Barack Obama's planned campaign rally and speech in Berlin on Thursday is roiling the German political class, reports Der Spiegel (article in German). Authorities in Berlin are preparing for a million spectators, which would instantly make Obama's speech the biggest political event in that country since unification in 1990. There are even plans to close down the street, a mile long, and replicate the setup during the World Cup with massive projection screens. Inevitably with a political earthquake of this magnitude, there's some controversy stoked by conservatives.
Obama will be speaking on the eastern side of the Victory Column - the Siegessäule - a monument to the Prussian victories in the wars of unification that preceded Bismarck's establishment of the Second Empire. The speech itself will be focused on the Trans-Atlantic relationship and give a preview of the foreign policy approaches of an Obama administration towards our NATO allies.
So what's the controversy?
Team Obama picked what is arguably one of the most historically evocative spots in Berlin for his speech, and that history is not uniformly benign. Conservative members of the German parliament, the Bundestag, are pointing out, correctly, that the Victory Column was built in triumph over countries Germany defeated in its quest for unification; Denmark in 1864, Austria in 1866, France in 1871. But, as is often the case in Berlin, this terrain carries far more associations than that, some inspiring, some evil.
The column was inaugurated in 1873, somewhat less than two years after the proclamation of the German Empire in the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles. As you can see, the statue of Victoria on its summit points a laurel wreath into the distance; the direction it's pointing to is towards Paris, a literal finger in the eye of France. It was built on Königsplatz, "King's Square", which later became Platz der Republik, "Square of the Republic", then Adolf-Hitler-Platz, which needs no translation.
In 1938/1939, as part of the preparations for Hitler's rebuilding of Berlin into Germania, the capital of the Fourth Reich, the column was moved from its original location across from the Reichstag - which was ordered to not exceed it in height, to demonstrate the respective societal rank of military power and popular democracy in Bismarck's Germany - to its present location. The supervising architect of the move was one Albert Speer. During the move, the column was heightened, to give it more visual prominence at what was essentially the Western entrance to Berlin's government quarter.
Ironically, the move probably saved the structure from destruction during the battle of Berlin in 1945, when the Red Army captured the Nazi capital. However, the base of the column was heavily damaged; if you look closely at the photograph above, you'll see that it carries what look like pockmarks. Those are holes caused by artillery fire, which, when you stand directly in front of it, become the most significant visual feature of the structure. The German government decided not to have this damage repaired, as a reminder to future generations of the perils of war and imperialism.
In the post-war era, the column became a symbol of West Berlin, in part because most significant monuments, including the Brandenburg Gate, were in the Soviet sector. Looking towards the West from the Brandenburg Gate on the eastern side of the Berlin Wall, the column was the most prominent feature of the skyline (I traveled to East Berlin twice in the late eighties as a teenager).
During the workers revolt of 17. June 1953, an uprising against the Soviet-imposed East German government which was brutally crushed by Soviet tanks, fleeing revolutionaries used the column as a point of orientation in escaping from East Berlin. Partly in consequence, the street the Siegessäule stands on is now named the Street of 17 June. Ironically, Berlin's principal monument to the war dead of the Soviet Union stands on that street, about halfway between the column and the Brandenburg Gate. That monument is built out of red marble salvaged from Hitler's nearby Reich Chancellery, and Obama will be looking in its direction when he speaks. He will also symbolically be answering Ronald Reagan; when the latter spoke at the Brandenburg Gate, he was looking West. Obama will be looking East, in the direction of the Brandenburg Gate, answering and rebutting Reagan, as we prepare to enter a new era in American politics and bury Reagan's malignant legacy.
Today, the column serves as the focal point for mass events in Germany's capital, such as the annual Love Parade, a rave attended by hundreds of thousands of young people from all over the world. Berlin's annual gay pride parade also ends here, which is fitting, considering that Berlin's gay newspaper is also named, very tongue in cheek, Siegessäule. The golden Victoria atop the monument is no longer seen as pointing towards Paris to taunt, but as pointing to and leading towards Germany's Western allies, chief among them the United States.
Team Obama's decision to speak at this precise spot is not without symbolic peril; no place in Berlin is. The Victory Column is a complex spot in a complex city, layered with the bloody history of Europe over the last century and a half. Much of that bloody history originated within a few miles of where Obama will be speaking. In fact, if I were a betting man, I would wager that Shill O'Lielly will claim with as straight a face as he can manage that Obama will be speaking in front of a Nazi monument.
He'd be lying, of course, not that that's never stopped him before. Obama has chosen a location that speaks to a history we're well advised to understand and remember. In practical terms, he also picked the one spot in Berlin that can accommodate the huge crowds inspired by his candidacy and by the idea that America is turning over a new leaf. As to the larger symbolism, there are few places I can think of in Berlin better suited for a repudiation of America's own recent war of conquest and aggression than the German Empire's shattered monument to its own futile triumphs.