Welcome to Berlin
A Welcome Letter: Tertulia x Berlin | May 24-26, 2024
Liebe Gäste, liebe Freunde,
When I was a student in nearby Leipzig, Berlin beckoned. It was a choose-your-own-adventure kind of city marked at every turn by the extraordinary history it had seen and withstood, by its sense of incompleteness, its profound live-and-let-live mentality, its decided (practiced, even) nonchalance. In some ways Berlin was stuck in the 80s: exiting the train at Ostbahnhof, the old East Berlin central station, was a decidedly different experience than exiting at Zoologischer Garten, its West Berlin counterpart. (You can still experience both today.) In other ways it was heaving with modernity - in the spring of 2006, at the end of my time in Leipzig, the gleaming Hauptbahnhof lent its steel and glass hand to the extraordinary project of bringing Berlin into its reunified, 21st Century life.
I, like many of you, come from a country that gladly knocks down and rebuilds, that looks relentlessly forward, that pockets the winnings of its extraordinarily quick pace while often overlooking the accompanying loss. We didn’t realize how beautiful (and functional) Penn Station was until it was too late; still today we argue fiercely over the need to examine and learn from the past, especially the parts of it that reflect less generously on our present.
You will not soon forget the Gedächtniskirche (a must-see in west Berlin), its partially-destroyed cupola standing as a quotidian testament to war’s destruction. Stolpersteine, the small engraved brass cobblestones (literally “stumbling stones”), appear where you least expect them, searingly simple reminders of the lives, the lifetimes, taken by the Nazis. A sojourn to one of the remaining stretches of the Berlin Wall displays the cruelty - and futility - of division, let alone of building walls. This city lives its history not just for itself but for everyone who walks its streets, rides its yellow U-Bahn, its red S-Bahn; by embracing its painful past Berlin offers us a present - and a presence - that we rarely encounter in our own metropolises.
But the history of Berlin is so much more than darkness! It is pleasure, it is joy, it is release, it is independence, it is anonymity, it is hedonism. Whether as the raucous center of the Weimar-era Golden Twenties, as a safe haven for young LGBTQ West Germans escaping the conservative countryside, as a tawdry, euphoric, late-night, substance-laden, dance-filled celebration of reunification in the 90s, or today as a global center for artists of all stripes, Berlin lives like a survivor (even if it is a little slow to get started in the morning).
This weekend I invite you to soak up the past in such a way that makes it imperative to indulge in the present. This is an invitation to have an extra drink, to stay up a little too late, to revel in the great food, the exceptional music-making, the joy of a weekend-long cultural party in a city that has thrilled for centuries. The only rule: no judgment at the breakfast buffet.
Es lebe Berlin!
James
Tertulia x Berlin | May 24-26, 2024
Featuring: Seiji Okamoto and Thomas Reif, violins, Karolina Errera and Mathis Rochat, violas, Kristina Winiarski, cello and James Austin Smith, oboe