sun
Not much to report, because I've spent the last four days almost exclusively finding, in the 70-degree weather we've been having, sunny spots all over the city in which to read. On the grass in a park for a couple hours, at an outside table at a café. I love it when the weather gets nice and all the cafés and restaurants put out tables and open their big folding glass doors so the whole front is open to the sidewalk.
Kleistpark, which is right down the road from my apartment, has a nice big lawn in front of this prestigious-looking building--
--which I only recently learned was home to Hitler's Volksgerichtshof (People's Court), established after the Reichstag burned (which event led directly to Hitler assuming dictatorial powers) to prosecute the crazy Dutchman who said he did it. Hitler's would-be assassins, who plotted to kill him in 1944, were also sentenced here, along with plenty of others.
There's another place between here and Kreuzberg that I walked by several times without knowing it was there before I read about it: it's a 12,650-ton concrete cylinder 18 meters high, situated among some apartment buildings and scrubby bushes. It was put there by Albert Speer, Hitler's favorite architect, to test the weight-bearing capability of the ground in preparation for building the Great Dome. It would be seventeen times the size of St. Peter's basilica in Rome, and it would be the hub from which Hitler would run the world. They also wanted to build a Triumphal Arch 49 times the volume of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. But they never got any further than blowing up some apartment buildings to make room, and leaving a giant concrete pillar near some train tracks. (It's still there because it's rather ungainly to dispose of; they'd have to blow it up, and that would cause problems for the people living in the apartment buildings nearby.)
I've been reading a ton of Berlin history lately (in case you couldn't tell), and it's nothing short of fascinating to live in this city where so many of its changing faces are still visible, yet it's easy to miss pretty important places like the above because it's all just kind of part of Berlin's mish mash. Which I love. Probably the most-repeated quote about Berlin belongs to Karl Scheffler, who said in 1910 that "Berlin is condemned forever to become and never to be."
Kleistpark, which is right down the road from my apartment, has a nice big lawn in front of this prestigious-looking building--
--which I only recently learned was home to Hitler's Volksgerichtshof (People's Court), established after the Reichstag burned (which event led directly to Hitler assuming dictatorial powers) to prosecute the crazy Dutchman who said he did it. Hitler's would-be assassins, who plotted to kill him in 1944, were also sentenced here, along with plenty of others.There's another place between here and Kreuzberg that I walked by several times without knowing it was there before I read about it: it's a 12,650-ton concrete cylinder 18 meters high, situated among some apartment buildings and scrubby bushes. It was put there by Albert Speer, Hitler's favorite architect, to test the weight-bearing capability of the ground in preparation for building the Great Dome. It would be seventeen times the size of St. Peter's basilica in Rome, and it would be the hub from which Hitler would run the world. They also wanted to build a Triumphal Arch 49 times the volume of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. But they never got any further than blowing up some apartment buildings to make room, and leaving a giant concrete pillar near some train tracks. (It's still there because it's rather ungainly to dispose of; they'd have to blow it up, and that would cause problems for the people living in the apartment buildings nearby.)
I've been reading a ton of Berlin history lately (in case you couldn't tell), and it's nothing short of fascinating to live in this city where so many of its changing faces are still visible, yet it's easy to miss pretty important places like the above because it's all just kind of part of Berlin's mish mash. Which I love. Probably the most-repeated quote about Berlin belongs to Karl Scheffler, who said in 1910 that "Berlin is condemned forever to become and never to be."
Labels: Berlin history, Berlin life
