Above/featured: Reflection – 19 Mar 2011 (450D).
In Berlin’s Mitte district between Brandenburg Gate and Postdamer Platz is a field of standing blocks (Stelefeld).
The slabs of concrete are uniform in colour, composition, length, and width. However, the blocks stand at different heights, the curved ground below undulates, and when the slabs loom suddenly overhead, the spaces in between can be eerie, adding to feelings of confusion and disconnection.
Above/featured: A swath of “Mitte” colour in the fog – 16 Nov 2012 (450D).
Berlin doesn’t have the easy natural landmarks of mountains or open waters immediately adjacent to the city. But there’s plenty more urbanity in Berlin which includes countless green spaces inhabited by deciduous trees whose leaves reveal their colours as temperatures drop with the change in season. The colour change by day gives way to night-time illuminations of colour and pattern onto buildings and landmarks during October’s annual Festival of Lights. I found myself absorbing and remembering the colours to tie me through the subsequent cold dark grey doldrums.
I made all photos on multiple visits to the German capital between 2006 and 2021 with the following devices: Canon PowerShot A510 (A510), Canon EOS450D/Rebel XSi (450D), Canon EOS6D mark1 (6D1), and Fujifilm X70 fixed-lens prime (X70). This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com as http://wp.me/p1BIdT-LK.
Some view East Germany (GDR/DDR) with great fondness, if it’s a comparison made between today with the “good old days.” I’m not interested in the “Ostalgie” (nostalgia for the former east). I’m interested in learning how a system in place does a gradual creep, takes over a country and her people. Before they realize what’s happening, their own government has locked them inside the borders to prevent them from leaving; get caught trying to escape near the border, and you’ll be shot for your trouble.
On 15 June 1961, when asked at a press conference if a wall would be erected between west and east Berlin, Walter Ulbricht, leader of the GDR’s only recognized political party, the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands), answered:
“Die Bauarbeiter unserer Hauptstadt beschäftigen sich hauptsächlich mit Wohnungsbau, und ihre Arbeitskraft wird dafür voll eingesetzt. Niemand hat die Absicht, eine Mauer zu errichten.”“Construction workers in our capital city are fully engaged in residential construction, and the labour force is deployed for that purpose. No one has any intention of putting up a wall.”
(Chronik der Mauer | YouTube )
Privately, Ulbricht had already been pushing hard to build a wall to stop the increasing number of people leaving East Germany for the West. Building a wall would also strengthen the (buffer) position of East Germany within the developing Soviet satellite-empire.
Two months later at midnight on August 13, work began quietly on a wall, and orders were given for additional troops to guard and “protect” the border. Berliners awoke at daybreak to a divided city.
I’m sure I would’ve immersed myself in European history and languages, had I not studied physics or astronomy. After two years of working in Germany, I developed a deep interest for language and her people. Even after having left the country in 2003, I’ve been fortunate to return once or twice each year.
I had read about one of the few remaining DDR-Wachtürme (East German Watchtowers) in Berlin. On a December afternoon, light snowfall in the German capital city seemed to slow both human and mechanized activity. I wandered slowly into Berlin Mitte to check out the location of an old East German watchtower that’s been listed as a historical monument since 2001.
