Elegant Elbe: Wannsee (6/2/2018)

Saturday, June 2, 2018 (continued)
We hopped on the S-Bahn to travel almost back to Potsdam, to Wannsee.
In Berlin, the U-Bahn or Untergrundbahn/underground railway/subway is part of the rapid transit network that also includes the S-Bahn or Strassenbahn/street railway/rapid transit. First opened in 1902, the U-Bahn now has ten lines. After the Berlin Wall was built, the system was cut into two, with no trains crossing the border, except two West Berlin lines that did cross the border but could not stop at any station in East Berlin.
The S-Bahn, first so-named in 1930, was the system connecting to the suburbs, and all S-Bahn trains are powered by the third rail (bottom contact). The system now has 15 lines.

Borussia (personification of Prussia) Monument/
Denkmal  (1879-1880, by by Ernst Sputh,
Eduard Lürssen, Andreas Lürssen and
Paul Wimmel) with the Villa Wild behind it

Otto von Bismarck Bust (1945, by Reinhold Begas)
was re-erected in 2013 (KSS)

View of Greater Wann Lake/Grosser Wannsee with the
communications tower/Fernmeldeturm in Berlin-Berlin-Schäferberg
in the background to the left

We caught a bus that took us into Wannsee and out to the House of the Wannsee Conference/Haus der Wannsee Konferenz (1914, by Paul Baumgarten, as a private villa). In 1941 the villa was sold to Reinhard Heydrich, and was used as a guest and vacation house for the SS. It was here on January 20, 1942, that Heydrich chaired the meeting on the final solution to the Jewish question, with Adolf Eichmann preparing the protocol. The villa was opened as a memorial and educational institute in 1992.

We had to peek through the locked gate
at the Haus der Wannsee Konferenz (KSS)

Next door was the resort of Haus Sansouci

Flensburg Lion (1874 zinc copy of an 1862 statue
by Herman Wilhelm Bissen to commemorate the
Danish victory in the First War of Schleswig;
it was erected in Flensburg)

When the Danish lost Schleswig in 1864, the statue was left in Flensburg. In 1867 it was dismantled and taken to Berlin. At the end of World War II, Denmark asked for the return of the statue, and General Dwight D Eisenhower granted that request. It stood in Copenhagen until 2011, when it was returned to its original location in Flensburg. (The Wannsee copy does not have the reliefs of four Danish officers on its base.)

We had dinner at the Restaurant Seehaase, the only public restaurant
with a view of the lake, because nearly all the lakefront property is private

White asparagus with scrambled eggs and boiled potatoes

Turkish-style beef patties with rice

Caught the bus back to the S-Bahn station.

And took the S-Bahn back to Berlin, and eventually our hotel

Today was a gray day, and the high temperature was 79 degrees F.
Next: Berlin 4a.