Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs invasion "Lawrence of Arabia", British Beatlemania Ole Miss, John Glenn, Liston beats Patterson Pope Paul, Malcolm X, British politician sex JFK – blown away, what else do I have to say?
Top slice: Our first full week of orientation wrung us out and we walked nearly 8 miles (minimum) by the end of each day. My feet were on fire and I need to investigate a better pair of shoes, but on our longest walk around the city looking at all the sites and historic facts, my biggest takeaway was the theme of fire.
Bottom slice: As the week wrapped up, we travelled to Lübeck which is north of Hamburg but somehow, still in Germany? More history on that next time. It was gorgeous and followed by a late night at the Reeperbahn and then a lunch date on Sunday. I will spend the majority of the week prepping for two mini class presentations—one on David Bowie’s time in Berlin and Moonage Daydream and another on the photographer Astrid Kirchher.
The Filling
Classwork: We have three brilliant instructors for our orientation program that are named Jutta, Fenja, and Kathrin a.k.a JFK. We have spent time with them in our daily German Sprachkurs (a refresher for language), practical work (navigating the city), and academic orientation in which bureaucracy remains and is the biggest item and thorn in my side. I now have three library cards, however, which is excellent.
Architecture: The Universität Hamburg’s campus is quite ugly considering how beautiful the rest of the city is. The majority of buildings are in Brutalist style—towering, hefty, gloomy, rigid cubes that look like someone found a Froebel block (Fröbelgaben) and decided it was a great idea to plop it right next to the underground student bar. Of course, it is unfair to compare a university that experienced extensive bombing in WWII to Bowdoin’s campus. The code name, Operation Gomorrah completely altered the city landscape: most of the old harbour, university campus, and unfortunately, the neighbourhood of the working class. The bombing by British and U.S. airforces lasted for 8 days straight and resulted in approximately 40,000 direct civilian deaths. In the bible, Gomorrah was a city destroyed by God’s wrath at its residents and many art depictions show people fleeing, yet looking back toward the apocalyptic scene (see below). When we expressed apprehension to our director about the widely dispersed and hostile campus, I was reminded that there is always more than meets the eye and that the preservation of beautiful buildings can offer the opportunity to read violent histories more closely even as city planning attempts to erase it through restoration and re-building.
As I learned in the corporate world, “I want to loop back” to Billy Joel’s lyrics and for my German speaking course, need to prepare a deck for my course. Apparently a ‘deck’ is a just a powerpoint which I find it somewhat humorous we pay $80k per year of college to learn how to make slides. In German course requirements, one must have a deckblatt in every paper which makes more sense as it is the short cover sheet. Sadly, I need to prepare a full deck and not just a deckblatt for next week. I will be presenting on the Beatles in Hamburg which loops back to the line “British Beatlemania.”
Photo by Astrid Kirchher of The Beatles on their first major career launch in 1960 playing at various nightclubs, somewhat seedy, in the Reeperbahn in Hamburg.
A few quick notes about the Reeperbahn.
On our city tour, there was a stark transition between the beautiful buildings of Sankt Pauil neighbourhood and a street lined with neon signs, clubs, and known as the Red Light district. A juxtaposition I also found somewhat unsettled was the density of police stations and hospitals directly next to the Reeperbahn. This makes sense, naturally, but the panopticon of surveillance and criminalisation of certain populations remains.
The Reeperbahn music festival was held for four days from Wednesday to Saturday. Tickets to concerts were too expensive so my friends and I just went dancing and explored the scene.
I will be visiting again on a more academic level looking at the murals and plaques commemorating The Beatles. Until then, I’ve been looping “Here, There, and Everywhere” from the Revolver album on repeat which is how my brain feels right now. Klaus Voorman, a friend of Kirchher met The Beatles at the same time in Hamburg and later designed the cover art for Revolver. I wish he could illustrate my RBF on the U-Bahn.
Contemporary themes in art: We will be registering for courses in the coming weeks and as per my Bowdoin degree, I will only be taking art history courses. I anticipate they will all be entirely in German but most work closely with the Hamburger Kunsthalle and some of the best printmaking collections in the world which is the practical aspect I always have loved.
Most likely, the courses will deal with the architecture of the city, landscape painting and its relationship with the sea (an extension of my interest in ecocriticism), and discussions on museum repatriation and what to do with old collections—do you phase them out/deaccession them to acquire new works as part of a decolonial project? For Hamburg, their prints and drawings are the crown jewels but have disturbing representations of women and people of colour as well as direct historical ties with imperialism: printmaking spread like wildfire across Europe due to trade routes and transformed art from just culture to cultural capital.
Stay tuned for more on classes and my engagement with the art scene here and perhaps, in Berlin whether that be a gallery or writing art criticism for some of the more progressive magazines like monopol and BOMB, an unintended pun on the fire theme.
Sodom and Gomorrah afire, Jacob de Wett II,1680, oil on canvas. Used with permission from Wikimedia Commons.
Northern printmakers like Lucas van Leyden, Joachim Patinir, and Jacob de Wet II were fixated on the narrative of Sodom and Gomorrah and rendered some of the best known depictions in 1530 and 1680. Even art can foreshadow historic events but the sad irony here is no one could imagine the violence and humans would later be able to leverage through weapons. I am not defending Germany against the atrocities of WWII but rather pointing at the consequences of advanced warfare technology that parallels today: the destruction of cultural artefacts which are subject to political atmosphere and now, environmental conditions as well.
Die Schedelsche Weltchronik (Schedel's World History) or Nuremberg Chronicles completed in 1493 depict a print of Lot and his daughters fleeing the city. Lot’s wife was instructed not to look back lest she turn to salt which spoiler, she does (Genesis 19:16). Salt was one of the biggest industries in Hamburg before the Great fire of 1842 in which Eduard Cohen’s cigar factory started a fire which was detrimental to Hamburg’s economy and yet did nothing to deter people from nicotine.
Analyses of this story across different biblical versions and Judeo-Christianity ultimately endorse the homophobia, the demonisation of women (Eve gets all the blame in Genesis), the punitive power of omnipotent law, and even incest. Yet reframing it, these same mechanisms enact violence on society today and there is a debate in the art world about the role of art discourse as corrective or generative. How we attribute blame to women is hypocritical. Lot should be considered in the same tradition Orpheus, Hercules, and Hamilton in that these men just don’t know how to follow the rules yet are rewarded. By impregnating his own daughters, Lot is rewarded with a lineage while his wife’s disobedience dissolves her human form to the earth.
She was told not to look back at a burning city, but as I continue to grapple with how to engage deeply in a temporary home, I am more attentive to hidden histories that have transformed the aesthetics of the city as well as the nuanced morals judgements politicians make through their rhetoric, policies, and even religious justifications.
Lot flieht aus Sodom, Holzschnitt aus der Schedel'schen Weltchronik, Blatt 21 recto. 1493. Used with permission from Wikimedia Commons.
On a lighter note
It rained heavily and bitterly the first week and we were gifted with some sunny days until this Saturday. A friend and I took a stroll in the Stadtpark and sprawled on the enormous grass field, watched youth FC (Fussball Clubs) drill while the coach and parents grilled food. It felt so akin to summer that I mused on why I chose, knowingly, six months of sleet and Scandinavian-like darkness. At least I found a new climbing gym I love which is in the paradigm of a brutalist building: urban apes in the bunker.
Found a polar bear even in the middle of Hamburg. Go U Bears :)
The Sauce
The Bauhaus is everywhere in my life as coursework, (urban studies), a career at the Stiftung Bauhaus, the architecture of a city, and with interior design as I try to make my dorm room less häßlich. Froebel blocks, akin to the geometric forms of the Bauhaus served as a type of pedagogical approach to architects like Frank Lloyd Wright in which the simple forms were imbued with a type of spiritual and intellectual potential that would transcend human-built structures. The Bauhaus was known for its unique pedagogical approach as well as its pursuit of unity and the ‘masters’ like Wassily Kandinsky,Lyonel Feiniger, and Paul Klee that taught at the school utilised Froebel-like forms in their art. Another student in my dorm is finishing her bachelor thesis on the intersection of dance, the Bauhaus, and pedagogical approaches to teaching music. Her thesis deals with Paul Klee, specifically, which I requested to read at a huge party on a Friday night. Again, the Bauhaus is inescapable.
Sankt Michaelis (St. Michael’s Church) is a unique venue holding history and many music ensembles and nightly concerts. The church has been on fire and reconstructed three times. In 1750 from lightning, 1906 it caught on fire, and 1944 during the bombing of the city. One of my roommates studies violin performance and had a concert there on Monday for Nacht der Kirchen. Unfortunately I did not attend as all of us in the Smith in Hamburg program reported to our instructor, Fenja, during our Sprachblizor quick check-in on how we were doing, “ich bin ganz erschöpft” or as one says, I feel burnt out.
Rekindling: I am thinking about renewing my WFR (Wilderness First Responder) training when returning to the United States. The content on lightning strikes starting fires was unusually, one of the main harbingers of anxiety. I attribute it to the acute potential for fires to transform the subtle and soothing smell of sap into char and smoke that not only diffuses in the senses but litters the sky. However, one of the biggest things I missed on both coasts was the rumbling of thunderstorms and the piercing lightning in an open sky. I have witnessed the former in Hamburg and to my delight have avoided the latter.
Mystery Meat
The mystery meat photo from last week is a famous ‘Feuerboat’ that sits right on the harbour. Boats that fight fire on the water seem like a fake concept, but are worth learning about.
Mystery meat on the menu this week is well-done…some might even say…a little bit charred.
More about Bauhaus, please :)