Graptolite - Something Old, Something New
Graptolite's Sailing Log
Martyn Pickup & Heike Richter
Sat 6 Mar 2010 17:04
Saturday 6th March, doubtless covered in weed and guano. The skipper is in
Berlin.
I had a couple of what might loosely be called themed explorations of German
history over the last couple of weeks. The first was of the industrial
heritage of the Ruhr taking me to coal mines and museums in the
Dortmund/Bochum area and the second was some much darker stuff in and around
Berlin related to WW2.
One interesting place was Zollern II/IV which sounds like it should be a
concentration camp but was in fact a disused colliery near Dortmund. The
remaining buildings and winding works look like a rather stylish palace and
it would be hard to imagine them as pitheads in Yorkshire or South Wales.
Generally speaking, Germany seems to have survived the industrial revolution
without too many eyesores. At least until they started putting wind turbines
all over the landscape.
Another interesting place visited was Sachsenhausen, which, of course,
sounds a bit like it should have been a coal mine but was in fact a very
nasty concentration camp to the north of Berlin. It was such a useful place
that the NKVD continued to use it after the war up to 1950 to lock up former
Nazis, and anyone else they didn't like the look of. The Holocaust Memorial
in Berlin is also very good for making you feel embarrassed to be human.
Yesterday we were among the last few people on the planet to go watch
'Avatar' the movie. It was pretty good in 3D on the big IMAX at the Sony
Center in Potsdamer Platz. The movie's story doesn't show humans in a
particularly good light either. Must be the zeitgeist.
M