Fernsehturm, Alexanderplatz, Berlin

On our first day of the trip to Berlin in February, as well as getting on a flight in the very small hours of the morning, we will be visiting Fernsehturm in Alexanderplatz.

Image courtesy of berlinperspectivesonarchitecture.com

In the early 1950s, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) planned to build a new facility in Berlin intended primarily for the broadcast of GDR television programmes.  The Fernsehturm (television tower in English) was built in Alexanderplatz and commissioned by Government Leader Walter Ulbricht, who aimed to demonstrate the superiority of socialist societies.  The tower would dominate the skyline and construction showed that a better future was being built in the East.

The original design of the slender tower was devised by the GDR architect Hermann Henselmann. The sphere at the top of the tower was intended to remind people of the Soviet sputnik satellites and was to light up red, the colour of socialism.

The tower was constructed between 1965 and 1969 with only one method considered for constructing it, a method known as “climbing formwork”. The internal steel frame is built first and then the external concrete shaft is built around it.  Mounting the sphere at a height of 200m presented the engineers with a challenge.  The load-bearing steel frame of the sphere was initially precast on the ground and the segments were heaved up using cranes and then secured on the circular platform which forms the final section of the concrete shaft.

The Fernsehturm was also nicknamed "the Pope's revenge" because when the sun shines on the metal skin of the sphere, the reflected light creates the shape of a cross. This was quite unfortunate for the the atheist foundations of the communist GDR government.  Former US President Ronald Reagan once said in a speech that the GDR tried as hard as they could to get rid of the light cross, but without success, the Christian symbol continued to shine on the GDR’s power tower.

Sunlight cross in the Fernsehturm Berlin, and the cross of the Berlin Dome aside, Patricio.lorente, 2015.

At 368 metres tall, the Fernsehturm is the highest publicly accessible building in Europe with  more than a million visitors from 86 countries going up to the observational level with it's breathtaking views of the bustling and constantly changing city of Berlin.

The Lives of Others Film Review

I am currently studying an MA in Creative Enterprise with Management and Arts at the University of Reading.  This term I am doing an International Study Visit module, and we are going to Berlin in February reading week.

One of my aims for the trip is to research further how art is used to depict events that have happened in Berlin and how this has had an affect on the viewers.  In preparation for the module we have a list of films we can choose from that are related to Berlin:

• Aeon Flux, Karyn Kusama, 2005
• Berlin Alexanderplatz, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1980.
• Cabaret, Bob Fosse, 1972.
• We Children From Bahnhof Zoo, Christiane F – Wir Kinder From Bahnhof Zoo, Uli Edel, 1981.
• Deutschland 83, Anna & Jeorg Winger, 2015.
• Downfall, Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2004.
• Funeral in Berlin, Guy Hamilton, 1966.
• Germany Year Zero, Roberto Rossellini, 1948
• Goodbye, Lenin!, Wolfgang Becker, 2003
• One, Two, Three, Billy Wilder, 1961
• People on Sunday (Menschen am Sonntag), Curt and Robert Siodmak, 1930
• Rosenstrasse, Margarethe von Trotta, 2003.
• Run Lola Run, Tom Tykwer, 1998
• The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen), Florian Henckel von
• The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, Martin Ritt, 1965.
• The Mysteries of Berlin, Cordelia Swann, 1979-82.
• The Bourne Supremacy, Paul Greengrass, 2004
• Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin), Wim Wenders, 1987

I chose The Lives of Others, released in 2007, and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, an award-winning political thriller set in 1980s East Germany.  Captain Wiesler (pictured below) works for the Stasi, the secret police, and is asked to keep surveillance on a playwright, Georg Dreyman, whose loyalty to the party is under question.  Wiesler arranges arranges for every wall and floor surface of Dreyman's apartment to be threaded with wires, tapped so that, while perched in an upstairs attic, he can listen out for evidence of treachery.  During the surveillance Weisler is slowly drawn into Dreyman's life and begins to question his own ideals.

Image from bbc.co.uk

The film starts with Wiesler teaching a group of students in interrogation techniques.  The captive had been kept awake for many hours and had started to become upset.  Wiesler ignores the emotion being heard from the recording and listens instead to the precise use of language to indicate guilt, advising that an innocent person would be angry and protest, whereas a guilty one sticks to their story and cries at the inevitability of being caught in a lie.

Wiesler's demeanour is very impassive, quietly taking in other peoples' actions, assessing them through his many years of experience as a Stasi officer.  As the film progresses, his detachment weakens.  He becomes thoroughly absorbed in the lives of Dreyman and his girlfriend actress, Christa-Maria Sieland, drawing out their apartment layout in the surveillance room and following them around the rooms, even mimicking them cuddled up in bed.

The film sets themselves are very bland in colouring, as is the functional clothing worn by the characters, reflecting the utilitarian nature of East Germany at that time.  When the Berlin Wall finally comes down there is a shift towards more colour in the scenes and more fashionable clothing.

It is hard to imagine the level of control on peoples' lives when living in East Germany, the daily fears and suspicions they would have endured.  The Lives of Others depicts some of this feeling, however I thought some parts of the story were not covered in detail, and it is only from my additional research into the film that I now understand what it was trying to achieve.  This may be down to the film being subtitled and so the viewer has to concentrate on reading the translation rather than being able to freely watch the action on the screen. I also found that I may have projected feelings onto the actors; I kept waiting for Wiesler to condem Dreyman with the information he had gathered on him based on the first scene of the film and my understanding of the regime, but Wiesler turns out to be a saviour and protector when Dreyman is investigated by the Stasi.  A part of me then wanted the film to be based on a true story, however, a Guardian article from 2007 by Anna Funder, advises this could never have happened:

"The thoroughness of the regime was horrifying: it accumulated, in the 40 years of its existence, more written records than in all of German history since the Middle Ages. East Germany was run on fear and betrayal: at least one in 50 people - by CIA estimates, one in seven - were informing on their relatives, friends, neighbours and colleagues. People were horrified to discover what had happened, again, in their country; what human beings were capable of."

I am interested in finding out more about the time just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and just afterwards, how it affected peoples' lives and how artists portrayed these events.  This will be the focus of some of my future research for this module.

Image from IMP Awards, 2007

The Great Wide Open

Following on from my personal photography project last year, Looking Into The Depths, that explored the impacts humankind are having on the environment, particularly the oceans, I have found that other issue-based photography or films capture my attention much more than they previously may have done.  I pay particular attention to the visual narratives being created, comparing their techniques with those I aimed to portray in my project to caution my audience of the effects of our actions.

My objective was to create beautiful images that confused the viewer so that they took a second look at the photograph and questioned what wasn't quite right about it.

As I was scrolling through the National Geographic Instagram feed the other day, I came across a post of Jared Leto's Great Wide Open videos made last year to celebrate America's National Parks and the incredible adventurers who explore its beauty.  Leto is described as an actor, musician, entrepreneur and environmentalist, and so I had to take a look at the videos to see if there was any link to preserving the National Parks.  However, rather than focusing on the environmental aspect, these videos tell the stories of the people who choose to push themselves to the limit through extreme rock climbing.  Rather than focusing on destruction and ruin, the Great Wide Open emphasises the stunning expanses and wilderness to be found in the National Parks, and the experiences felt by the people who visit them.

The fourth video in the series, The Wolfman, has to be my favourite.  It tells us about the wild animals found in Yosemite National Park and features interviews with more normal people than the fearsome rock climbers, showing that it appeals to all people from all walks of life, and the haven that it offers them, and the wildlife.

They are beautiful videos telling stories of how the parks have had an influence on the lives of the central characters and the sense of wanderlust to be found in this wilderness.  I like to think that seeing the beauty and benefits the parks bring to these people will influence others to take more care of the environments they encounter.