2 reactions to this article

Nastassja Thomas posted: 21-05-2008 | 11:00 AM

I have a theory that the Germans have a certain complex when it comes to their history and tourism. They seem to tread very carefully as to how they preserve, re-represent, or honour. I may just personally enjoy trying to figure the Germans out, or I like the idea that they are funny about their history, I don't know, but I can give you a few examples.
My second example is the two Stasi Musuems, both held in the former headquarters in Berlin and Leipzig respectively. Although I am yet to visit the Berlin headquarters' customer cafe apparently stands in an exhibition room. My father in fact told me a conference table stood in the room, and he couldn't face sitting at the cafe to have a cup of coffee, knowing that the leaders of the stasi once sat a few metres away. I have personally been to the Leipzig 'Runde Ecke', which apart from informative text boards, and glass cases protecting the letter-opening machinery etc., has been left in it's original state. And oh how one can tell. I firmly believe that I could smell every person had been in there since it became the Stasi Headquarters outside of the capital.
As much as this makes for a great tourism experience, as the example office mock-up looked like it hadn't been moved a centimetre, which certainly gave me the creeps, I still think that this, along with the cafe 'mittendrin' in the museum in Berlin, shows a resistance to doll these artifacts up too much, lest the Germans seem as though they are validating or honouring the work that was done in these buildings.
Something which me and a fellow Auslander found amusing and somehow fitting to the Germans way of dealing with the past, was something we noticed while visiting the events of the 75th Anniversary of the Nazi Book Burning on Bebelplatz earlier this month. The focus was of course on how we should deal with the past, how to learn from it, whether we have already learned from it etc. Any sort of reproduction of what happened here in 1933 would obviously have been in poor taste, but they Humboldt University across the road found it perfectly fitting to hold a book sale outside it's gates, to celebrate the literary freedom we can enjoy today. God love those Germans.
Unfortunately, the Checkpoint Charlie thing doesn't match my theory, although the Allies weren't necessarily seen as the 'bad guys' in regards to the building of the wall, so perhaps this is way it is not seen in poor taste to dress up as an American soldier. It would however be a different story I'm sure, if Germans were sought to be employed as Soviet soldiers who are to pretend to keep watch from re-erected watch towers. Still, it does seem like perhaps a simple money-maker, and/or a way to add numbers to the employment quota.

Also, has anyone else noticed that often German museum staff are like hawks when it comes to standing too close to artefacts, carrying large bags etc.? If true, it's interesting that they are exremely wary to protect that history, which is worth honouring, and consciously less anxious about that history, which they no longer want to be associated with.

Potential for an article on another aspect of Tourism, perhaps?

James Robeson posted: 22-05-2008 | 9:52 AM

I agree with your sentiments entirely. Three years ago I was in Washington, DC. There is a bas relief memorial to Franklin Roosevelt commemorating the Great Depression in which a group of men are shoddily dressed and standing in line. While a was looking at this, a young teenager, thinking he was funny, posed in line, with head bowed and acting depressed like the figures in the basrelief, as his parents photographed him. As an American, I was offended by this. On the other hand, what the hell can you do about it? As H. L. Mencken once said, "Noone ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American Public."