outside, it was cold enough to….well, you know.

Little Shop of Horrors

***Update below!***

"Our giant has haemorrhoids"

This past week while I was home on the East Coast, I delivered a public lecture on a topic related to my dissertation at Observatory, the lecture and exhibition space my friend Joanna Ebenstein runs in Brooklyn. She is an independent scholar and artist who also writes a blog called Morbid Anatomy. Joanna is interested in history of science and medicine, in museums and collecting, and most of all in death. In addition to books, she has an impressive collection of memento mori and specimens in her research library (right).  My talk was entitled "Body Voyaging or, A Short Excursion Through the History of Fantastic Anatomical and Physiological Journeys Through the Body" (sample image, left).

In this vein, during my travels here in Europe, I have occasionally come across some truly bizarre and/or disturbing things, some of which I will now share with you.

This was the first find, in the window of a bakery around the corner from the hotel in Copenhagen where Joanna and I shared a room while attending a conference on history of science and medicine museums. It’s a Barbie doll…baked into a cake. I hardly know where to go with that--a certain line from Alice in Wonderland comes to mind--but as this is a family publication, I’ll just leave it there.

Radio PSR. Always. There. Even when you’re
lying in bed drinking a cup of coffee.

If you can believe it, this billboard advertisement for a local radio station is the less creepy of the two iterations I’ve seen. The creepier version I saw from a streetcar involved this man poking his head from another dimension through the fabric of the universe into the front seat of a car being driven by a cheerful young woman in a yellow scarf.  I just *love* when my favorite disc jockey physically invades my personal space, don't you?


You know my roommate moved us across town between Christmas and New Year’s to an apartment so new it’s still under construction. It’s in an old factory warehouse that is being remodeled into apartments, an excellent project to re-purpose an existing structure. But the people who painted the stairways have a different aesthetic than I do, so I will include one of their pieces in my gallery of the disturbing.

My artist roommate needs a more avant-garde, in-your-face style to support her artwork. I rather preferred the slightly gentrified older neighborhood with the century-old buildings of our last place. Ah well. More on the aesthetics of Lebensraum in a future post.


You have hear how I found this one. I hadn’t come across it during our three months at the old apartment; then, when we moved, the utensil drawer (like everything else) was wrapped in industial-strength cling wrap for the Schlepp across town. While our kitchen was still under construction, if we needed something we just made a hole in the plastic and pulled out whatever we needed.

The week before I left for the US, I got tired of plastic-ware and went looking for a spoon. This…hoof was sitting right under a hole in the plastic, I guess because my roommate had wanted to open a beer. Now if I were the screaming type, I would have exercised my vocal cords. But as it is, I knew that whatever that foot was attached to, it wasn’t the rest of Bambi.

Chucky’s German cousin Hans

I haven’t shared much from my research yet, so I’ll close with this disturbing image.  It shows Baby Hygiene, decked out like Father Time on New Year’s Day, representing the Second International Hygiene Exhibition in Dresden, 1930-1931. It has the face of a Kewpie doll and not one but two Hygiene Eyes, the symbol of the German Hygiene Museum and the major sponsor of the health fair.

In case you’re wondering, the text reads:

Nun geh’ ich schon ins zweite Jahr,
Bin kerngesund und froh,
Das machs daβ ich hygienisch war.
Seid Ihr es ebenso!

Now I’m entering my second year,
Completely healthy and happy,
Which means I was hygienic [in my first year].
May it be the same for you!

original art deco hygiene eye, 1911

new objectivity logo, 1930

***Update!***

My MIL shared with me that the Barbie-doll-cake is an old cake-decorating trick:

"The Barbie doll in the cake is something we used to make in the late 70's.  Both Aunt M. and I made them at different cake decorating classes.  We had a good laugh one Easter at Grandma's because mine was too tall for the cake I had baked and I talked about cutting off the legs to make it work.  G. said why don't you just raise the cake?  Evidentally Uncle P. and Aunt M. had had the same conversation when her doll was too tall for the cake she baked.  You bake the cake in a bowl shaped cake pan and then cut a hole and insert the doll, then decorate it.  We have a picture of M. holding my decorated cake.  He was about 4 years old and so proud to have his picture taken holding the cake.  He probably won't want to see the picture now."     Thanks, MIL!

Prosit Neujahr!

After my adventure in the Saxon Switzerland and the move across town to a new apartment right after Christmas, I was not feeling very ambitious about New Year's Eve.  So I almost didn't accept my roommate's invitation to a small party with some of her friends (whom I've met).  However, I'm glad I did: we had a stereotypical but very fun German "Silvester."

Some background: despite years of German language and culture education, I had no idea that New Year's Eve is known as "Silvester" here.  It was pretty easy to figure out from the posters advertising parties and concerts on 31 December; but it turns out my German hosts didn't even know how the day got its name.  When I asked about it, we learned from Google that the last day of the year is the feast day for Saint Sylvester, the fourth-century pope whose tenure saw the Council of Nicaea and Emperor Constantine's big building projects, notably the Basilica of St. Peter's in the Vatican.  As someone mentioned, there was very little to do with saints yesterday...

This snapshot doesn't do justice to the blue flames.

There were just five of us plus my roommate's six-year-old daughter at our party.  The evening started a little after 7pm in the kitchen.  I made guacamole from the avocados in the fruit basket DH got me for Christmas, and my roommate skewered some pan-fried ham and prunes (surprisingly delicious).  There was also cheese, olives, deviled eggs, flat bread, and Greek chicken.  But that was just ballast for the main attraction: a Feuerzangenbowle.  This party drink begins with a warm red-wine sangria.  Then you soak a sugar loaf with rum, light the rum on fire, and, let the sugar melt into the pot, sweetening it.  I knew what a Feuerzangebowle was because in a German humor class in college, we watched the 1944 comedy of the same name whose first scene involves a large one of these.  But I had never made one before.  Ours involved a little last-minute DIY excitement: my roomie had to construct a rest for the sugar loaf out of wire while the wine was heating on the stove. To the left you can see the final result.  I found the punch strong but tasty.

The next "Projekt" was Bleigiesserei, or lead pouring, in which a small amount of lead is melted in a spoon held over a candle (right) and then dumped into a bucket of cold water, where it hardens.  You are supposed to be able to tell your fortune for the coming year in the shape(s) that result.  This Sylvester tradition I had recently read about, because the one really helpful entry in the farmer's journal I transcribed from the 1920s and 1930s is about the family's celebration on New Year's Eve 1929.  Farming during Weimar was difficult because of weather misfortunes and the precarious financial situation, so this entry stands out for its warmth and obvious happiness.  After describing the dinner his daughter, fresh from Home-Ec School had cooked (a win for my dissertation!), Walter Lohs lists the results of their Bleigiesserei: his wife a zeppelin, his son something between a devil and a black cat, his daughter two frogs, him an owl and a flute with stag's antlers, one guest a bouquet of flowers and a swallow's nest, and the other something unintelligible.  We poured a tadpole (new beginnings, evolution); a witch flying on a broomstick and a child (travel); a swan carrying a ring (marriage?); either a dolphin leaping out of the water or a fairy flying above two layers of earth (achievement); and one moth wing, a leaf boat, and a small egg on fire.  Can you guess which was mine?  (Answer below!)

Then is was time to watch "Dinner for One," or "Der 90. Geburtstag," an 11-minute English-language comedy sketch that involves a delusional old lady, her comedic butler, and lots and lots of alcohol.  Never shown on either British or American tv, it has been a New Year's classic in many parts of Europe and also South Africa for about 40 years.  (The link above is a short history of this quirky tradition).  Critically speaking, I suppose it doesn't rank up there with Monty Python or "Are You Being Served?", but after a couple of rounds of Feuerzangenbowle...

At this point it was 11:30pm and time to light the fire on the balcony and watch the fireworks.  Fireworks are legal here, and Dresdners make the most of the chance to celebrate and destroy stuff.*  I saw home footage from last year: hundreds and hundreds of people crowd the plazas and the bridges and general mayhem ensues.  You could hear regular "bangs" from about 8pm, but with half an hour to go the noise became constant.  We huddled on our balcony and cheered our thanks to the group in the next courtyard for the bottle rockets and sparkler showers they set off.  Finally, at midnight we toasted each other with champagne and caught glimpses of the city's firework display over the Elbe.  The steady explosions began to drop off after about 12:30.  All the fireworks really made it feel like the celebration was an event.

What was the first thing you did in 2011?  Ours was the last "Projekt" of the night: fresh fruit and chocolate fondue.  Lecker!  It was a delicious and convivial way to begin the new year.  As we rutschen (slide) into 2011, may you find health, happiness, and adventures.

What do you think it is?

*--As I walked home this morning, I observed said destruction: a pane of glass from a telephone booth and most of the sheets of glass of a tram stop!