Author: Clint Swift

The Berlin Wall is gone … mostly. You find segments still standing in several places. In reality, it’s a permanent scar on the city and the psyches of some of its longtime residents. The wall has fallen, but the divisions between East and West are deep and long-lasting. My host told me his parents, who…

For residents of eastern Berlin, one dictatorship perished only to be replaced by another. The Topography of Terror exhibit shows what the Third Reich and the Soviet-dominated German Democratic Republic had in common — a foundation of terror. This block-long stretch of the Berlin Wall is said to be the last standing in its original…

The East Side Gallery is one of the biggest tourist magnets in the formerly divided city. This is what the west side of the wall looked like — then and now. The wall graffiti goes on for blocks … and blocks. This artist shines in a different medium, but the wall still is pulling the…

Germany’s executive and legislative branches are in Berlin (the country’s “supreme court” is in Karlsruhe, in southwestern Germany). The chancellor’s office, the parliament building and the president’s residence are within a few minutes’ walk of each other. I strolled through the government quarter on a Saturday, my first day off since classes began. On the…

Tears during parting is what the division of Germany meant for many. The station where friends and family had to say good-bye after a visit across divided Berlin was known as the Tränenpalast, “palace of tears.” The Friedrichstrasse station was where you went if you wanted to travel from East Berlin to the West. Right…

The Hohenzollerns are a dynasty of former princes, electors, kings and emperors of Hohenzollern, Brandenburg, Prussia, the German Empire and Romania, says Wikipedia. Charlottenburg Palace and its extensive garden were built for Queen Sophie Charlotte. Its oldest section dates to 1695. Frederick the Great updated it in the 1740s. It is the most important Hohenzollern…

Berlin is getting its palace back. During the war, the palace in the center of the city was badly damaged, and in 1950, it was demolished. After the Wall came down, parliament agreed to reconstruction of the palace. The original palace, main residence of the Electors of Brandenburg, the Kings of Prussia and the German…

We all grew up hearing about the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, where American track star Jessie Owens won four gold medals and put the lie to Hitler’s myth of an Aryan super race. The Berlin Olympic stadium is where that history was made. A multi-level oval was created in the middle of a 320-acre sports…

Gen. Lucius D. Clay was known for his administration of occupied Germany after WWII. He was commander-in-chief of U.S. forces in Europe and military governor of the U.S. Zone, Germany, 1947-49. While I waited for the ex-NSA listening station on the Teufelsberg to open, I tried to find his Berlin residence. The address is Im…

Arrived at the Grunewald urban rail station for a hike up the Teufelsberg (Devil’s Mountain). Paid my respects at Gleis (track) 17, from which thousands of Jewish people were shipped to concentration camps. Out front, the pretty Grunewald station gives no hint of Track 17 inside. Track 17, a deceptively innocuous departing point. The rails…