Elegant Elbe: Berlin 1d (5/31/2018)

Thursday, May 31, 2018 (continued)
From St Mary's Church, we wandered down Rosenstrasse.

Women's Protest Memorial/Block der Frauen/Block of Women
(1995, by Ingeborg Hunzinger) commemorates the demonstration
on Rosenstrasse in February and March 1943 by non-Jewish wives
and relatives of Jewish men who had been arrested (for deportation
or registration?), continuing each day until the release of the men

A couple being torn apart (KSS)

Jewish symbols are scattered
throughout the sculpture (KSS)

"1943: The strength of the civilian disobedience,
the strength of love conquers the violence
of the dictator" (KSS)

Meanwhile, a man sitting nearby looks away...

The Weber Grill Academy!

One of many, many Ampelmann shops

Kent with the Ampelmann/traffic light man

In the atrium of the Radisson Blu hotel, the elevator
travels through a vertical tank, the
world's biggest cylindrical aquarium

We visited the DDR Museum, showing life in East Germany.

Daycare collective potty breaks, they all sat until everyone was finished!

A simulated drive in a Trabant

A Trabant limousine! (KSS)

Typical store offerings

An electric lawn mower (KSS)

WTSCHE Line Telephone (high frequency was supposed to be untappable)
for communication between Eric Honecker and Leonid Brezhnev

"Interrogation room"

East German humor

Making use of the ramps on the stairway

Liebknecht Bridge/Liebknechtbrücke (1949,
to replace a wooden pedestrian bridge), with the
former Arsenal/Zeughaus in the background

The annex (1998-2001, by I M Pei) to the Arsenal/Zeughaus

Extensive renovation at the Pergamon Museum (1910-1930, by
Alfred Messel and Ludwig Hoffmann) that was purpose-built to house the
archaeological finds from German-supervised digs underway in ancient
Babylon, Uruk, Assur, Miletus, Priene and Egypt (KSS)

The main entrance is not accessible during construction

Entrance to the Pergamon Museum (10/3/1987)

Across from the main entrance of the Pergamon Museum is the
building where Angela Merkel lives with her professor husband

Admiralspalast (1911, as an entertainment venue with a theater,
ice rink, luxury baths, skittle alleys, and cinema),
this is the façade on Planckstrasse

The façade of the Admiralspalast on Friedrichstrasse,
the street that was hopping in the Roaring '20s

"The Sting at the Government Seat" was a
political satire piece at the cabaret theater

Palace of Tears/Tränenpalast was the waiting room for West Germans
leaving by train after visits to East Berlin, so named for tearful goodbyes,
often due to the fear of never seeing a loved one again

Inside the Palace of Tears, at the Friedrichstrasse station

Haferkafer counter in the Friedrichstrasse station,
where we wanted just a light meal

The fish and Spätzle, also came with vegetables and
a whole lotta tartar sauce!

The pedestrian bridge between the Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus
and the Paul-Löbe-Haus, both federal office buildings

Tour boat on the Spree River (KSS)

Memorial crosses to victims of the Berlin Wall

I am a new Berlin city tree, sponsored by
Orthopedic and Emergency Surgery (KSS)

"To the German People/Dem Deutschen Volke"
on the façade of the Reichstag

Memorial to the Murdered Members of the Reichstag/Denkmal zur
Erinnerung an 96 von den Nationalsozialisten ermordete
Reichstagsabgeordnete (1992, by Dieter Appelt, Klaus W Eisenlohr,
Justus Müller and Christian Zwirner) to commemorate the 96
members of parliament who were murdered by the Nazis

The names, birth and death dates, place of death,
and political party are found n the edges

After taking a bus back towards the hotel, we went to check out one more sight.

Sun setting over the Landwehr canal

Rosa Luxemburg Memorial (1987), marking the spot where
her body was thrown into the canal by Freikorps troops in 1919

Rosa Luxemburg was a revolutionary socialist. Born in Poland, she joined the left-wing Proletariat Party at age 15. She fled to Switzerland to escape detention for her political activities, and there earned a doctorate in law, one of very few women with a doctorate at the time in 1897. Luxemburg believed that an independent Poland could arise and exist only through socialist revolutions in Germany, Austria, and Russia. So she wanted to move to Germany to be in the center of the action. In order to do so, she married the son of a friend to gain German citizenship. Luxemburg spent most of her life in Berlin, working with the Social Democratic Party of Germany. When her party supported what is now known as World War I, she co-founded (with Karl Liebknecht) the anti-war Spartacus League. Even when imprisoned, she wrote illegal anti-war pamphlets and articles. After the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II, she was freed from prison in 1918. Karl Liebknecht proclaimed the "Free Socialist Republic" in Berlin from a balcony of the Berliner Stadtschloss, two hours after Philipp Scheidemann's declaration of a "German Republic" from a balcony of the Reichstag. Luxemburg and Liebknecht were opposed to, but joined the Spartacus uprising in January 1919. The new German government used the Freikorps/mercenary troops to capture, torture and interrogate, and execute both Luxemburg and Liebknecht.

Finally, we returned to the InterContinental!

Today's high temperature was 88 degrees F. Apparently it is unseasonably hot, like it would be in August!
Next: Berlin 2a.