Macabre Meandering

The schools in Germany take a week long break in October. The family I nannied panicked when they realized that the older kids would be home all day for a week in a two bedroom apartment. In their madness they rented a car and drove across most of East Germany that week to entertain them. With no charges I was given the week off. Since Matt and Gretchen had German class everyday from 1pm-5pm, I had a significant portion of the week to myself to wander Berlin.

I decided to do something that they wouldn't be interested, namely a trip to see some Bertolt Brecht sites. America's, nay, the world's leading Brecht scholar was at my institute of higher education, and so I had taken two classes on Brecht. I read most of the plays and poems in the first class and in the second class we read all of his early plays and poetry, as well as film scripts, correspondence and diaries.

I went to visit an apartment Brecht had lived in, now set up as an museum, but it was closed when I got there. However, right next door was the cemetery that he was buried in. Already being there, I thought I might as well go in and take a look. It was a small so he was easy to find, buried next to his wife.



In the process of finding him, I found some other notable figures. Close to Brecht was Heinrich Mann, Thomas' older brother who was also a writer.



Around the corner was another left-wing writer, Arnold Zweig.






My last find was the architect of most of neoclassical Berlin, Carl Friedrich Schinkel.





Brecht and some cool dead Germans, I thought. I wonder who else is buried in Berlin cemeteries?

I spent the next couple of days lost in Berlin's cemeteries looking for interesting people resting in peace in that Prussian capital, and here's who I found:





Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn, the sibling composers united in death.



Rahel Varnhagen, a German woman writer and famous salon hostess.



Marlene Dietrich, possessor of Germany's most coveted thighs.



Max Bruch, composer of that cursed violin concerto movement I slaved over for a whole semester.



Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, folklorists and philologists.



Kaethe Kollwitz, artist and mother.

The last one was at a huge socialist/communist cemetery deep in the east. It was a cold day and I had to walk a long way from the bus stop to the cemetery and then another long way from the entrance to Kollwitz's grave. The communist martyrs Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg are buried there too, but alas, I did not get a picture. In the middle of the cemetery I suddenly lost all interest in the project, probably due to hunger, fatigue, cold weather, and that uneasy feeling I always get when I've wandered to far east and have to consult my map constantly. I love European cemeteries, but I overdosed on them, and didn't visit any more that trip. Don't worry, thought, I saw plenty of tombs in various churches, but somehow it's not quite as eerie as visiting a graveyard.

Happy Halloween!