this evening, while dining at a vietnamese restaurant in a formerly east german city, i overheard an australian declare to his companion that his 'vmware would run much faster after implementing iscsi". and the scary thing is...i understood what he meant...
to further cross border cooperation gulliver, the economist's travel blog, has a few recommendations for doing business with berliners. my favorite:
"berliners are known for their schnauze and can be quick to ridicule anything they see as pompous. don’t be aghast at this acerbic wit, and tread carefully when responding."and, as i can personally attest, contrary to german superstition failing to meet someone's eyes when clinking glasses upon a toast, though rude, need not result in seven years of bad sex....
and coffee saturday at a villa in berlin-dahlem. here i would meet my first actual anglicans - they seemed almost normal! of great interest was the vacant lot next door at number 24. a hillock of clay and a dozen small rosebushes huddled together providing the only evidence that the lot had once been the site of a luxurious villa, home to swedish chanson and film star zarah leander. the following day found us wandering through friedrichshagen, marvelling at the lakefront villas before venturing into the waterworks museum, which provided a look into the murky history of berlin's water systems. afterwards by tram and ferry to a late lunch in rahnsdorf where, at twilight, mosquitoes the size of small birds emerge from the pines.
of his 112th birthday this weekend, ernst udet's grave has been gussied up a bit. new white gravel, potted flowers, a grave candle, and a new plaque honor the earthbound flying ace. until yesterday the ivy had crept tastefully over the grave but it's now been pushed back with a rather tacky green plastic border. they say graves are more for the living than the dead and of course there is no accounting for taste...but still....
the chill april clouds parted just enough yesterday to allow for a expedition into the brandenburgensian hinterlands. destination - schloss neuhardenberg to hear two dresdeners, durs grünbein and ingo schulze, read from their work and discuss the beginnings of their ink stained careers as part of renatus deckert's program 'wie menschen zum schreiben kommen' which follows his recent anthology 'das erste buch. schriftsteller über ihr literarisches debüt'. a bit thick for my blood but since ingo is a friend of a friend (and i had heard him read last year with günter grass at the adk) it seemed like a fine excuse to venture out amidst the pines. reaching the platform at berlin-lichtenberg i was heartened to see a rather new talent train operated by neb (the niederbarnimer eisenbahn). a welcome change from the old db regional bahn line. the sleek bombardier talent is quite comfortable, with plenty of space for bicycles, and boasts internet access, potable yet inexpensive coffee, a friendly staff, and large windows to watch the countryside roll by. running hourly between berlin-lichtenberg and kostryn at the border the talent makes wandering the mark brandenburg easier than ever.
debarking at seelow-gusow we pedalled over to schloss gusow to see old fieldmarshall derfflinger's digs. fontane remarks that schloss gusow is not architecturally significant but i would note that it does have a sort of disheveled charm, mostly due to the prussian history museum the current owners have installed in the rooms and the rangy park behind it, which would be quite at home in an edward gorey tale. in the dim stuffy rooms which comprise the museum the local history as it pertains to brandenburg, prussia and germany is illustrated by an assortment of books, furniture, and paintings, as well as busts and other objects - but most importantly by dozens of dioramas castles, battles, citizens and soldiers all rendered in tin. the museum's caretaker (and i suspect, its curator), initially gruff and suspicious, grew friendly and animated as soon as we paid the three and a half euro entrance fee. he then instructed us as to gusow's pivotal spot in world history - specifically its role in the destruction of three great empires. apparently the goths, vandals and assorted 'germanic tribesman' that brought down rome were quite enamored of the area and used it as a base for their attacks on the empire. later napoleon would convene three hundred thousand troops here for his march to moscow - of whom only eight thousand would return. finally the last great battle against hitler's empire - misnamed the battle of seelow heights - was actually decided here in gusow since, the russian armor being unable to climb the steep hills, bersarin instructed them to advance along the rail lines, the same lines we had just ridden out from berlin! truly the center of the world, we shall have to keep our eyes peeled to see how gusow brings the american and nascent chinese empires to their knees.
around the old squirm.com yesterday - replacing those stodgy, useless, category, calendar and archive lists in the sidebars with a few of our favorite folks, moving around some headings and scrubbing off those nasty old trackback stains (all part of a virtual spring cleaning designed to shake some of the dust out of the old girl as a prelude to a more muscular posting regime) - i suddenly received news that the most wonderfully wonderful gridskipper.com has been sold by mothership gawker to nascent blog empire curbed. as one of gawker's lesser lights it is hardly a surprise that we were marched out naked and shivering to the auction block (along with sister sites wonkette and idolator), but our acquisition by curbed could herald a more energized community of readers and, one hopes, advertisers. what this means for yours truly remains to be seen, however, allow me to leap from my chair, proclaiming with vigour, "I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords!"
is around the corner at my local kaiser's - the ubiquitous, tengelmann / a&p grocery where i purchase most of my staples. as i was shuffling along in a dull, shopping inspired daze this evening, i found myself staring at an aisle end display of products branded 'von Hier'. i've long appreciated that organic products are easily available at berlin's trashiest local supermarkets - though what they actually mean by 'organic' is always up for discussion - and i am always happy to try to further reduce the amount of toxins i gobble down. 'von Hier' takes it up a notch though - offering a selection of goods from ten organic manufacturers in berlin or brandenburg. not only does this program encourage local organic economic development but also reduces the energy necessary to get the goods to market. not being a gourmand many of their foodstuffs extend beyond my simple needs, but i was able to pick up some strange looking barley band noodles which could prove quite tasty.
on a further food related note - i stopped by the farmer's market here at zionskirchplatz last week, as i needed a couple of cucumbers. but in response to my inquiry the awkwardly dressed farmer lady informed me that they weren't in season yet...and in fact she wouldn't have any until the following weeks! i almost burst into tears and laughter at the same time - not only because she actually understood my broken german, nor because of the absurdity of not being able to procure a few filthy cucumbers ("don't you realize who i AM!"), but also because of the sudden exposure of how far removed i am from any sort of real relation to the discrete food units which keep my meat machine chugging along - wandering the mark brandenburg....
cycling along the berlin-spandauer schifffahrtskanal this morning i spied the wasserschutzpolizei casting off from their mooring and was amused to see one of the two officers on board sporting a red mohawk. though perhaps it was only a sort of water safety strategy....
this would be annoying
if it wasn't for the cute
japanese girls....
today for my mittagspause i pedalled down turmstrasse to the Galerie Nord in order to check out their controversial ZoG-Surrend exhibition of work by danish political provocateurs surrend.org, which reopened this month. It had originally been closed in response to vague stone throwing threats by from even more vague 'muslim groups' six local youths who objected to the appearance of the ka'aba in one of their political posters. surrend artists are expert at making "fun of the world’s powerful men and crazy ideological conflicts" and in this collection direct their graphic attentions toward bush, putin, israel, iran, burma, and the npd (one poster suggests giving a german state to the sinti as reparations). i hadn't been in the gallery for thirty seconds and was still getting my bearings when a woman suddenly begin screaming at the top of her lungs, delivering her judgement that it was a "filthy nazi exhibition". a staff member approached her to confer and another helpfully held out an informative brochure but it soon became obvious that, not only had she had missed the point of the exhibition, but she was also a bit unbalanced. eventually - to a chorus of raised eyebrows - she was escorted from the building, and stood outside bellowing her criticisms for the benefit of passersby...i suppose satiric irony is not everyone's forté...
the rest of us will just have to take the bus to the sites of our own exploitation!
the simple pleasures of the rural life are soon dissolved in the degenerate cesspools of the modern metropolis. imagine the assault on my moral uprightness last night when i found myself at the opening night of the 2nd Annual PornFilmFestivalBerlin. oh the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune! after a short introduction by organizers Jürgen Brüning and Manuela Kay the festival opened with advertisements from BlueMovie, a festival sponsor, then a short in which poker faced actors read through the dreadful dialogue of a porn scene. These were followed by the evening's main presentation, "5 Sex Rooms und eine Küche", director Eva Heldman's documentary examination of a frankfurt brothel. pleasantly straightforward, the film followed the women as they described their experiences and opinions on relationships, sex, and prostitution. there were also a lot of sexy shoes in the film as the director has a bit of a shoe fetish. following a short Q&A with the director and lady tara, owner of the brothel, everyone (or at least it seemed like everyone) piled into a chartered double decker bus for the jaunt down to kreuzberg's L.U.X. club for the festival's opening party. entering the club to the smooth sounds of DJ Vaginal Davis (who, in a performance years ago, called me a 'little white deathrocker' - is it that obvious?), we soon found ourselves face to...er...face with performance artist Mouse, whose naughty poodle performance caught the imagination of the clubgoers. emerging from her backstage doghouse in pink poodle underwear (which disappeared in the first thirty seconds) the naughty little doggie proceeded to push a plastic bib from out her softer regions which she then tied around her neck, replacing it first with her fist and then a few plastic doggie bones. after messily eating a can of dog food, she produced several long sparklers with which, audience members assisting, she turned herself into a double fountain of sparkly light. no doubt aware of local safety regulations she removed any llingering fire hazards by filling first her femaleness with soapy water (cleanliness is close to godliness after all) and spraying the audience, then repeated the process from her behind, resulting in a general re-adjustment of audience position as not everyone had remembered to bring their umbrella along. now clean and serene Mouse gathered her playtoys and, after a few hearty rounds of applause, left the stage while the assembled clubgoers drifted along, now damp and happy....oh the simple pleasures of babylon on the spree.
they forgot to send my invitation again!
this weekend. to wit
- 19th century french paintings from the met
- jim jones and the peoples temple
- piranesi's views of rome
- uli richter's fashion from berlin
- georg cantor driven mad by contemplating infinity
- eine armee gretchen
- the love letter of a portuguese nun
i can only begin to imagine what devil's brew these are cooking up in my delicate psyche....
yesterday, after spending the afternoon pacing a black mare around the riding hall and musing over the bulky sculptures of henry moore, we spent an hour or two wandering through the gropius bau's exhibition "Under the Sign of the Golden Griffin - The Royal Tombs of the Scythians" gawking at the golden treasures. a far flung empire of horse riding wanderers, the scythians roamed the steppes from central europe to eastern asia centuries before the rise of christianity, warring against each other and the peoples that bordered their extensive realm. as my psyche is being trampled beneath hooves in preparation for my trip to transylvania next week, i noted with interest the close relationship between these nomadic tribes and their steeds, many of which were found buried in elaborate graves, complete with golden bridles and elaborate headgear. even the star of the exhibit - a scythian warrior mummified by burial in ice for a thousand years - was not without an equestrian tribute, as he had an ornate tribal image of a horse tattooed over his right shoulder. today is the exhibit's final day, it will be pulled down on tuesday (in part by my good friend Ulf who helped build it back in July), so if you didn't get a chance to see it - well, you're shit out of luck.
i had the opportunity to see our cute-as-a-button mayor this week when i attended the opening of the neue heimat exhibition at the berlinische galerie. 29 artists contributed works to the show, framed as a meditation on the mobility and movement of artists and others who have made Berlin their home in the years since german re-unification. i found myself attuned to the exhibition's spirit, having made berlin my neue heimat as well. (In fact, today marks three years since i lowered the landing gear, touched down and taxied into the hangar. while being so far from family and loved ones has been difficult, my delight and enjoyment of life here in the hauptstadt only grows with passing time. if only my ability to jabber berlinerisch grew as rapidly!) wowi was on hand to open the festivities and to thank directress Ursula Prinz for her many years of service as she leaves for greener pastures, presenting her with the official white berlin bear. crowded with the usual mix of arty types, politicoes and cultural voyeurs the museum kept the exhibition open for us to peruse while waiting for the speakers to speak and the bar to open. much cleverness on display though it was soon too crowded to properly view, though i can recommend the large inflating tank and the spiky orb of plastic chairs, a return visit is necessitated to delve further into the subject. i was also pleased to wander upstairs to the grafik im licht exhibition, consisting of works on paper - usually kept under wraps - from the museum's graphic collection. due to the museum's limitied purview - art made in berlin - they have grown into geniuses of presentation, shuffling the same works into multiple combinations, like the bits of colored glass in a kaleidoscope.
as the evening wore on i made my way through the milling kulturicrats outside to my waiting steed, planning to take my usual swim before returning home. to my horror i found that some degenerate had parked next to me and, mind fogged by entartete kunst, had actually locked their bicycle to mine! Bastards! or should i say - Buggery Fuck! it took but a moment to realize that, without an detachment of heavily armed gunmen, it would prove impossible to survey the crowd, find the miscreant, and force him to undo his doing before a summary execution would prove his own undoing! i stared in disbelief for a few moments, then walked away muttering in the direction of my gym. obsessive as i am, it was blocks before i could actually accept the incompetence of this wheeled stranger. thankfully my long swim and sauna routine wrung the hysteria out of me and pacing berlin's streets on a chill september night does have a charm of its own. as i approached the museum upon my return shortly before midnight i was disappointed to see the galerie glitterati still gabbing about, though it appeared they had already sucked the bar dry...and was that our mayor i spied, three sheets to the wind and strutting across the tables behind the coat check? ah berlin....happily my miscreant and his rude vehicle were nowhere to be found and so i mounted my trusty steed and drifted off into the nacht und nebel....
the Rykestrasse Synagogue reopened today after a thorough reconstruction. How the neighborhood has changed since it was originally completed in 1904. Most touching to me is this snippet from the deutsche welle report
"Ninety-four year-old rabbi Leo Trepp, who had preached at the synagogue in the 1930s and was one of the rabbis who was seized and deported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp along with many of congregation members, called the reopening a 'miracle'."one can imagine this to be one of the better days of his ninety four years...
as i have the singular pleasure of working deep in moabit i am well aware of the semi-annual Turmstrassenfest which brings festive tone to the normally grim streetscape. But who could have expected that to celebrate the festival's 30th birthday the organizers would have been able to pull of a coup of this magnitude.... hold on to your seats kiddies, tonight's headliners are those monster of mayhem, those bad boys of bubblegum, those crown princes of pop - The Ohio Express!
this evening i had hoped to roll down to radial system v - whose name makes me a bit nervous, as well as the explanatory "space for the arts" moniker. but i figured i'd be safe since i was only planning to see a film "Die Spree - Sinfonie eines Flusses" (nod to Walther Ruttman), a documentary about Berlin's beloved stream which perishes here into the Havel. Little did i know that the film had become pick of the litter for several culture rags around town and when i called about tickets i was snappily informed that all tickets were ausverkauft. oh the slings and arrows. after a brief search through the listings my film going companion suggested Am Ende Kommen Touristen, based on the book of the same name. a young berliner is completing his civil service in poland, assisting an aging auschwitz survivor and performing tasks around the town's youth hostel. he befriends a young polish woman who works as a tour guide at the concentration camp and the film follows these characters as they struggle between the remembrances of cruelty and the sorrowful requirements of modern life. each reduced to an isolated particle by the terrible gravity of history they move through the film skirting the edge of an emotional event horizon. the actors played masterfully and the script left room for the emotions to resonate. recommended...
As the clock ticked over last night's Long Night of the Museums found us returning from the grunewald. a pommes pitstop at the gay imbiss on wittenbergplatz and then back in the saddle heading east. suddenly we were atop the bauhaus museum and decided that the long night might as well start here. the museum had arranged for some charleston lessons which we cleverly avoided by sucking down black coffee and hiding behind the bins of art books on sale. pickings were thin but i was able to find a still sealed copy of Uli Bohnen's Paradise Lost for only a single thin euro. after meandering through the current exhibition (detailing the candidacy of Berlin's bauhaus developments for recognition as a UNESCO world heritage site) and salivating at the household items of bauhaus inspired design we took a seat in the ersatz auditorium to watch Die Neue Wohnung, a 1931 film by Hans Richter, which contrasts a stuffy old gemutlich apartment with a clean well lit efficient living space for the modern family unit. a sort of prehistoric ikea advertisement. later this long night we checked out phoebe washburn's green factory at the deutsche guggenheim and a few films in the old nicolai kirche. this was the Long Night of the Museum's tenth year and judging by the crowds on the street its popularity is at an all time high....
just returned to the office from my normal late lunch hour. i was born prematurely and have been making it up ever since by sleeping, eating and generally showing up - late. for today's mittagspause i headed off to find Levetzow Strasse 15. i recently came upon evidence suggesting this may have been the address of Prana-Film GmbH, the production company of Albin Grau, whose only film was Murnau's dark classic Nosferatu as they were sued by the estate of Bram Stoker after its release and driven into bankruptcy. Grau, an occultist involved with the Fraternitas Saturni, a german masonic society with links to Aleister Crowley's O.T.O., worked variously as an art director, costume designer and film producer during the Weimar, and was later murdered by the Nazis in Buchenwald. strangely (or not, given the decimation of Berlin by the Allied bombing campaign) Levetzow Strasse 15 no longer exists - the street numbers reach the Hansabrücke at number 14 and begin their return to the west with number 16. to distract myself from this tragic loss i made my way up and down the banks of the Spree peering at the willows and discovering an odd statue of a boy fisherman playing an accordion to the delight of a gathering of frogs. my hunger gnawing i made my way over to the arminius markthalle in search of a tasty helping of H5N1. the markthalle has taken to hosting a flea market in its unoccupied space - a dozen or so broken down stalls offering old records and cds, obsolete computers games, chipped coffee mugs, unsightly clothing and of course my personal weakness, books. though i stoically hid behind my half chicken and plastic cup of fanta the addiction soon got the better of me and i ended up turning over some ducats for das blau des engels, josef von sternberg's autobiography, and briefe und schriften penned by philipp otto runge, a contemporary of cdf and correspondent of goethe's...sweet surrender indeed....then a hurry back to the office to re-assume my position....
as we scrabble slowly toward that yawning pit. my negligence to post here is inexcusable - though, i suspect, quite comprehensible. in the past few weeks i have busy grid-skribbling, and traveling about eastern germany for the job. to bitterfeld - never was a town more aptly named as years of toxic manufacturing processes by the local chemical industry give the local air a special acidic tang. stepping off the train my throat contracted and eyes began to water - and they say it is much improved since the city's glory years as the DDR's personal chemistry set.... and to Magdeburg, whose university is the only notable feature beyond the much touted hundertwasser haus. naturally i saw neither.
speaking of flying - highly decorated fighter pilot Werner Mölders is still dead, his grave located directly behind that of his friend and mentor Ernst Udet, to whose funeral he was travelling when killed while landing in a thunderstorm.
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| Herr Worrmann lived next door at Wolliner Strasse 3. This new Stolperstein just appeared in front of his old building. I wonder if he and Herr Holzheim spoke in the stairwell, or had a drink together to discuss the worsening times. |
for frighting. here in babylon it was the 'Long Night of Science' - meaning all the participating museums, libraries and foundations stay open until one in the morning to educate, irritate, explain and entertain. a friend and i took a late jaunt to the Natural History Museum, which has been undergoing renovations for what feels like forever (got to get those dinosaur skeletons just so) to take a special tour of the arachnid collection. we were led up several flights of stairs by our two legged guide and settled at a four card tables set up between the vitrines housing thousands of eight legged friends in jars labelled with fading gothic script and submerged in yellowing alcohol. after a short introduction our guide proceeded to present us with critters of various orders from the museum's arachnid collection. indigenous and exotic species of spiders, scorpions and ticks were presented (a live specimen of the last was hideously scrabbling around the inside of a diminutive glass phial) and a brief overview of the arachnology of the local Brandenburg region was provided. being an insect man myself i have always disdained as inordinate the amount of attention that the arachnids receive and thus after descending the stairs and returning to the public collections, i was pleased to see that the museum is offering (for twenty clams) the chance to sponsor one of the hundreds of specimen boxes in their entomological collection - just the thing for the boy who has everything! as the hour grew late we roamed the exhibits marvelling at the glassy eyes of the stuffed hippos and looking for Bobby and the Tasmanian Tiger stopping to listen to a lecture on the evolution of amphibians and land dwellers. i was pleased to see a few interested boys and girls, brows furrowed in concentration, relieved that not all of nature's children were being led, their minds shackled by idiots, into the dungeons of creationism and intelligent design.
today was a special day for Ernst Udet! He was honored by the Veterans Association of Luftwaffe Fighter-Wing III, which was named after him subsequent to his suicide in 1941. Cycling by his grave this morning i couldn't help but stop to admire the fine floral arrangement presented to the earthbound aviator... carry on Ernst!
a little work i have started doing, combining two of my greatest interests: berlin and cold hard cash. recently started contributing to gridskipper - a travel blog which is part of gawker media, an online publisher of gawker, defamer, wonkette and - my favorite - fleshbot. i am quite pleased as this is the first time i have gotten paid for creative work. i am writing brief snippets regarding things to do and places to see here in babylon on the spree and then they toss some pocket change in my cage - getting paid to blog - who da thunk it? i also recently 'arranged' for german press credentials and am finding out just how easy all those journalists have it - a land of milk and honey indeed! anyway you can check out my stuff here if you'd like - though the format is somewhat limiting it is still a good exercise for my writing skills - brevity being the soul of wit and all that...
we paced the Zattere in the footsteps of Nicholas Crabbe, greeting a pink Sun from the Punta della Dogana. the past night, tracking a fractured moon over the oily blackness of the Grand Canal, we had lost ourselves somewhere in the thousand years of calli and campi. the stones swaying beneath our feet as at sea, we wandered with Frederick Rolfe, Proust and Henri de Régnier, only the dull thuds of the vaporetti against the traghetti punctuation to our dreaming. in the ghetto we found Gautier's blistered walls and impossibly narrow passages while yet the wraiths crept furtively beneath the high houses, now draped insufferably bright beneath the burning sky. at sunset, reveries over cappucini at Florian's, the bitterness of history sweetened by austro-hungarian marches and mustached conspiracies.
and now wake again on the sands of the Mark, a dream departing across the silent sea of memory...
the curator of the soon to be opened Museum of Things in Kreuzberg got a surprise yesterday when examining pieces for the museum's collection of everyday objects. As Renate Flagmeier peered into a cardboard box she spied something looking 'somehow dangerous and weaponlike'. The police were called and after examination declared it a "Gewehrgranate, deutsches Fabrikat, Zweiter Weltkrieg, hochexplosiv“ - a still hot, german made, rifle propelled grenade from the second world war! Furthermore, once the bomb squad arrived, it was decided that the little fella was too dangerous to move and would have to be detonated in the closest available space - Leuschnerdamm's grassy median. Traffic was blocked, streets cleared, residents warned and the antique explosive was brought out in a padded container and gingerly positioned. A few minutes later a controlled explosion hurt the ears, throwing dirt and fragments of grenade into the air. The danger now passed, the streets were reopened, the police returned to their usual task of harassing the mohawked and the museum will open to the public next month with their now slightly less exciting exhibition Kampf der Dinge (The Struggle of Things). But for that dangerous little fella, the struggle is finally over.
to the Goldisthal Pumped Storage Power Station we go! or rather went. Saturday. invited by my electricity provider as one of their Ökopur electricity subscribers (all the electricity i use is returned to the system from renewable sources). met the bus before dawn along with my fellow target group members at the parking lot of the corporate offices. the journey out into the Thueringer Wald was to be a long and arduous and to forestall any problems, i scanned my waiting fellow travelers for the chubbiest and healthiest looking of the lot, in the event that a bus disaster and delayed rescue from the wilds of Thueringen would necessitate a return to a primitive cannibalism. (happily it was not to be so and we subsisted on watery coffee and biscuits for breakfast, later enjoying a lunch of regional flavor at the Gasthof Zum Ritter). on the outward jouney we were educated by one Herr Doktor Lemm regarding the architecture of large scale electricity generation, the history of Berlin's electricity distribution system(s) and recent mergers within the european energy sector. upon reaching the site of what is essentially a gargantuan battery, we were first led to the upper reservoir, into which unspeakable volumes of water are pumped in times of low electricity demand (and cheap prices), later to be drained back below, generating electricity when demand is high (and prices juicy!). the monumentality of the structure would have pleased albert speer - one could easily imagine a platform atop the pumping station for the fuerher to address the vast expanse of algae and greasy water. next stop - the lower reservoir, which despites its name, still sits high above a small village, endangering the local populace. finally we made our way into the vast hall of the mountain king - where great turbines pump the water back and forth with prodigious noise and vibration. quite impressive, even for one as ignorant of civil engineering such as myself. the trip was of course not entirely without cost - during our return journey we were battered with surveys and paper forms to determine if our relationship with our corporate chaperone had blossomed into a deep and abiding love affair. being a simple man, i was simply relieved that we hadn't been forced to throw someone overboard or draw straws to determine who would be eaten first. though one must admit a certain curiousity.....
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illuminates the city under a clear sky on this walpurgis nacht. witches and devils enjoy their revels on Brocken mountain and the earth releases the dead to walk among us. let us hope they don't demand justice from the living...
i know exactly how he feels! earthbound air ace Ernst Udet celebrates a birthday today! i have been a bit of a 'flieger' myself this past week, having made my way through Frankfurt, Mannheim, Baden-Baden, Halle, Leipzig, Düsseldorf and Duisburg, which i hope provides an acceptable excuse for the neglect of my scribbling here. i seem to be accumulating more air miles over germany than a B-24 Liberator. while it is always interesting to be out from behind the desk and sniffing around the fatherland (though much of that time is spent deep in customer datacenters and conference rooms - architectures of anonymity and placelessness if there ever were), the best part of the journey is inevitably touching down at TXL and catching a cab back to the kitties. somehow the shudders of excitement i felt my first time cruising down saatwinkler damm, through the beusselkiez and into faust's metropolis still remain despite my increasing familiarity with the frustrations and fascinations of the city....
now that the axis of the seasons has turned, and we return to face our father sun, my morning commute is again on two wheels. riding through invaliden friedhof each morning i hail the buried flying ace with a hearty 'Morgen Ernst!' rudely he has not, as of yet, returned my greeting....
despite the sunny weather saturday found me in darkness. sitting in our tiny lichtlblick kino watching peter lorre's singular directorial effort der verlorene (the lost one). the film, made upon his return to germany in 1951, opens with Lorre as Dr. Neumeister, a physician in a displaced persons camp who is suddenly joined by one Nowak, an associate from his wartime past. as the two men reacquaint themselves in the canteen that evening, we learn the truth about the doctor, his associate and their shared dark past. the film is a meditation on murder, seeing, silence and the burial of truth beneath opportunism - themes which would also haunt it's release and subsequent disappearance (after a short ten day run) from german cinemas. the film's relentless confrontation of historical horror was unacceptable in the germany of 1951 which, on the verge of its miraculous postwar economic recovery, could not bear the sight of its recent crimes. lorre, silenced in his homeland, went back to hollywood where he would live until his death in 1964.the next day we left before noon to ride out the the grunewald. in preparation for a planned trek this autumn through the transylvanian countryside i am training to ride (horses, that is). the riding association of uncle tom's cabin (don't ask) has a riding school and so we went out to make the proper arrangements. afterwards, having noted it on the map of riding trails taped to the door of the barn, we decided to bicycle through the grunewald to the selbstmord friedhof (suicide's graveyard) - who could resist? though setting off in a general northwesterly direction, we soon became turned around and lost among the dense network of walking, riding and cycling trails running through the forest. and we weren't the only ones - as we stopped to ask directions from the other cyclists and wanderers we would often as not be asked the same questions - where had we come from? what was down the next fork or over the next ridge? the woods were full of the desperately lost and disoriented - i think i even spied a group of east prussian refugees still fleeing the advancing russians sixty years later. and one can also imagine the looks of horror we received inquiring for directions to the suicide's graveyard... luckily we soon ran into a orchestra conductor out for a constitutional with the faithful hound and young 'protege'. he closed his eyes and waved an invisible baton, directing us through the forest to the banks of the havel where he indicated we could find a map for the remainder of the journey.
our conductor also remarked that the cemetery was no longer known as the selbstmord friedhof nor the alternate name of friedhof der namenlosen (graveyard of the nameless) but was now officially designated the friedhof grunewald-forst (graveyard of the grunewald forest). the old names reflect the history of the cemetery, which was founded by the local foresters as a burial ground for the bodies that they pulled from the river, whose currents had the habit of dropping the floaters from the big city here along the reeds. since suicide is a mortal sin, the local churches refused the dead entry into the their churchyards and the woodsmen provided this ground in the stillness of the forest as a final resting place for these tortured souls. as the years progressed it became a resting place not only for the suicides and unknown dead of faust's metropolis but also for those who preferred to rest in eternity untroubled by the petty badgerings of religious faith.
as promised, after a bit more wandering through the forest we found ourselves on the banks of the havel. the warm sun had brought innumerable families to the water's edge where their children were busy harassing the local waterfowl and being repayed in kind. finding the promised map we soon determined that we were several kilometers southwest of the cemetery. given our propensity for misdirecting ourselves we thought it best to ride north along the havel - keep the river on your right (or in this case left) and all that. the next few kilometers found us dodging butterflies, toddlers, teens and ancients along the bike path until we reached schildhorn where we paused for refreshment before heading back up into the forest.
leaving the waters edge and riding up into treeline, the lowering sun reddened the trunks of the pines. before long, a clue we were headed in the right direction. a wooden sign pointing down the trail and announcing in large letters 'zum friedhof'. heeding, we found ourselves a moment later at the gate of the graveyard. as we wandered between the plots, we spied a small stone with a pair of names, upon which rested a bottle of wine, a lantern and several pebbles. it was the grave of one margarete päffgen and her daughter christa - better known as NICO. singer-songwriter, fashion model, actress, keyboard player and warhol superstar, NICO was buried here with her mother after her sudden death in ibiza in 1988. funny really, as we have been listening to NICO quite a bit lately after reading simon reynolds writing about her in the guardian. her two albums the marble index and desertshore are to be rereleased together this year as the frozen borderline. siren of the lost, NICO was our youthful companion of many a dark and delirious night and we've even a vague memory of seeing her once in concert. our recall of the evening a bit dim, the main thrust being that she was extraordinarily late to come on stage.
leaving the chelsea girl and onward through the graveyard - past the final resting places of the nameless fished out of the river, the unknown soldiers, the russian war prisoners of wwi, lost beloved parents and the children who perished on christmas eve. all of them buried here in the middle of this pine expanse beneath the dome of the sky. as the hour was growing late and the woods were darkening we left to make our way back into the city, the low wall of the graveyard disappearing behind the pale screen of the pines reaching heavenwards from the sandy hills....
last night i had the opportunity to see Hitlerjunge Quex - one of a trilogy of nazi propaganda films from UFA. Like the others (SA-Mann Brand and Hans Westmar – Einer von Vielen) the film takes as its theme the power struggle in the streets of the weimar republik between the nazis and the commies. The film opens with a pair of neighborhood boys triggering a food riot as they try to steal an apple from a local grocer. We soon meet our protagonist, young Heini Völker is the tender son of an alcoholic prole (played perfectly by Heinrich George) who is expected join the local commie cadre as his father before him. However, on an camping trip with the commie youth group Heini is put off by their chaotic and slatternly ways. He wanders away and passing through the darkness (of lost faith?) he soon comes across the hitler youth camp. the clean cut hitler youths are busy taking oaths and singing songs around a bonfire. Heini soon finds himself caught between the expectations of his father and the neighborhood commies and the seductively healthy hitler youth with their spiffy outfits and short pants. the commies are shown to be a bunch of criminal types hanging out in smoky bars and plotting murders, while the nazis are mainly concerned with rebuilding germany, marching up and down in their smart outfits and singing patriotic songs. also stressed is the difference between the seductive commie slut Gerda (played by a super sexy Rotraut Richter), who seduces one of the nazi boys to obtain information and later humiliates him, and the ever chaste Ulla, sister of the hiter youth troop leader who we first encounter coming out of the kitchen to welcome our young heini to dinner (and the party). The suspense grows as the antagonism between the evil commies and the shiny happy nazis becomes increasingly violent and our Heini is caught in the middle - a bad end is inevitable.
As this film is on "the list" it cannot be shown without a lecture from a film historian to give it the proper context and so was screened at the german historical museum as part of their art and propaganda exhibition. the audience was a mix between the usual film intellectuals, student groups, perverts and a few old folks that had probably seen the film on its first run in 1933! As the entire film takes place in the Beusselkiez - a worker's neighborhood just around the corner from our office - i can visit the scene of such heroics during lunch hour!
warms. yesterday, traipsing around what was once the playground of emperors we saw two yellow sulfurs, the first butterflies of the year. in a copse behind the antikentempel, an Eichhörnchen searches for last year's treasures, from out the cellar window a cat appears to watch the stream, and everywhere the iridescent headed mallard men trundle persistently behind their bashful mates....
apparently those besotten limeys over at bbc world have decided (no doubt in a drunken haze) to stop broadcasting on berlin's digital terrestrial system (DVB-T). I tuned in last night to get a hot news injection from dharshini david only to find myself confronted with some home shopping channel that looked as if it had been produced in khazakstan. i supressed the memory successfully (just like all that satanic ritual child abuse) until this morning when a post by neighbor paul brought it all rushing back....oh the horror, the horror....
please register your complaints here. the news monkey on my back thanks you.
WWII - the big one - is never, ever over, over here - the latest news: norwegian war babies are appealing to the european court of human rights, claiming they deserve compensation for abuse suffered since the end of the war. (one notes that Anni-Frid Lyngstad of Abba is a war child - which would make the swedish supergroup one of the nazis much feared vengeance weapons). in other news, those rascally german catholic bishops (thinking, perhaps, of Archbishop Orsenigo) are having fun putting their feet in each other's mouths. During a trip to israel one compared the west bank's 'separation barrier' to the berlin wall, while another compared ramallah to the warsaw ghetto. of course the outrage poured in from the expected sources. more outrage was to be found in the east after erika steinbach, head of the german league of expellees, compared the intransigence of the polish government over the question of building a memorial center to german wartime expellees to the extremism of the german far right parties (which are still hungering for those prewar borders). while the SPD and the CDU made the expected tut-tutting noises, green party secretary volker beck hopped on the bandwagon stating "the League of Polish Families, which supplies the culture minister, has neo-Nazi traits". one might also note the overwhelming catholicism of the polish conservatives. this skirmish comes on the heels of sunday's broadcast on ARD of 'die flucht' - a two part drama recounting the flight of a fictional "countess Lena of Mahlenberg" together with the other 14 million ethnic germans before the advancing russian troops. needless to say discussions of german suffering at the end of the war always make the poles a bit nervous. perhaps what we need is a strong leader who can lead us out of this endless nattering and arguing....someone who can act as a sort of guide during these troubled times.....
here in Babylon on the Spree. birds are singing, daffodils and crocii thrust tentatively from the mud and flocks of old bitties are swooping down on unsuspecting pups. why, even the skinheads are out and about, polishing their boots and looking for nooks and crannies in the concrete in which to lay their noxious little eggs.
"where do all the christmas trees go after christmas?" you ask yourself every year. one can never really say what happens in your town i suppose, but here in Berlin we feed 'em to the fuckin' elephants!
snow. granted, i woke late after a silent morning interrupted only by the yawning of cats. seeing a glaze on the roof of a house on the corner i assumed at first that the night air had simply occasioned the frost, but spying a bit closer i spotted the tiny snow specks drifting down from our refrigerated sky. and now it has begun to lay a thin blanket upon the autos, the heaps of dirt piled up by workers and the abandoned bicycles in the street, the snow gods having decided that the solstice and christmas are safely past and the winter can begin in earnest. it eases my heart which had begun to doubt the possibility of snow in this greenhouse world into which we have shut ourselves - pulling fast the door and listening for that doomladen 'click' - like a lone child trapping himself in a dead refrigerator thoughtlessly abandoned on the street.
a few days ago i thrilled to see Unheimliche Geschichten (Tales of the Macabre) at the Babylon. Richard Oswald's 1919 film adaption of five strange tales (authored by Edgar Allan Poe and Robert Louis Stevenson among others) stars Conrad Veidt, Reinhold Schünzel and, most importantly, Anita Berber. I was especially excited to see the film since finishing Mel Gordon's biography of Berber and becoming better acquainted with this dark goddess of Berlin. Berber is presented as 'die Dirne' (the Harlot) in the film's introduction, her portrait hanging in an antiquariat between those of Veidt's 'der Tod' (Death) and Schünzel's 'der Teufel' (the Devil). At the stroke of midnight the portraits come alive, spring from out their frames and, after squirming about lasciviously, begin to read from the dusty volumes which are everywhere in the shop. The five stories which follow are tales of desire, madness and death. a man kills his wife, his crime only to be discovered by her lover, a mysterious lovely perishes of the plague, a man murders his friend for the attentions of a dancer, a mysterious club produces suicides in its members, and a baron is plagued by ghosts after importuning the delicate wife of a nobleman. Conrad Veidt is excellent as Death - his lank figure and skull like visage is bone chilling at first glance. Anita Berber is of course dreamy in this, her seventh film. She had already worked with Oswald several times and had played the lead in his film Prostitution. By 1919 she was the face of the erotic madness which was sweeping Berlin. Her naked dances were performed to acclaim (in the third tale of this film she is the dancer that drives men to murder, mad with desire, and we can witness her amazing talent), her scandalous personal habits were becoming legend, her life of drugs and drink had not yet taken its toll and her fame as an 'incarnation of the perverse' was growing night after night. Though in less than ten years she would be dead of tuberculosis, she was earning the lasting honors and fame which still attend to her memory and which still drive we humble imps of the perverse mad with dark desire...
as the weather has finally grown a bit chilly and wet in Berlin this week i have been U-bahn-ing it back and forth from the office rather than peddling my trusty steed across town. tis the end of the month and i was in zürich part of the week so i've been purchasing single fare tickets each time i catch the train rather than investing in a weekly or monthly pass. the
