Perhaps there was purpose behind the fact that there was no prior explanation delivered regarding the Palace of Tears. We had no idea what it was: some ancient palace? A Holocaust memorial?
We didn’t even know where it was. First the group congregated in front of some ornate building beside Humboldt University, remarking that, “It definitely has ‘palace’ in its name.” After concluding that this indeed was not the Palace of Tears, we turned back to Friedrichstrasse Station and followed perplexing signs leading us to “Tranenpalast:” a blue a concrete building evoking architecture of the 1960s Soviet Union. Faced with the name’s irony-- this was no sort of palace we had ever encountered-- it began to dawn on us: this place, this “palace” served as the main means of contact between East and West Germans. And now I get lost. I don’t know what to say, how to extend beyond physical descriptions. There was a building. There remains a building. It was once the point through which individuals long separated could say hello, where they said goodbye before another long separation. There’s something strangely intangible about the story of the wall. Perhaps there wasn’t enough death: only 139 deaths along the wall are recorded, read a sign in the museum (only). Perhaps I don’t understand enough about life in the East, the level of surveillance, the extent of the DDR’s power. I don’t know. It’s as if the history does not strike me as gruesome and harsh enough to warrant my emotional response. They had their whiteness. It only lasted a few decades. Most survived well enough. And yet I know. I know this cynical voice fails to take into account the individual. It fails to note the artists banned from producing, the academics constricted in their thinking, the families separated. I know this. And yet as I meandered through the Palace of Tears, reading personal accounts and emotional footage, I couldn’t feel. I think I need to better learn the nuance of situations. Until then, I take it in with a perplexed face and stone heart.
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AuthorStudent at the University of Washington, Sophie Aanerud, will be studying abroad in Berlin, Germany. Here are some of her thoughts . . . Archives
August 2017
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