During our trip to Berlin in March, I was able to visit an extremely unique place. Teufelsberg is the site of an old American listening station sited on top of a hill in what was Western Berlin.
When climbing this hill, people are more often than not completely ignorant to the deep history that is figuratively and literally underneath their feet. The hill is the site of an old Nazi military college which was buried under the rubble created by the bombing of Berlin at the end of World War 2.
The hill is a good vantage point, and the furthest east point the western powers had access to during the cold war, so it made an excellent site for a spy station. After the Cold War thawed, the site was eventually abandoned, and the site for a counter cultural gathering place for artists, ravers, environmentalists and many more. I plan to also look into the alternative cultures in Berlin and the interaction of art and geopolitics.
Germany has attempted to figuratively bury its past and remove itself from the atrocities of Hitler and the Nazis. The site of Teufelsberg is emblematic of this, however in comparison to Britain, I think Germany does an excellent job of distancing itself from its dark past without completely whitewashing its history. Whilst it is important to consider that the primary reason for the hill existing is the fact that a place was needed to place all of the rubble from ruined Berlin, but also to symbolically bury the past.
Whilst in this case, the tracks may be covered, Berlin is home to many reminders of the atrocities from its past; the Memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe, the Soviet War Memorials at Treptower park and Tiergarten and the memorials to the murdered Roma and Sinti people. The German history museum in Berlin also does extremely well to tell the story of the past in ways that do not attempt to present its colonial past in a positive light. I found the artwork in Teufelsberg to be thought provoking.
