Two
identical buildings sit on opposite sides of Briennerstrasse, along the eastern
edge of Königsplatz. Grey stone, three
stories high, no domes or other architectural flourishes. Walking by, you wouldn’t notice anything
special about them, and neither did we when we were in Munich a few weeks
ago. It wasn’t until our guide pointed
them out that we noticed their understated neoclassical impressiveness. Tall, round-arched windows set inside
rectangular reliefs which formed their own frame and obviated the need for a
lintel. Squared-off doric columns
supporting twin porticos that extended toward the street, shielding the
entrances from the elements and offering a platform from which orations could
be given.
The
building to the north, our guide explained, was the Führerbau, built by
the Nazis in the mid-30s. It’s where Hitler
and Chamberlain signed the Munich Agreement in 1938 (“peace in our time,” etc.),
and it was the party’s HQ until the end of the war. With this added context, the building took on
an awesome / fearsome aura, which I suppose was the point when it was built,
even though there’s nothing sinister per se about the architecture. The only overt political symbols – two
immense eagles, cast in bronze, which originally hovered over each portico just
below the roof – have been removed; only the holes from the giant screws that
held them in place remain, like the bullet holes one still sees pocking
other sites in Munich. Today these two
buildings are home to the University of Music and Performing Arts and the
University Art Library. Some of the
original fixtures are still inside, our guide noted, and indeed I spied a
couple of cool art deco light fixtures through one of the windows.
In 1945, I imagine
it must have been extremely tempting simply to tear these buildings down, given
what they represented and what went on inside them. The Allies did in fact raze a nearby memorial commemorating the Nazis who had been killed in the Beer Hall Putsch. But rather
than demolish the Führerbau, the Germans planted a row of trees across the
street, to neuter the buildings’ dominance over Königsplatz, and rededicated them
to art and music – a graceful middle finger to the National Socialists, who had
gone to great lengths to persecute and shame so-called “degenerate artists.”
We
continued walking toward the Alte Pinakotek, which had been partially
demolished by American bombs near the end of the war. The jigsaw of newer and older brick revealed how
the museum was rebuilt, intentionally allowing the scars to remain visible.
Inside the
museum, like everywhere else in Munich, people wore masks. Disposable white medical masks, plain fabric
ones, hospital-grade ones, sequined fashion-y ones, homemade t-shirt reboots. One man improvised with a cone paper coffee
filter. This did not prevent life from
going on: people rode the metro, they went out to bars and restaurants, they
stayed in hotels. At most of the places
we went, you scanned a QR code that sent you to a contract tracing form. Once you got seated at your table, you could
remove your mask, but if you got up to leave or to go to the bathroom, you put
it back on. In the dozen or so
restaurants we visited over a week, every single person did this. On the odd occasion when someone would absentmindedly
forget, a waiter would dash over to remind them, and they would quickly and
apologetically put their mask on.
Right here
is where I was planning to draw a nifty compare-and-contrast between Germany
and my home country. How the fatality
rate from COVID-19 in the US is six times what it is in Germany. How one country is run by someone with a PhD
in quantum chemistry, and the other by a landlord who muses about drinking
Clorox. How I haven’t seen any reports from Germany of politicians suing each other over mask regulations, or of dudes with assault rifles storming government buildings over
public health measures. How Germany’s
response to the pandemic has demonstrated above all a sense of humility: a
respect for mysterious, often destructive forces which are more powerful than
our own will, wishes, or pride. Humility
which has obvious roots in the country’s own past demons, and which has inspired
gestures like Willy Brandt’s kneeling before the Warsaw ghetto in 1970. Humility which has allowed artful
acknowledgements of the darker elements of the country’s history, rather than the
frantic, often hypocritical attempts to efface them that one sees elsewhere.
The problem
is that this comparison doesn’t completely hold up. In fact, there are dudes in Germany storming
government buildings, minus the assault rifles, but plus the far right
banners and sentiments. The anti-mask
protests are not confined to the Boogaloo crowd; they’ve sprouted up in London,
and Zurich,
and Geneva. Even in Germany, where atonement for the sins
of the Nazis has been deeply socialized into the post-war generations, around
half of the population did not approve of the Warsaw Genuflection. And to be fair, there are plenty of places in
the US where officials are trying to do the right thing: my daughters’ school district in
Massachusetts,
for one, is being thorough and responsible with their plans for the fall
(certainly moreso than the public schools here).
Still, the
numbers are what they are. As of September 16th, 9,371 people
had died from COVID-19 in Germany, or 11 per 100,000 inhabitants. In the United States, those figures were 196,676
and 60. There is selfishness and denial everywhere, and to some extent, in all of us. But where we live, and how we live, and the people we elect to run things, still mean something.
