Photo Diary: June 2013

These are some photos of the Soviet Monument in Treptower Park. It commemorates the 20,000 Soviet troops that died taking Berlin. A lot of soldiers are buried on the grounds, though there are no individual markers.

The gates above are designed to look like lowered flags.

We had a long unit in one of our culture classes on monuments, memorials, and museums, and this was used as an example of a kind of overbearing, monumental, pharaonic construction--but I don't know if I buy this criticism: when your country loses 25 million people in an epic struggle against the Nazis I feel like some monumentalism is in order.

Kneeling soldier at the entrance.

The grounds. This area is flanked by rows of trees (planted decades ago, now full grown), and then is fenced in. The result is that this area is very quiet and still--a "hallowed ground" effect.

Steles. Above: Soviets curse German planes. Below: Partisans.

Main statue.

Standing on a shattered swastika

Inside the base of the statue

The Bundestag is the lower house of the German parliament, with over 600 deputies. As you can imagine all these people need a lot of room for offices, conferences, and so on, so the Bundestag is located in a whole complex of buildings. Above is the Reichstag building, which holds the main plenary chamber where deputies debate, give speeches, and hold votes, and it also houses the Fraktionssäle or Parliamentary group chambers, where the different parliamentary groups have their meetings.

There are currently five parliamentary groups, as follows: (1) The FDP or Free Democratic Party. This is, in European terms, a "liberal" party, which is to say, pro-business and free market, in favor of a small state and individual civil liberties. In American political terms we might call it libertarian. (2) CDU/CSU Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union. This is a center-right Christian Democratic party. The CSU is the Bavarian sister party of the CDU, and is considered more conservative. This is a conservative party, but considerably more oriented towards the welfare state than an American conservative party would be. Some political science writings refer to the "business wing" and the "social wing" of the party. (3) Alliance90/The Greens. This is the green party. When we hear "green" I think we just think of wind energy and so on, but that's not the exclusive province of the Greens, because even the conservative parties in Germany are in favor of renewable energy. Actually the origins of the Greens are a bit weirder, they come out of a basically anti-capitalist/vaguely anti-civilization tradition which is also tied up with sexual liberation and other issues. I think they are more of an established normal party now, but I have to admit I'm not totally sure how they are viewed. (4) SDP, Social Democratic Party. (5) Die Linke, "The Left." Semi-reformed Communists. The successor party to the "Socialist Unity Party" of East Germany.

A parliamentary group is almost synonymous with a party: the only exception is that CDU/CSU is technically two parties. A parliamentary group must be 5% of the deputies in the parliament, but since a party must clear the threshold of 5% of the vote in order to be represented in the parliament, any party can be its own group, and as such there are no "mixed groups" like you find in the Spanish parliament.

Here is Soviet graffiti from inside the Reichstag.

If you know the Cyrillic alphabet you can recognize the word "Berlina" several times on this wall.

Here is the dome as seen from the roof terrace.

Views from the roof.

Below is the Kanzleramt or Chancellery.

View of Tiergarten, with some sort of belltower and a "Hall of World Cultures" (the concave roofed building)

Sony Center and Concert Hall.

In the distance you can see a green-colored steeple, to the right of the four big floodlights. That is the Gethsemanekirche which is one block from my apartment (see here).