I love it and found it made such a huge city feel relatively small and manageable as it would pop in the background of so many of the photos that I took throughout the city.
As with any building in a city with such a complex history as Berlin, it is a political structure. I had a theory that the DDR modeled the form of the tower on the spires of the other principal structure of Berlin, the Berliner Dom (Berlin Cathedral)... showing the world that socialism was the new god now and all that...
I asked my brother who is writing his doctorate in the philosophy of art about it and he said I was probably wrong and that construction then was all about function over form. But I choose to ignore his expert opinion. I mean, come on! How can this be a coincidence?
As I said, in Berlin it feels like everything is political and history is never very far away. I spent some time at the Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas (Memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe). It is a disconcerting space designed to make you think and feel. When you enter the space, it seems to be a nonthreatening collection of stones, kind of just a garden.
But as you move through the structure, the ground undulates...
and you quickly find yourself overwhelmed by these massive slabs of cold hard concrete, lost and dominated and unclear of how it all happened so suddenly.
I cannot say I enjoyed my time there or in the centre below where all the names of known Jewish Holocaust victims are stored, but I will not easily forget it and I guess that's the point. A must-see if you visit the city.
Another surprisingly moving memorial is the Neue Wache (New Guardhouse).
This is a central monument to commemorate all those who have been victims of war and tyranny. I thought I would be quite blase about going there, just ticking another item off the sightseeing checklist, but I ended up getting quite upset there. I suppose it was just thinking all at once about how many different people have suffered in many and different ways for many and different reasons; race, ability, sexual identity, political affiliation, military allegiance. It was a bit harrowing.
Not all the political stuff in the city is moving or thought provoking, though. Checkpoint Charlie was the biggest let-down of the trip. Imagine the worst tacky tourist trap you've ever been to and multiply by ten. It even gave the rosary-bead hawking teashops of Knock a run for their money in tackiness.
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