Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church

It was just a few blocks beyond KaDeWe, and we needed to stop at the MediaMarkt on the way, so we visited the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. Briefly, the church was built at the close of the 19th century to celebrate Wilhelm I, King of Prussia and Kaiser of the Reich, placed on a small square in the middle of a boulevard. British bombs* wrecked it the night of November 23rd, 1943, and it stayed wrecked for some years after the war. Eventually a replacement church was built nearby, but the wreck, now mostly the spire and narthex were cleaned up and left as a memorial to war losses. There are of course similar memorials in Coventry and elsewhere. Inside the narthex are the remains of some interesting mosaics as well as historical displays and models.

As it appeared before...sort of neo-Gothic

Helpful model of before

After the war

As we saw it

Mosaics, reconstructed from the rubble; mostly about the Kaiser

Model of the current area, memorial, and the octagonal new church

Interior of the new church; Chartres blue blocks

*The British mostly did night bombing, the Americans insisting on the more accurate (so it was argued) but costly day-light "precision" bombing. 

And Now For Something Completely Different: KaDeWe

Enough Vergangenheitsbewaltigung already. The next day, September 9th, we took the underground, and surface too, to Schoeneberg, the big former West Berlin shopping area, to visit KaDeWe, Berlin's and Germany's largest and most famous department store. KaDeWe is Kaufhaus des Westens: Germans understandably are fond of contractions and acronyms and the whole brevity thing. It has been known as KaDeWe since its opening in 1907. Originally Jewish-owned, it was Aryanized by the Nazis, ruined by bombs in 1943, and then rebuilt as one of the showpieces of Germany's reconstruction after the war. It is now owned by a conglomerate based in Bangkok. Sic transit, Gloria. We had an extended look around, modestly stimulated the local economy, then headed for the food court upstairs.

KaDeWe from Tauentzienstrasse; not sure what all the lavender
pipes are about? Homage to Bowellism? 

Approaching from the station

The very famous Naturisten am Brunnen

Ubiquitous city "sculpture"

In the toy department, Lord Voldemort and Vicki

And here, I am receiving The Force from Harry Poppins

Adjacent to the toy department is the KaDeWe Outlet Store, to
which we naturally gravitated...of course I was tempted by the
50% off Abito Leisure Slacks, but at €1,460 (you can round that
off at $1,500) I thought they were just a bit out of my price range
(Vicki did buy another small travel bag) 

Now we are in the kitchen department, examining the latest in
small appliances

For tubing on the Rhine

The food hall seemed to us rather more focused on sit-down dining
than selling fine and exotic foods; no comparison with the Galeries
Lafayette nor Bon Marche; our lunch/snack was at the tapas
bar, jamon and a quiche Lorraine...

The ham (Cinco Jotas) was so good we decided buy some to take
home

And while the guy was slicing it off this leg, I got to sample the
sherry, the wine, and then some great Spanish brandy

Nice department store, but not up to les grands magasins nor even
Harrod's

"Richard Wagner und das deutsche Gefuhl" at the German History Museum

I suspect it doesn't translate very well--"Richard Wagner and the Nationalization of Feeling"--and it certainly doesn't convey what's in the exhibit, which was billed, in some quarters, as Germany's finally coming to terms with Wagner's anti-Semitism and other repulsive features. Really. As if the DHM had the final say on a subject widely and fiercely debated, internationally, for going on two centuries! Oh well.

The German Historical Museum/Berlin, its permanent collection, is closed until 2025. Renovations, etc. For us, it's just as well, since it's a vast museum, we've seen it on previous visits, and its emphasis on 20th century German history is not entirely uplifting. But they are doing special exhibits in the I. M. Pei building, of which the Wagner show was one. (Another, concurrently, was on Marx and Capitalism, bringing to mind Barzun's old classic Darwin, Marx, and Wagner, but that's another story.) Daughter Rachel had brought the Wagner exhibition to my attention months ago. It was not something I'd miss.

 Anyhow, I toured it Thursday, September 8th. I can't say the exhibit added anything for anyone as steeped in Wagner as I (used to be). But it does place much of Wagner in historical context. Nineteenth century Europe was a place of tumultuous change, and Wagner was an unusually gifted and impressionable child of his times. The exhibition's text was concise but very informative, I thought, and the artifacts--the biggies apparently don't leave their respective homes in Bayreuth, Lucerne, etc.--added to the interest. The show is over now, and I'm glad to have caught it.

Entrance to the Pei building at DHM; I. M. was so
over pyramids after the Louvre project

Entering the exhibition, an assemblage of visages of The Master

Scenes from the Dresden uprising of 1849; Wagner, a life-long
pacifist, was nonetheless one of Bakunin's lieutenants...

After the Prussian troops arrived, Wagner escaped with a price

on his head and spent the next 11 years in exile...Switzerland and

Italy mostly; it wasn't his first insurrection either; above, warrants

for his arrest

Among Wagner's earlier operas was Rienzi: The Last
of the Tribunes, a work about revolution...apparently
he was not the only writer who thought Rienzi a fit
topic for an opera: above are notes for such by one
Friedrich Engels, Marx's close personal bud

Click to enlarge...the exhibition notes are quite informative

Wagner of course wrote the librettos to his works as well as the
music--he regarded himself as a fusion of Shakespeare and
Beethoven--and published the librettos in book form well in
advance of the completion of the work and its eventual
performance, sometimes years later; like any decent megalomaniac,
he was a self-promoter par excellence, and the published librettos
built appetite and anticipation for the opera

The exhibit hall was bordered by copies of photos
from 19th century productions from Bayreuth, all
behind dreamy shrouding...

First page of the original score of Das Rheingold

Among Lenbach's several portraits of Wagner, this
one traveled all the way from Museum Island

Assorted librettos, etc.; his prose works vastly outnumber his
musical works

Helpful model #1,835, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus

Seating chart, representing W's "democratic," anti-Bourgeois,

"Greek" ideals...Richard Wagner and the Birth of Tragedy, Nietzche's

early adulation of Wagner...didn't last, however

19th century costume props from Bayreuth

Wagner and sycophants, 1860s

Admitting what is well-known, self-proclaimed since 1853, etc.;
among the things they don't tell you is that, when the best conductor
(Mottl) or best scenic designer (Joukovsky) in Europe were Jewish,
Wagner would have no less; he was even more thoroughly anti-
French, though that appears to mostly escape notice...

Caricature of W slaying the critics; the Bayreuth
museum used to have a whole small room called
"Anti-Wagner" full of such things; gone last time
I was there; W was ruthless and relentless with his
critics, in both prose and music

Thus, the above

Depictions, representations of the legacy; and its misuse 

Bayreuth, 1936; again, what they don't tell you is that
several of W's works were banned in Bayreuth during
the Nazi regime--insufficiently German, I guess, or
maybe too Christian--as if W were even remotely a
Christian or could admit a god greater than himself

Large painting depicting the dedication of the Wagner monument
in Tiergarten Park; I guess it's still there...we've never penetrated
far enough into the park's vast grounds