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The Shadow of Berlin
| Article
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20422 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
3 / 1992 |
2,728 Words |
| Author
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Richard Lourie
Richard Lourie is the author of Sakharov: A Biography. |
Crossing Bebelplatz in East Berlin, I paused to admire the architecture. Dark, Prussian, imperial, the buildings, on the large square were sharply outlined against the midafternoon October sky, which was both bright and dim like twilight. None of the buildings an opera house, a cathedral, and a library was marvels of architecture, but they did have their beauty as well as the presence and the grime that come with centuries.
I recalled a story I had read about the church, St. Hedwigs Cathedral, an odd structure all dome, no edifice. When asked by his architects what he wanted the proposed cathedral to look like, Frederick the Great had turned over his coffee cup and said, "Like this." "No one knows whether it actually, happened or is a legend that worked backward from the shape of the building to imagine its origin. In any case, Berliners still engage in such urban folklore, nicknaming their buildings one monstrosity of modernism has been dubbed' the pregnant oyster."
There was a pleasure, fine but keen, in following the inky outlines of the various structures in Bebelplatz, built I had places to go and as always, time was limited. I wanted to se what the communists had done to east Berlin's central square, Alexanderplatz, and to visit the cluster of great museums on Museum Island, one of which, the Pergamon, contains an entire Greek temple and the immense Ishtar Gate from sixth century B.C. Babylon.
I was just heading off on my way when, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a plaque on the wall. Too far away to read from where I stood, it caused me a microsecond of indecision. But the reader in me always triumphs. Even though my German is like the East German car the Trabant, laughable but serviceable, I was able to make out the key word, Buchverbrennung, and the date. So it was here on this square on May 11, 1933, that the infamous book burning took place.
I remembered newsreel footage from the times--great pagan bonfires, excited young men with swastika arm bands hurling books into the flames--the works of Thomas Mann, Einstein, Freud, Marx what Goebbels, the propaganda chief, had called "immoral and destructive documents and books." Also burned were volumes by the great nineteenth century German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine, who had prophetically remarked. "Where they start by burning books, they will end by burning people."
That Heine was correct has been amply demonstrated by history in this century, this country. Hatred
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