From the Outside Looking In

I was recently in Berlin and visited the Historisches Museum (History Museum) with an American friend.  Given that we are fast approaching the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War you can imagine that just as there is a significant amount of discussion/books/programs on the subject in the UK that there is a similar level of activity in Germany.

Part of the drive to go to the museum is that there is an interactive map of Europe there showing the ebb and flow of empires across the Eurasian continent from basically the year zero to the present. If for no other reason I would recommend the museum.

But part of the agreement to go to the museum was that we would stop at 1914 so as not to have to get involved with the calamities of the 20th century, and under that aspect I would also highly recommend it.

It is an excellent museum which mixes military, imperial, economic, social and cultural history in its presentation of the development of Germany. 

As we were leaving my American friend turned to me and mentioned casually how interesting it was to see German history from a German perspective.

At first I just nodded as we walked down the street towards the Brandenburger Tor to be suddenly overwhelmed by the sweet, powerful smell spilling out of Unter den Linden (Tilis cordata or small leaved Lime Tree for the non German readers). 

Then it hit me. 

These trees were first planted in 1647; the Brandenburger Tor was built in 1791 replacing a gate in the city wall with a monument to victory, and to peace.  This place, this object, is a living archive.

For anyone who lived through or was born after the Second World War German history is tainted.  Whether stated explicitly or implicitly the crimes of the National Socialists cast a pall across the breadth of German history, certainly from a non-German perspective.

But the history from the year zero to 1914 can't be painted with the knowledge of 1933-1945.  

And in the Historisches Museum it isn't. 

There can be no guilt for the future in the past as I have postulated it.  Of course post 1933 into the present there will always be the question- 'what did I/what did my parents, my grandparents do?'
But that is not the lens through which the exhibition was built.

As a schoolboy I went to English grammar school where we studied the American Revolutionary War from the British point of view. 

I had to go home and check my dates to ensure that we were actually talking about the same war.

History is written by the victors.  But if the defeated are not annihilated then they too will write their history, and we should never lose sight of the fact that the descendants of the victors, and of the vanquished, are a matter of birth, not choice.