4: From Berlin (after Hamburg, Münster, Osnabrück, and a little more Amsterdam)
Beloved friends
I went to Münster because three old iron cages hang from the steeple of St. Lambert’s Cathedral, overlooking the town’s main platz. In 1535, each cage held the body of a man. Jan von Leiden, Bernhard Knipperdolling, and Bernhard Krechting had been condemned to gruesome torture and painful death by the Prince Bishop of the region, and their mangled bodies were to be prominently displayed as a deterrent for other aspiring rebels. Before that, the men had held the town of Münster in their thrall, living with the millennial abandon that accompanies those who truly believe the end is nigh. The short-lived Anabaptist Kingdom of Münster was an experiment in anarchy turned messianic theocracy gone awry, complete with the burning of paper money and books, the institution of polygamy, and mid-town orgies that followed on the heels of public executions.*
It was with these historical images in mind that I showed up at the Münster train station. Upon arrival, I walked immediately toward St. Lambert’s, whose imposing spire is visible from most of the town. En route, I found no historical monument, no commemorative plaque, no mention of the reason I had for visiting the place. Instead, in the shadow of the cages, I found a vibrant Christmas market filled with the rolling laughter of young Germans drinking Glüweihn, Lumumba, and Firecracker Punch. It turns out that not only is Münster not an open-air museum preserving the history of this fascinating but all-in-all pretty minor historical event, it’s actually a lovely, bustling university town. And if there is a history that the city chooses to celebrate, it is NOT the grisly events of 1535, but the illustrious ones that followed about a century later. In the early-/mid-17th century, Münster, alongside Osnabrück (which I visited earlier that day), was inscribed into the history books as the locale of the signing of the Peace of Westphalia. For those of you who, like me, must have missed this day in middle school history, the Peace of Westphalia ended the European wars of religion that followed the Protestant Reformation. It was the first time peace was established by diplomatic congress and set the precedent for co-existing sovereign states that became the basis for much of international law. Of course, coming into town I had no idea this was the case. The story of Münster in my head was very different from the story the city chose to tell, which in retrospect is not particularly surprising, but it did play into a long-running, mostly-one-sided conversation about history I’ve been having with myself.
This conversation started with the events that began in the the Spring of 2015 at Universities and colleges across the United States. At Yale and elsewhere, students from various minorities and historically oppressed groups protested in response to what they perceived as an unsafe space, one in whose nomenclature was inscribed an unescapable history of oppression (like referring to those responsible for their residential colleges as “Master”, or living in a college named after a slaveholder and defender of slaver rights [Calhoun College, named after John Calhoun])**. This issue was taken up by Yale President Peter Salovey and then-Dean John Holloway in their welcome addresses to incoming Freshmen in the Fall of 2015. The speeches were sent via email to the greater Yale community, and I forwarded this email to a number of my friends with unabashed pride in my alma mater. Deconstructing a simplistic narrative of good v. evil, Salovey and Holloway opened the floor for a meaningful conversation on the selective histories we choose to celebrate and those we choose to erase.
With regards to Calhoun College and the renaming of historical buildings, I believe the act of renaming is counterproductive. Through it we erase the parts of our complex histories that we dislike; we pretend that we can construct a history of unflawed heroes based on our current set of moral priorities. I recognize that naming buildings after people is an honorific act in our culture, and that by naming buildings after slaveholders, we are celebrating their legacies. But these buildings were named after them to celebrate parts of their legacies that were not primarily related to the deplorable fact that they owned other human beings. The very fact that these buildings were named after them means that the institutions we cherish at some point valued these men (they are almost exclusively men), and that is worth reflecting on. How are their stories interwoven with our own? We should not pretend that our history is free of the prejudices and wrongful actions of our ancestors.
Which brings me to Berlin, where I’ve been for the past few days. The horrendous history that took place here is inscribed into the landscape of the city. Every few blocks, little shiny cobblestones point to individual lives drawn short: “Here worked Meta Kroner, born 1905. Deported 1943; murdered in Auschwitz.” An outdoor exhibit called “The Topography of Terror” indicates major sites of the horror of the Third Reich. Memorials to those who were murdered are almost ubiquitous. The Jewish Museum screams a silent architectural scream through its many open gashes. Remnants of the wall that split the city in two are protected heritage sites, and even when the wall has been torn down to make way for everyday life, twin rows of cobblestones mark where it used to be. Of course, there’s a lot more history here, and some of it lies farther below the surface (like the fact that German Berlin became a center of craft because of a large influx of skilled French Huguenots in the 17th century, hidden in French street names and the Gendarmenmarkt). And thankfully, there are also great sources of joy in the city. But these ineradicable 20th century horrors are always visible. Let us not forget, they say, that we were responsible. And let us say: never again.
I am struck by how different this is from treatments of history in New York and in Brazil. In Brazil we shove our history into dull, severely underfunded museums, like people might (unfortunately) do with old, senile, crazy aunts. In New York, four years of living in Harlem and all I was bodily confronted with were a couple of quaint sculptures celebrating Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. Where are the horrors we were responsible for? Hidden in bodies long buried? That is too easily forgotten. Let us remember who we have been so that we may become who we aspire to be.
And this does not just apply to memorials and national or ethnic histories. This applies also to the histories inscribed in our bodies. Before coming to Berlin, I spent the weekend in a Nonviolent Communication Workshop in Hamburg, focusing on how my body felt. There is a great deal of bodily experience, of suffering present and historical, that I shove under the rug for the sake of order and progress. And the truth is that the rug bulks up and starts to look strange after a while, eventually spilling onto the floor of the living room and making any claim of order and progress delusional and patently absurd. The way to deal with the darkness is not to pretend it is not there, but, to hear it and to see it and to allow it to teach us. I guess I ended up this week where I ended up last week: with an exhortation to look at our stories and at ourselves, individually and collectively, with honesty and responsibility, but also with compassion.
With love,
Rafa
* In sum: it was nuts. For more details, I suggest that you listen to the “Prophets of Doom” episode of the Hardcore History podcast.
** The protesters made many other claims and demands, many of them very important, but this one captured the public imagination, as well as my own.
