Germany Unification Day

Today is Germany Unification Day. No parades or presents, but I did get the day off work.

I celebrated the birth of my dear, young Federal Republic by bulldozing all the walls in my apartment (heh) and visiting two very German museums.

The first was the Deutsches Museum, which documents advances in German science and technology. It had one of the world's two trautoniums, on which Oscar Sala composed the music for Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds." Creeeeee-py.

It also had an exhibit on new technologies that are allowing women to detect genetic defects in their unborn babies. The exhibit said that if a woman does not take advantage of these technologies, she may be accused of being irresponsible. And so the question becomes whether the "right to decide" is really a duty. Hmm.

I then went for my fourth visit to the German history museum. They had a special exhibit that detailed the expatriation of German Jews at the beginning of WWII. In all its exhibits, the Bonn history museum has excellent primary source materials. This was no exception. It had several of the Nazis' original manifestos and the board games that they created for their children, in which sending Jews to other countries was the object of the game.

I always have trouble believing that some of the things I've read about in history books really happened in Germany so recently. You walk down the street and everything feels so normal.

Most of the vestiges of divided Germany are invisible (they are either economic or in terms of cultural mentality). That is why when I visited Berlin I was so struck by some of the visible legacies - the remnants of the wall and the hats worn by crosswalk figures in East Germany.
Prior to coming to Germany that same sense of disbelief always characterized my understanding of the Nazis. But seeing this exhibit really helped me believe.