We arrived separately on Friday afternoon. Many of those who travelled by air suffered one of the minor inconveniences of Brexit by having to queue for up to one and a half hours to have their passports stamped.[1] Only those with an EU passport were able to slip through the automatic gates.  

Most of us were staying at the comfortable Classik Hotel Alexander Plaza. This is not far from the Hackescher Markt in the Mitte (Centre) district of Berlin. That was in East Berlin before the fall of the Wall. Indeed we were to spend much of the stay in what had been the East (part of the DDR)[2] (which contained most of the historic centre of the City), crossing over to the former West only briefly for the visit to the Reichstag complex on Saturday, and then again for the visit to Tempelhof on the Sunday morning.

I remember visiting Berlin before coming up in 1970, leaving West Berlin, then a showcase of Western capitalism, and feeling strangely at home in the dingy quasi-socialist atmosphere of the East.[3] Until recently, it was still fairly easy to spot the difference between the two, despite the demolition of the Wall, as the considerable public investment in the former eastern parts of the city had focused on public buildings and  tourist infrastructure. However, the differences are gradually being erased.

In the evening we were welcomed  by the Dean at a dinner held in a private room at Crackers, an excellent restaurant and evening events venue located on the SW corner of the intersection of the Friedrichstraße with Unter den Linden. The venue is in a strange complex of buildings: apparently the main room was previously the theatre and cinema of the Institut Français in East Berlin, which had been the only cultural centre of a  Western country in the DDR.[4]

In the morning we followed individually  and at our own pace part of a guided audio-tour of the City devised and  spoken by Neil MacGregor, and made available by courtesy of his  college, New College. This started at the medieval Heilig-Geist-Kapelle, and  turning towards the Marienkirche took us down the Karl-Liebknechtstraße,[5] across the Museumsinsel,  a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and then along Unter den Linden towards the Brandenburg Gate, delving into the history of key locations buildings and artefacts on the way. For me the highpoint was the Granite Bowl in the Lustgarten, near the Berliner Dom (Protestant Collegiate Cathedral) and the Altes Museum. The Bowl is a seven-metre diameter 75 tonne bowl of porphyritic,[6] pink granite,[7] hewn in one piece (as I later discovered) from  a giant glacial  erratic boulder thought to have been carried in the last Ice Age  to the Mark Brandenburg from Karlshamn in southern Sweden, where a similar 1420 million year old granite is found.

We learned that the area, dominated by the Neoclassical architecture of Karl Friedrich Schinkel, was part of a move in the first half of the 19th century to make Berlin the “Athens of the North” as Prussia assumed the dominant position in Germany which was to culminate in the founding of the Bismarck Reich after the Franco-Prussian War.

Passing the controversial Humboldt Forum built on the site of the former Royal Palace, we went along Unter den Linden,[8] turning into the Bebelplatz (formerly known as the Opernplatz and then as the Kaiser-Franz-Josef-Platz). This eighteenth-century square, Neil MacGregor told us, epitomised Prussian tolerance, having a Catholic cathedral in a prominent position.[9] He also spoke of the tolerance towards Jews, which was greater than that in contemporary Great Britain.   

However, as the site of the Library and Law Faculty of the Humboldt  University, it was also the scene of a notorious book burning organised by the German Student Association in May 1933, commemorated by the “Empty Library” memorial in the square.

Down Unter den Linden, the group met up again, together with the Dean and with Professor Alexander Vasudevan, who teaches Human Geography at Christ Church,[10] in front of an hotel near the Brandenburg Gate.

 We then walked to the Holocaust Memorial,[11] located on a section of the former Death Strip between East and West.

From above and to one side, this appears to be simply an abstract sea  of grey concrete slabs. However, if you walk down into the maze, you get a sudden impression of being imprisoned in the dark. It gives a vivid appreciation of the experience of those unfortunates who were unwilling or unable to escape, but continued with their daily lives, and then suddenly found themselves trapped.[12]

We then walked north between the Brandenburg Gate and the eastern end of the Tiergarten to the Reichstag building and climbed up the Dome.

The Reichstag Dome is a Norman Foster-designed steel and glass structure, with separate spiral walkways for ascent and descent, from which both the Debating Chamber of the Bundestag, located below, and the surrounding City, are visible. It is intended to symbolise the idea that, in a democracy, the People are above their Government. The visit is perhaps not to be recommended for those uncomfortable with heights, but affords a superb view of Berlin.

 We then walked back, crossing the Museumsinsel to the eastern bank of the Spree, for a visit to the DDR Museum. This is an inter-active “hands-on” collection of artefacts and rooms, including a “Trabi” driving simulator and rooms from a typical pre-fabricated tower-block flat, to illustrate both the positive and negative sides of daily life in the DDR.

In the evening we met at the Hotel for drinks with alumni based in Germany.[13]

Before dinner, we were addressed  briefly by the Dean, who explained the proposals for the reform of the governance of Christ Church and the need for them, and the plans for the development of the College. She emphasised that, contrary to a widespread misunderstanding, Christ Church would under the proposals remain one Foundation, albeit with a separate Dean and Provost.

Again before dinner we listened to a talk by Professor Alex Vasudevan, Official Student and Tutor of Urban Geography at Christ Church.

Alex described Berlin as a city of Memory which  gave shape and form to the past like few others, and said that the walks and site visits had been designed to illustrate and crystalise this. It was a city of 'Movement and Migration', not merely of migration by foreigners, but also during the Cold War of young West German males seeking to avoid conscription, which did not apply there.[14] It was a city of social and cultural Experimentation, not only under the Weimar Republic, but during the Cold War (when it was of key geopolitical importance) and also more recently. It was also a city of Resistance to various types of authoritarian government, with surprising instances of permeability of frontiers and authorities turning a blind eye.

In the morning we made our way individually to the former Tempelhof Airport, where, having admired the striking 1930s façade, we were met and given a guided tour. We wandered through the remnants of the terminal building, through an indoor baseball field created by the US Air Force when they occupied part of the site, and through cellars once used to store celluloid aerial  created by Lufthansa in the thirties, at least partly for military purposes.

Once land of a commandery of the Knights Templar (hence the name) and a military parade and exercise ground from the 18th century, it was turned into a commercial airfield in the 1920s. The Terminal was constructed by the Nazis as part of a project for the redevelopment of Berlin as Germania. The  Nazis also used part of the site as a concentration camp. Having largely escaped destruction in the war, it was used by the Americans for their contribution  to the Airlift  at the commencement of the Cold War which supplied the population of West Berlin with necessities and preserved it as a NATO listening post in a strategic Warsaw Pact location. This necessitated the construction of runways, which enabled its return to use as a modern commercial airport until its closure in 2008. A project for re-development of the site  for residential use to meet pressing housing needs having been rejected in a local referendum,[15] it is now a public park with allotments, but also provides an emergency camp for refugees. Its history can be said to encapsulate in many respects that of Berlin.

The afternoon was left to our own choices. I walked along the Märkisches Ufer, a stretch of bank along the Spreekanal, which has buildings which are partly survivals from Old Berlin, and partly reconstructions of buildings destroyed  in the War. It also contains a museum of vessels used  in the river traffic which once played a key role in the City’s economy.

Following a suggestion made in Neil MacGregor’s audiotour, I then visited the Nikolaiviertel, an attempt by the DDR at the reconstruction (together with much modern building) of a quarter of Old Berlin which had been destroyed by air raids during the war.[16] It nestles round a reconstructed church originally built in about 1230, but deconsecrated in 1938 for use as a museum. It now houses  a collection of artefacts and documents illustrating the history of the area from mediaeval times.

Altogether  this was a fascinating weekend, in which we gained valuable insights into the history of, and the challenges facing, a key European city, as well as being kept up to date on the plans for future  development of Christ Church, particularly as regards the Library  project, and plans to further postgraduate study at the College.

We are, I am, sure all most grateful to those who planned and organised it.

The concept is most imaginative, and it will I hope be tried out again in other cities.

[1] Apparently the fairly new Berlin-Brandenburg Airport was short-staffed with Immigration officers that day.

[2] Or German Democratic Republic.

[3] I was  struck by the politeness of East Berliners, and their anxiety to talk with visitors from the West.

I also remember admiring the magnificent traditional uniforms and drill of the Nationale Volksarmee at the Neue Wache (New Guardhouse).

[4] My brother lives in France. One of his French teachers there was employed at the Institut in the late1980s, and following a big demonstration  shortly before the fall of the Wall was asked to act as interpreter for some French-speaking journalists who  interviewed Markus Wolf, the then recently retired head of counter-intelligence at the Stasi.  

[5] The oldest still functioning church in Berlin.

[6] i.e. with large crystals, in this case of pink microcline feldspars, set in a finer matrix

[7] Intended as a centre piece for the Altes Museum, and to emulate and surpass a bowl commissioned in England by the Duke of Devonshire, it proved too large and had to be placed outside.

[8] “Under the Lime trees”(with which this grand Avenue is lined).

[9] The Catholic Cathedral was built by Frederick the Great, following his conquest of most of (mainly Catholic) Silesia from the Austrians. The population of Berlin at the time would have been overwhelmingly Lutheran, but toleration would have  encouraged by the fact that the ruling house was, at least nominally, Calvinist, also emphasising the need to serve the State regardless of Religion, and there was an important French Huguenot minority of the same Reformed Religion as them. In the early 19th century there was a forced merger of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches in Prussia into an umbrella organisation, causing significant migration of irreconcilable Lutherans to the United States.

[10] Radical politics and precarious urban living in Berlin are among his fields of research.

[11] Officially, the Memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe.

[12] One of my late father’s medical colleagues in Warwickshire was a Jewish Berliner. In the early 1940s Bernard Barth received orders to report for resettlement at one of the railway stations. Fortunately for him, Bernard was (as usual) late for the appointment. The SS officer in charge was furious. ”But I have already finished with the “Bs” for today. Well, you had better come at the same time tomorrow, and don’t be late again!”  Having had sight of the deportation trains, Bernard decided it would be more prudent to absent himself.

[13] The solid, if unluxurious, welfare enjoyed by the masses, the concealed luxury enjoyed by the Party elite, and the activities of the Stasi.

[14] Due to the Four-Power status of the City. I suspect that this was respected more in the West than the DDR.

[15] And of course provide revenues for the developers.

[16] Despite the revolutionary pretensions of the  SEP (Socialist Unity Party),  the DDR made much of preserving traditional German values, as against the americanisation of the West. In the words of their national anthem (the music for which some may remember hearing on the wireless) “Aus Ruinen auferstanden und der Zukunft zugewandt” (“Resurrected from the ruins and facing towards the future”). Some called it “Prussia without the Bourgeoisie”. It should be added that a not insignificant role, particularly in the military, was played by members of old families who dispensed with the “von” in front of their surnames.