Werner

Werner is another old acquaintance from my Dad's Nixdorf days, and, more importantly, a very old and dear friend of our family friend Frank. It was arranged that while in Berlin we would have lunch with Werner, who picked up at at the Jewish museum and took us to a place adjacent to the Brandenburg gate. On the way there, he gave us an impromptu tour of Berlin from an architect's perspective, which got us all talking about Berlin's complex history.

The Jewish Museum is a very impressive building designed by a now well turned over name in Toronto: Daniel Liebskind (architect of the heatedly controversial ROM revamp). Werner, as an architect, is a fan of the Jewish Museum, recounting for us a powerful experience he had there with his then 14 year old son. Together they stood before a photo of a boy exactly the same age as Werner' s son, and had that thought that so many of us have looking at the lives of Holocaust victims - they are no different than me. After looking at the photo they both walked into what is called the Holocaust tower, but what Werner chillingly referred to as "The Chimney". It is a very narrow, tall room unlit except for a little opening at the top, which lets in a tiny bit of natural light. It is designed to make you feel cold, utterly alone and afraid. Werner said in that space he held onto his son tightly, and felt that panic associated with loosing a child. No one would want a child to be lost in the chimney.

Over lunch we began to talk about the wall again, and I got a very different side of Werner. Where I had seen resentment in the taxi driver, I saw anger in Werner. He was so blunt about the stupidity he saw in the Soviet regime that had cheated, deceived, and even killed some of his friends. He spoke so passionately that in a heated moment he knocked over my glass of wine. He told us that even today when he hears a Saxon accent (the boarder guards were predominantly from that region) he still shivers. He asked me what I thought of Berlin and I told him what I have already expressed in this blog - that for me it is a great modern city, perhaps the greatest. He smiled at that and I think he really liked that I said that. That is, I think, what I liked best about him - that for all his anger and sadness he still loves Berlin and retains a prideful hope about its future.

He is such a lovely man, he has the kindest eyes I have ever seen, but so sad at the same time, and a little tired too. For me he epitomises the German trauma the best, marked indelibly by this anger and sadness, but tempered by hope. He is the kind of Berliner that makes Berlin truly great, and I feel privileged to have met him.