By Abbie Gentry
The architecture of Berlin, Germany, has
transformed greatly in the past century. Monumentality, which acted as a
physical representation of Germany’s political dominance and leadership within
the world, led to partial obliteration by the Great War. This then opened doors
for reconstruction, renovation, and reconsolidation of its damaged past to a
brighter, more peaceful future. However, there are still emotional scars that
will take a long time to heal. Berlin’s emotional history, where pride, power,
prejudice, and pain coexisted, can be expressed through architecture that can
have a profound impact upon visitors. Two architects in particular, Daniel
Libeskind and Peter Eisenman, strove to design in a way that portrayed the anguish
and dehumanization that were felt by, and to honor, the victims of World War
II.
Because
of his Polish and Jewish heritage, Daniel Libeskind felt a strong connection to
those who had suffered from Nazi oppression. When he designed the Jüdisches Museum in 1998, he aimed to create a
space that was emotionally stirring and extremely metaphorical. More
specifically, he “wanted to express the feelings of absence, emptiness, and
invisibility” (Kroll). Symbolism is manifested through every detail, beginning
with the zigzag shape of the building, which is arranged to create an
abstraction of the Star of David (Krull). Its zinc façade displays thin lines
of windows that slash through the building in a violent and seemingly random
manner but are not, however, without reason. The contours are derived from the relationship
of “addresses of prominent Jewish and German citizens on a map of pre-war
Berlin” (Lenhardt). These connections form “an “irrational and invisible matrix
on which he based the language of form, geometry and shape of the building”
(Lenhardt). Within the museum, there are three main axes for visitors to choose
a path: the Axis of Continuity, the Axis of Emigration, and the Axis of the
Holocaust. The first axis represents the history of Berlin and the continuum of
time. The second comprises of an increasingly tight and enclosing staircase
that leads to the Garden of Exile. The garden was designed to disorient
visitors so that they can understand the how lost those cast out of Germany
felt. The last axis is a dead-end, a disturbingly accurate metaphor for the
lives that lost (Lenhardt). Furthermore, five deep Voids occur throughout the
building to represent how empty, hopeless, and lost in despair the victims felt
during the Holocaust. They feature “concrete walls [that] add a cold,
overwhelming atmosphere to the space where the only light emanates from a small
slit at the top of the space” (Kroll). The building in its entirety is
psychologically unsettling. Its sharp angles, voids, and darkness, all of which
allude to the horrors and cruelty endured during the Holocaust, invoke a keen sense
of sadness and empathy. I can only imagine how incredibly moved one would feel
to personally experience the building because simply viewing photographs makes
me cringe.
Peter Eisenman also sought to illustrate the abhorrent narrative of the
Holocaust in his Memorial to the Murdered Jews in Europe. On a large scale, the
memorial is symbolic because its “grid… can be read as both an
extension of the streets that surround the site and an unnerving evocation of
the rigid discipline and bureaucratic order that kept the killing machine
grinding along” (Ouroussoff). A graveyard of rectangular
masses, the site is comprised of “ 2,711 pillars, planted close
together in undulating waves, [that] represent the 6 million murdered Jews” (Quigley). Visitors experience a
range of emotions while traveling through the monument. They may walk in between the rows and sit on
the lower blocks that lay on the perimeters. However, when one wanders further into
the maze, the blocks grow taller and soon tower far above the human scale where
tallest blocks are 4.7 meters high and block all views of the cityscape and vegetation
(Quigley). This severance from the city creates feelings of confinement,
insignificance, and loneliness that echo the emotional experiences of those who
were persecuted during the World Wars. One of Eisenman’s key concept was to “speak to one of
the Holocaust's most tragic lessons: the ability of human beings to numb
themselves to all sorts of suffering - a feeling that only intensifies as you
descend into the site” (Ouroussoff).
Furthermore, he wanted the memorial to be just that, memorable. He did not “want people to weep and then
walk away with a clear conscience” but to remember and reflect on the reality
of what occurred only a few decades past. It speaks to “those who looked the
other way, [those who] continued with their work, [those who] refused to bear
witness,” and especially those who allowed themselves to become numbed and
apathetic to the truth of the situation
(Ouroussoff).
These buildings have begun to pave the way to allow Germany to
move on from its guilt for its involvement in the World Wars without
disrespecting or forgetting those who lost their lives in the great tragedy. It
acts as an educational resource and is, and will continue to be, successful
because of its powerful symbolism and strong, psychological effects on the
human spirit.
Sources Cited
Kroll, Andrew. “AD
Classics: Jewish Museum, Berlin/Daniel Libeskind.” ArchDaily. 25
November 2010. Web. 01 September 2012. <http://www.archdaily.com/91273/ad-classics-jewish-museum-berlin-daniel-libeskind/>
Lenhardt,
Maja, Lubrich, Naomi, and Tesche, Doreen. “The Libeskind Building.” Stiftung Jüdisches Museum Berlin. Web. 31 August 2012.
<http://www.jmberlin.de/main/EN/04-About-The-Museum/01-Architecture/01-libeskind-Building.php>
Ouroussoff,
Nicolai. “A Forest of Pillars, Recalling the Unimaginable.” The New York Times. 9 May 2005. Web. 31
August 2012.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/09/arts/design/09holo.html?pagewanted=all>
Quigley,
Sarah. “Holocaust Memorial: Architect Peter Eisenman, Berlin 2005.” The Polynational War Memorial. 21
September 2005. Web. 1 September 2012. <http://www.war-memorial.net/Holocaust-Memorial--Architect-Peter-Eisenman,-Berlin-2005-2.66>
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