Posts tagged ‘Siegesäule’
Love story number 3
Originally called Charlottenburger Chausee, the east-west boulevard through Berlin’s Tiergarten park was renamed “June 17th Street” to acknowledge the East Berlin uprising on June 17, 1953.
Under unusually clear skies on the final day of my March-birthday vacation in Germany, I spent the afternoon wandering through familiar sites in the city I’ve come to love, but I was trying to view the sights a little differently. I had obtained a point-and-shoot picture of the Siegesäule (Victory Column) in late-afternoon light in 2006, and I wanted to create a similar yet different looking photograph. Fortunately, circumstances were all converging nicely on this late-winter afternoon.
The statue in the foreground is called “Der Rufer” (The Caller or The Crier). Created by Gerhard Marcks in 1966, a cast of the bronze statue was purchased and erected here in place in the former West Berlin in May 1989. The statue was placed deliberately so that the “caller” faced East Berlin. At the sculpture’s base is a quote by Italian poet Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374): “Ich gehe durch die Welt, und rufe ‘Friede Friede Friede’” | “I wander through the world, and cry ‘Peace, Peace, Peace.’”
With the fall of the Wall in 1989 and subsequent reunification in 1990, authorized and enforced divisions between east and west are no more. Those that remain are in the mind – but they can often be the most difficult to dismantle.
West along Strasse des 17. Juni : Tiergarten, Berlin, Germany.
I made the photo shown above on 19 March 2011. This post is originally published on Fotoeins Fotopress (fotoeins.com).
