Guess what is pictured below before you read the caption
An unexpected and wonderful part of the trip was seeing all the ways in which Germans have commemorated their past through visual art, trying to come to terms with what has happened, trying to shape what is to come. The very best was a ground relief outside St. Mary's in Wittenberg, the town church in Luther's time (above right). It's Wieland Schmiedel's "History Cannot Be Held Down." High above, on the outside wall of the church is a large relief from 1304, depicting Jews suckling from a sow, a popular image of anti-Semitism at the time in Europe. In 1988, not long before reunification, Schmiedel's piece was unveiled, a testament that the cross of Christ opens up the experience of oppressed and crushed people, so that it can be known and healed.
The most recent memorial is a temporary display of art by children in the cathedral at Erfurt (top left), where students and teachers were killed in a school shooting in May, 2002. In Berlin, there are many attempts to come to grips with the Nazi past. Below the glass plating set into the stones of a large public plaza near the Reichstag (above) are rows and rows of empty bookshelves, a reminder of the book burnings that took place there. Every legislator killed by the Nazis is memorialized on a panel of this sculpture outside the Reichstag (bottom right). A Coventry Cross in the Kaiser-Wilhelm Church (below left) links that church with other churches throughout the world which also display the cross. Throughout Berlin, there remains plenty of reminders of the street fighting that accompanied the advance of the Allies into the city. The patches and marks on these columns are all bullet holes(above left, a common site on virtually every World War II-era structure in central Berlin. Not much remains of the Berlin Wall (standing, that is, as opposed to chunks on sale in souvenir stores). A few stretches are being preserved, however, as a tangible reminder of the GDR era (bottom left). If you are in Berlin, I recommend a visit to the very fine museum at Checkpoint Charlie(bottom, middle).
