By Larry and Joan Dolinski
The book-burning event is recalled in two poignant ways, there in the middle of the square. First, there is a plaque containing an 1820 quote by Heinrich Heine which says, "Those who begin by burning books will end up by burning people." If that isn't an attention getter, consider the other memorial...a room beneath the surface of the square with a plexiglass roof so that one can gaze in. The room is a library with shelf capacity for 20,000 books, all empty. Although we were there in daytime, we understand it is considerably more eerie at night with the lighting array.
Speaking of eerie, we visited (and stood over) the site of Hitler's bunker which has been sealed and over which a parking lot now exists. How about this for an historical juxtaposition...the new Jewish Holocaust Memorial presently under construction is immediately adjacent to the site of the bunker.
We were at a number of sites where the Berlin Wall had been located. According to our guide's explanation, the breaching (and destruction) of the wall occurred by accident. Eastern European states were coming under great pressure from their populations to liberalize. As a defensive measure, East Germany held one of its rare press conferences to preempt an uprising and announced certain modest reforms which were coming. The official making the announcement was asked "What about travel restrictions"? He unintentionally, and without license, replied "They will be lifted." The crowd let out a spontaneous cheer and moved like a tidal wave toward the border guards, who also heard the announcement. They became confused and intimidated and opened the gates..."and the wall came tumbling down." Many knowledgeable historians say, because of the political tide in Eastern Europe, the dismantling of the wall was inevitable and would probably have taken little longer.
[Jelly Donut]
On a lighter note, a humorous story concerns the quote by President John F. Kennedy, who visited West Berlin to commemorate the historically important "Berlin Airlift." The city of West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory. The Russians, who controlled that territory permanently closed all roads, including the corridor meant to connect West Berlin to the rest of West Germany. The Americans responded by bringing in all supplies by air (planes landed every few seconds, around the clock, for several months...So President Kennedy visited West Berlin to convey his support and admiration to the people of West Berlin for what they had been enduring. There he uttered the famous: "Ich bin ein Berliner" phrase which translates to "I am a jelly donut." The technically correct statement should have been "Ich bin Berliner." Of course everyone knew what he meant and it was received with good humor, and endures a standing, but good- natured joke.
There was a lot more to our Berlin experience, but we'll leave it with a couple of points of trivia.
o We visited the place (Frederichstrasse) where Marlene Deitrich launched her film career by being discovered by the director of the film classic "The Blue Angel."
o Also, we visited Potstammer Platz, the site of Continental Europe's first traffic light.
From Berlin we biked through more former East Germany territory to Dresden, a city that was severely fire bombed near the end of the war and has been rebuilt in kind (using the rubble wherever possible). Dresden is quite a lovely city and attracts many visitors. Crossing into The Czech Republic (Formerly part of Czechoslovakia), we headed for Prague, one of Europe's most handsome and historical medieval cities. Prague was the first capital of the Holy Roman Empire and is, by our measure, in the same class as London and Paris.
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