GENDARMENMARKT

Dear Lorraine,

its really too hot for me here. Things were particularly bad over the last few days and I have no contacts here of any kind. Today I went to the Freibad in Oranienburgerstraße (the orange bit - because oranien probably means orange - is probably an allusion to an actual connection between the Kaisers and the House of Orange. Also Berlin Zoo is near Bellevue. All in all Berlin is much closer to Belfast than Munich is. Munich is very catholic and conservative. In Munich the punks look wealthy, in Berlin the punks actually look like real working class kids looking for expression beyond the traditional fare. Berlin has a London feel too.
There´s a great statue of Bertolt Brecht at Frederichstraße and the actual house where he lived in the GDR is in Mitte. Today it is a Museum. Right next to the house is the Friedhof where he and Helene Wiegel are buried, along with Fichte, Hegel and others.

Another famous Berliner is Alexander von Humboldt, an explorer and naturalist in the mould of Charles Darwin. I passed the house where he lived in Oranienburgerstraße today. Another famous monument in that street is the Synagogue, which was destroyed in Kristallnacht (the night of breaking glass, an anti-Jewish pogrom in 1937 when the full weight of Nazi anti-semitism was first really felt.).

All in all I get a very positive impression of Preußland (Prussia) as it was known - today it is Brandenburg. The Prussians seem to have been positive, built on a large scale, optimistic and explorative. The portrait of Alexander von Humboldt in the Alte Nationale Gallerie (he´s sitting in a cave on a tropical island examining a local flower, exudes confidence, well-being and a delight in discovery.) particularly demonstrates this. His brother, Wilhelm von Humboldt, founded the oldest university in Berlin, which is in the very historical street, Unter den Linden (named after its Linden trees, which are today, alas, no more).

This evening I went to the Gendarmenmarkt to listen to classical music out doors and talked to a couple from Texas about the recent climactic abnormalities in their region. The Gendarmenmarkt was originally designed for military manouevres, there are two churches there and a concert house (Gendarme comes from Middle French, meaning Knight). That area is spectacular and gives an impression of what Berlin might have been like in the 19th century, breathtakingly beautiful. E T A Hoffmann, the writer, was born around the corner too.

Liebe Grüß,

Paul