Empty Space

When Berlin was divided it was a very crowded very old city that had a meandering wall (not in a straight line) that seems like it was designed by an insane person. The whole thing as we know was insane and not desirable to repeat. On either side of the wall was a huge no mans land so when the wall came down in 1989 it left a huge swath of open space with very crowded space still evident. Empty space was also created during the world wars, especially the almost complete destruction of Berlin through bombing at the end of WWII. Empty space is also something one feels, someone is missing along with something.

This turn of the 20th century house was very lucky to be left standing intact. One can imagine that on either side of this house were other buildings filling the street.

"The Deserted Room" by Karl Biederman can be found in the old Jewish neighborhood, home to many thousands of Jews before WWII. It's as if we've come upon the scene of a disrupted dinner when the family is violently ripped away from their normal routine and taken away, never to return. Around the base of the sculpture are the words of Nelly Sacks, a Nobel Prize winning poet who managed to escape and the words are: ...oh the houses of death / invitingly appointed / for the landlord of the house who was once a guest / Oh you fingers, / laying the threshold / like a knife between life and death / Oh, you chimney stacks, / Oh you fingers, / And the body of Israel going up in smoke!

People who do not understand this sculpture try to "right" the fallen chair. You can see where it's been rubbed shiny with their attempts. However, they are unable to do so and hopefully it will help them understand what's happened here.

This was a neighborhood where poor Jewish people lived from the 17th century on as there were no services and the housing was squalid. The wealthier Jews lived on the other side of the river though were not permitted to have synagogues, cemeteries, or schools so all of these facilities can be found in this neighborhood. The drawing you see on the wall under the graffiti is a drawing of a small synagogue that existed on this site. The synagogue was located on Kleine Auguststrasse and during the Communist Era the area became a cluster of kindergartens and day care centers.

These are known as the stumbling stones, as people walk along the streets these brass plaques appear in the front of doorways or where doorways used to be and identify the people who lived at that address, when they were born, when they were taken away by the Nazis, where they were killed and the date of their death. The more people step on them the shinier they get. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

The ordinary doorway to an apartment building that was once home to those people listed on the plaques. If the plaques weren't there we wouldn't know they are no longer with us.

But the plaques are not without controversy. They have to be paid for and it's not a large sum (150 Euro) but only those who have someone alive who remembers them, wants to pay, and go to the trouble of having one made are remembered. What about the rest of the 55,000 Jews of Berlin? And should they be on the ground where they get stepped on?

In 1990 Christian Botanski was invited to create this work entitled "Missing House" as there is a space between this building and one across the way, created when the building was bombed in 1945. The names you see correspond to family names of people who lived in that building who were taken away. Consider that the neighbors must have heard or seen something happening to those families who had lived in their building. What did they think, did they consider doing something about it?