The Sorrows of a Young Mädchen

Thursday

On Thursday, I had decided to get Out and About. There was one church that I hadn't seen in Marienplatz, and I'm a big believer in leaving no church unseen, so I decided I would see Heilige-Geist-Kirche and then perhaps leave my day open for going to the top of Frauenkirche. I went over to Viktualienmarkt first and bought a delicious Schmalznudel, a fried-dough-and-sugar-concoction, from Cafe Frischut. I ate it on the short walk over to Heilige-Geist-Kirche. The church had no services going on, so I walked in and looked around. Very shortly I was accosted by an old German man who grabbed my hand and put a medallion of Maria in it, and proceeded to go on. and on. and on. and on. about Mary and Mädchens such as myself. Those were the only two words I pretty much understood; everything else he said went totally over my head. I just nodded like a fool. Then he asked me a question that I didn't understand, and I just said, "Nein," and he said, "You don't know your Theologie?" in a voice expressing such shock that the state of my soul was even worse than he feared. I was like, "uh, well, uh, I have to go. Bye!" and then freed my hand from his grasp and walked out, n'er to return. I was really shaken by the experience. It bothered me for some reason, as funny as it was.

After that, I decided to go up Frauenkirche, so I paid my little entry fee, climbed up a couple of flights of stairs, and came to a large landing with an elevator to the top. There was an Australian couple with me, so I interrogated them about Australia and they seemed receptive and were very kind. They were quite shocked that I was over here alone, even with a program, living in a German dorm, away from my parents back in the U.S. It was very kind; they exuded a sweet caring vibe. The man gave me his phone number and address and told me if I ever wanted to see Kangaroo Island (as I had mentioned to him earlier), they lived just near the ferry to the island. It was uplifting.

Then I decided to go up and see Altes Rathaus as well---so I went over there, paid my entry fee, took the lift up to the top. I liked Altes Rathaus because it was outdoors and right in the center of the action, literally the heart of Marienplatz, so I could look down at the Renter's Party protest against raised rents and the various tour groups meeting up.

I went over to Karlsplatz to see what was happening and found an Israel Tag celebration going. I hadn't realized that it was the anniversary of Israel's Independence Day. The whole scene was fascinating--Israeli flags everywhere, little booths set up alongside Karlsplatz selling Israeli things. Amazing how time changes things. These people were coming out and saying, "We're Jews." 60 years ago, in the very same spot, they would have been killed for it. A board proclaimed the history of German-Israel relations: apparently 2/3 of Germans consider the state of Israel the greatest threat to world peace.

Inspired by this, I looked into my guidebook and said. . . hmm. It's time to go to Dachau.

Dachau

I took the 20-minute S-Bahn out to Dachau. My guidebook suggested taking the bus out to the KZ-Gedenkstätte, the concentration camp, but I was like, "meh! Everything's close in Europe."

55 minutes later, I arrived at the Gedenkstätte.

Admission is free, but the audioguide is 2 euros (reduced for students), so I got that. I couldn't believe how huge the place was. The photo I have up here shows the famous gate in Jourhaus Bridge through which prisoners entered the work camp, "Arbeit Macht Frei," or "Work Makes You Free." Behind the gate you can see a huge area: this was the roll-call area, and at the height of the camp, would hold 40,000 prisoners.

The Maintence Building in the center of the camp has a large exhibit in it. Behind the Maintence Building is the bunker, or punishment cells. I was in the bunker by myself, and it was utterly creepy. I half-expected to be thrown into a cell myself. The entire Western Wing is open, so you walk along and along and along the hall past all the cells, which have their doors still intact and their numbers above it. Some of the cells had been broken up into fourths to torture people by putting them in a cramped space with little light or air for days on end. However, when the Americans liberated the camp, they were so revolted by this they smashed all the divisons and kept the cell itself intact. They did use the bunker as their own jail for a short time--note, "jail," not "torture center." As I approached every cell, I expected to find a screaming, bloodied person behind the door. . . really creepy.

I went over to see the barracks, which stand on the other side of the Maintence Building from the roll call area. Even the arrangement of prisoners in the barracks lined up to Nazi racial ideology: Germans and Western European prisoners were housed in the first barracks, with it getting progressively "worse": the Soviets, the Poles, and of course, the Jews at the very far back. All of the barracks, except two, have been dismantled, but there is a concrete outline of the barrack structure filled in with gravel so you can still get an idea of the place. I went into the barrack to see the living conditions: just beds stacked as high as possible, like chicken cages. They soon ran out of little boards to divide the beds, so many bed structures were just large boxes were people had to sleep crammed head-to-toe.

At the back of the complex are some religious memorials.

It wasn't a chilling experience, but it was an eye-opening one. In my German literature class, we read this book called Tonio Kröger by the famous German author Thomas Mann, in which the protagonist, Tonio, is the child of Slavic mother and a Nordic father. His best friend, Hans, is "blonde and blue-eyed," and you can see how he envies Hans; the girl he loves, Inge, is also tall, blonde, and blue-eyed. A friend joins Tonio and Hans on the walk back from school and calls Tonio by his last name, "Kröger," because his first name sounds so "foreign." The book was written in 1906. It's the failing of homogenous societies. They may be nice, and safe, because everyone essentially one huge family (thus socialism works very nicely) but they have some severe shortcomings which I couldn't accept in my native country.

Photo: Photo from Altes Rathaus. Also, please note that the title of this blogpost, "The Sorrows of a Young Mädchen," is a funny (to me) reference to Goethe's work of a similiar title, The Sorrows of Young Werther.

America, America, America.