Sunday 31 May 2015

Beelitz Heilstätten: Nature's Revenge

Main Building Interior. Maddie Eckert, Beelitz Heilstätten 2015
Of all the abandoned buildings dotted around Berlin none receives quite as much attention, both digitally and in conversation, as Beelitz Heilstätten on the outskirts of Berlin. That is no doubt, because this old decrepit, falling down hospital appeals to that rather morbid side to us - here is a place where many people have died.

In fact, people were dying there for nearly 100 years from 1898 till 1994, when the hospital hosted its last patients. This rather morbid, yet understandable, fascination is also ignited further by the knowledge that Hitler and Hoenecker were once treated here - in 1916 and 1990 respectively. The ghosts of these past dictators haunt visitors with their long since silent footsteps through the leafy grounds of this once haven of healthcare.

Maddie Eckert, 2015, Beelitz Heistätten
However, travelling there on a sunny day in May as I did but last week, it was not a haunted horror house that I encountered, but in fact a place so brimming with life that it seems to be bursting out from every corner of the ruined buildings.

Beelitz started life as a sanatorium for those suffering from lung infections during a time when sooty air was about as good as it got in the city centre for many working class people. It was a military hospital during WW1, hosting patients including a rather insignificant corporal by the name of Adolf Hilter - recuperating from a bomb blast wound he sustained at the Somme.

After WW2 the hospital was turned into the largest military hospital in the Soviet Union outside of Moscow. It remained the prized military hospital in GDR Germany until its last patients were turfed into the milieu of the post unification German healthcare system in 1994. Since then it has been left to rot.

Women's Sanatorium. Maddie Eckert, 2015, Beelitz Heilstätten
Investors, as they always seem to, quickly bought the complex - its beautiful wood surroundings and proximity to the capital no doubt adding to its attractions. However, after going bust in 2001 the old hospital never had that corporate revamp that seemed so inevitable back in '94.

So 20 years on, in 2015, it seems that nature has taken the baton of change for this ruin and is shaping the buildings with a uniqueness that only nature can offer. Broken glass and graffiti plastered all over the walls pay homage to vandals of days gone by - but nature is the real victor in the descent of this building into rubble.

Trees, rooted in piles of collapsed stone and concrete, have somehow found enough organic matter to grow out of the middle of roofless rooms. They twist and jerk suddenly out of windows gathering height to reach more sunbathed stretches. The flat roof of the largest building at the back of the complex has now become a forest with a soil depth of up to a metre and countless varieties of trees and plants.
Nature's Revenge. Maddie Eckert, Beelitz Heilstätten, 2015
These are not the manicured additions to nature so often associated with human gardens, but natural reclamation of the space by the green goddess herself. Using her faithful comrades: wind, water, air and sun, nature has grown a forest on a building broken by the annals of human history.

Beelitz has a web presence describing the buildings as echoey glimpses of a rather haunted and dark past - but for me that is not enough. We must also pay homage here to the rebirth of an ecosystem sitting comfortably within 20 years atop these human configured foundations. What, then, is a faded memory for humans, is just a new beginning for an old master of this very old planet.

Friday 15 May 2015

The Olympic Stadium: the Folly of a Few

On a wet and windy day at the cusp of the long darkness of Berlin’s winter, I went to Berlin’s Olympiastadion (Olympic Stadium). I went here because it’s on the other side of the city from my home. I went because I needed an escape from the day-to-day humdrum that was also conveniently well within the realms of Berlin’s AB zone! But I also went because I wanted to inspect the folly of men. The folly of the few who were able to manipulate the many and weave a path that destroyed so much. I went there because I wanted to feel the darkness of what could happen if humanity is driven from the sensible to the insane. I went to inspect the ruin of a fallen regime that drove fear and hate into the hearts of millions.
Leslie Hossack, East Gate, 1936 Berlin Olympic Stadium
But instead, standing at the entrance, as if at the helm of a huge ship, I felt awe.
The stadium is huge: a magnificent oval that stretches out before the eyes and engulfs the plane of vision like the Colosseum in Rome. The style is one of classical brutalism: a convergence of Greco-Doric architecture and concrete. It is a benchmark of the Nazi regime, which paid homage to Imperial Rome whist creating a cultural and spiritual rebirth of an ancient German civilisation. The Doric shaped concrete is an emblem of this style, combining ancient-type pillars with brutalist materials to create a terrifying vista of bleak grandeur.
The original stadium was built by Nazi architects for the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and was meant to symbolise the power and strength of the 1,000 year Third Reich - just 3 years in. It was built to promote national pride and instil a sense of grandeur to Berlin after years of economic struggle.
Information boards line the stadium containing huge swathes of facts concerning the building’s history, the opening ceremony, the construction of the stadium, the watch tower, the statues’ mythical inspiration and the great feats of engineering that went into the stadium's erection in the 1930s. But, perhaps surprisingly, there is nothing on those boards about the controversial regime that built it. 
There is nothing there that would tell someone who didn’t already know that this was built as a monument to a terrifying ideology of fear and hatred; a part from perhaps the road leading away from the stadium, appropriately named Jesse Owens Allee – as if the 3 gold medal winning African American runner is still running from Fascism nearly a century later. This stadium, in all its grandeur, is the physical manifestation of how wrong humanity can get it; but one could forget that in the peace and quiet of the awe-inspiring interior. Ultimately, for me the place embodies the tragic contradiction of men – that though they can be great and create wondrous things, they can also synonymously commit insurmountable destruction and pain.
On the other hand, the Olympic Stadium’s fraught past also contains a great moment for Germans, who sought to participate and watch the games at a time when national pride was difficult and economic conditions were rough for the majority of people. Since then, the stadium has also seen many international games including the FIFA Football World Cup in 1974: these occasions are clearly why it has been kept in such good shape over the years.
The stadium has been given a new roof to protect it from the elements: from rain and wind, and sun during the summer. In 2002, whilst completing a huge extension of the seating area, an unexploded WWII bomb was found underneath a section of existing seating; a weapon of destruction to remind us that the stadium was not always so glossy.
As I sat gazing at the bright green grass of the pitch kept lush even on a cold day in October and the glittering rails leading to the shiny seats, I wondered, who made that decision? Who made the decision to remember the stadium as a memorial to a great sporting past rather than a monument to a fascist regime?
The stadium for me gives us a small glimpse of a the conflict in Berlin’s history: on the one hand monumental feats of architecture has been achieved here that pay homage to ingenuity and strength; but one the other hand these feats can be dragged down in an instant into the mire of confused loathing for a time when a brutal ideology became normal and diversity was eradicated. Perhaps though, the most important aspect of this conflict is how present Berlin has chosen to remember the stadium – as a symbol of national sporting pride. Perhaps the alternative history should be left to rest at last.

Musings on Monuments or Monumental Musings

Monument is a funny word. It is so often used to describe fancy palaces, statues, arches and random pointed pillars that ascend out of the ground and have names etched on them. The word conjures stand-alone pieces of architecture that perform no function whatsoever but to remind people of something that happened long ago that no one quite remembers. But for me, monuments are all around us; everywhere we turn, reminding us constantly of days gone by.
A monument is anything that contains at least some history of the society it was created in. A monument is an object or building that makes one’s imagination run wild with the “I wonder who lived here” or the “I wonder what kinds of things happened here”. A monument is a piece of the past preserved in the present that emulates mystery as well as meaning to those with an active imagination.
I have just celebrated my 2nd Berlin Birthday and to mark this rather wonderful occasion I have decided to do what no other expat has ever decided to do – and start a blog about Berlin ;): more specifically, a blog about the history contained in the nooks and crannies and crevices of this great city. In the stadiums, the derelict houses, the old Stasi prisons, the airports and streets that drip with history for those who search for it.

So if you love the idea of buildings oozing out past encounters, of streets revealing their deepest secrets and parks innocently lying atop the ruins of a past city centre then read on! This blog will be as much homage to a great city, as a fact checked exploration of days gone by.