History, Ideology, Beauty, Evil, Old and New meet in Berlin sometimes not as successfully as we would hope but then again they do come together.
In Old it was capital of the Prussians who where warlike but were religiously tolerant then the came the World War 1 and then it became the seat od the Nazis still war like and very bonkers.
Anyways, here is the Berlin Photo Diary as always followed with some commentary.
This one of the street performances I witnissed - wandering around the streets of Berlin.
This a collage of pictures I've taken of the Holocaust Mahnmal Berlin or the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. It's a large memorial covering 1900 sqr meters consisting of large concrete blocks 2.38m long, 0.95m wide and or varying height. As the pictures shows you the memorial is very modern in it's context but old in it's message. The blocks start off small and steadily increase in height before they steady down again - Peter Eisenman, the architect is trying to symbolize the intensity of the Nazi campaign . Walking through the memorial one get a feeling being lost in a large concrete maze - a feeling a good reminder of what many a child must have felt being separated from his family on his way to a concentration camp. But the Holocaust Mahnmal Berlin hasn't been with controversy many accuse of it of forgetting the other victims of the Nazi purges such as the roma people, homosexuals, pacifist and communists.
This a picture of The Fernsehturm (German for "Television Tower"), a sight you'll be accustomed to seeing when you're in Berlin. It's located in what was originally East Berlin. The Socialist Unity Party which governed East Germany wanted to build something large and shiny to show that East was better and the end product is the Fernsehturm.
The Berlin Wall. This is a section of the wall which is preserved as a gallery. It has many beautiful murals, politically motivated and otherwise most of which has been vandalized by tourists who want to leave their mark. I even say a Jai Hind somewhere.Here are some pics.
Here a soviet propaganda mural - a friend tells me this kind of art now is called socialist realism.Personifying the communist dream - well we all know the reality.
Most Berlin was destroyed in the war and what came up afterwards sometimes is very modern. Architecture one doesn't see in India atleast allot of glass and sky.
I'll leave you with this shot - a picture I took at a Saturday morning flea market.
Here's some of my older Photo Diaries -
7 comments:
- Nick said...
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What does jai hind mean?
- August 03, 2005 4:36 PM
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long live india
p.p. - August 03, 2005 4:50 PM
- Rahul said...
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Awesome snaps Akshay. You seem to be having one helluva trip. Make the most out of it :-)
- August 03, 2005 8:55 PM
- G Shrivastava said...
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It's interesting how diff the pictures seem - having visited Berlin in November 2003 (well into autumn,heading towards winter) I saw a very diff Berlin. Yet some of the sites are so familiar -
Holocaust Mahnmal Berlin was being built at that time. If I remember correctly there was some scandal at that time abt it, coz the company supplying cement/chemical used in constn had ancestors with Nazi relations.
Fernsehturm was the first thing I saw when I walked out of Berlin Hauptbahnhof...
More memories come flooding in - walking all over Berlin for 1 day, ard the Museum island you spoke of, visiting the Kultur House with frnd Annika who bought tix for and made us watch DCH...walking back to the stn to catch the last train back to Mburg...Annika singing n dancing to Koi Kahe on the platform while we looked on sleepily...as did alot of Germans :-)
Thanks Akshay... - August 03, 2005 11:55 PM
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been seeing these on flickr - you seem to have had a blast :)
so what plans now? - August 09, 2005 9:01 AM
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uh oh, that was charu and not chari. *blush*
- August 09, 2005 9:03 AM
- Aarushi said...
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the communist dream... just another picture of how the world's plans made with the best intentions can go so easily astray. of course there will always be corrupt people there to fuck it up.
When we went to Washington DC on a school trip, we took a trip to the brand new Holocaust museum, but as "children" we weren't allowed to see any of the actual museum. Just some kiddy dioramas of life in Germany... and not good one's either. - August 09, 2005 7:19 PM
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