Milo travels · Germany · POSTCARD 02
Berlin: following the traces of red memory
Milo arrives in a city where the history of the workers’ movement can be found in squares, monuments and beside a canal. These six postcards follow some of those traces, from Marx and Engels to the memory of those who fought fascism.
Photographs from different visits · 6 postcards
A square for Marx and Engels
The first stop is the Marx-Engels-Forum, near Alexanderplatz. Inaugurated in 1986 in the German Democratic Republic, the monument depicts Marx seated and Engels standing. The two thinkers who placed class relations, labour and the transformation of society at the heart of their work remain here in the middle of the city.
Source: Marx-Engels-Forum · Berlin.de
The name that remains beside the water
Beside the Landwehr Canal, Rosa Luxemburg’s name brings the memory of the German Revolution into the walk. Murdered by members of the Freikorps on 15 January 1919, her body was thrown into the canal. The memorial honours a revolutionary whose struggle for socialism her killers tried to silence, and who continues to inspire new generations.
Source: Lugares de Rosa Luxemburgo en Berlín · Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung · Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz · Berlin.de
Remembering who defeated Nazism
In Tiergarten, the Soviet memorial, inaugurated in November 1945, honours the Red Army soldiers who fell in the Battle of Berlin. More than two thousand combatants rest behind its colonnade. Amid the traffic and trees, this place preserves the memory of the immense Soviet sacrifice in the defeat of fascism.
A city turned into a border
Checkpoint Charlie on Friedrichstraße and the remains of the Wall take Milo into Cold War Berlin. The city’s division turned its streets into a border between two social systems and a setting for international confrontation. The photographs invite us to approach that history through its places and the lives lived on either side.
Source: Checkpoint Charlie · visitBerlin · Vestigios del Muro · Berlin.de
History works up an appetite too
The final postcard swaps monuments for a plate of roast pork knuckle with sides and a beer. Milo puts the map away for a while. After so much history, it is time to sit down to eat.
Original photographs. Milo is an illustrated addition to the photographs.