On Introverts

We have been in Berlin for exactly 5 months. While we have a home, schools, work and lots of family time, our social lives are somewhat limited still. Two of us are basically content, despite that fact. For the other two, the absence of their strong Silver City lifelong friendships has left a big gaping social hole. Wondering about how differently people respond to challenges such as this made me think about introvert and extrovert personality types. I wrote most of the content of this post first, and then surfed around the internet, only to realize that other people have been talking and writing about this recently too.

This past summer, a recovering corporate lawyer named Susan Cain published a whole book about the extrovert culture bias and how introverts are undervalued: “QUIET: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking”. She describes convincingly how schools and the workplace reflect that bias. Many additional smart things have since been written and said in response to her interesting argument. (I won’t litter links all over this, just google it.) So I probably don’t have all that much to add…. But since this is a cultural issue, it is also an “On the Fence” topic.

We all know that today, society rewards extroverts. And we have all bought into this to some degree. We tend to think positively of the people who are “out there”, who are visible, verbal, performing. We admire them as leaders, team players and trailblazers, perceive them as people who get things done, have a lot of friends, and operate within human networks effectively.

Introverts, on the other hand, are viewed as reclusive weirdos who stay to themselves. You never quite know what they’re doing, you just know it doesn’t relate to you or to other people - and that makes their activities suspicious, and sometimes makes the extroverts angry. Introverts are annoyingly content without the company of others. They don’t play by the rules. They probably don’t feel the need to spread their private lives out publicly all over social media networks.

They are forced to switch camps, though, sometimes….: The TED talk of Susan Cain, now the official spokesperson of the introvert tribe, has been watched almost 5 1/2 million times, and ironically she has received the Golden Gavel Award for Communication and Leadership, by a group that, one could argue, tries to turn people into extroverts - the International Toastmasters.

Of course the introvert and the extrovert personality types are two extreme poles. We need both of them. Most people are somewhere in between, and, if they have managed to develop a somewhat balanced personality, they unite the healthier aspects of both types. But the world loves extroverts. If you are parent or a partner of an introvert, you are constantly under pressure to explain or fix their behavior. I am not sure how and how many times my poor husband had to explain my absence at the political fundraisers he attends. Hopefully people just stopped asking at some point.

Introverts are under constant pressure to become more outgoing. But I think extroverts are actually more vulnerable. They depend more on the constant recognition and gratification of others. So maybe extroverts are just people who act out, or have found other ways to overcome their shyness? Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert De Niro were in Berlin recently to introduce their new movie, and when interviewed both said they were really shy people. It made me snort first, but then they said being on stage or on camera is an act of overcoming shyness every time. The introvert doesn’t need to do this, because he is not shy. He is just an introvert. So leave him or her alone.

The full-blown extrovert needs company all the time, or at least people around him. When I first moved to the desert 20 years ago, it was in part because I loved the utter emptiness, vastness and quiet of the landscape, and how it threw me back onto myself. I could hear myself think, and just be… without constant human input. I remember some people telling me that they hated the desert. It was too scary how the desert forced them to be with themselves.

The extrovert personality is often associated with leadership (another value-free concept that merits disassembling… but that’ll be a separate post one day). Extroverts lead us, but where to? Leadership is a very scary term in Germany, for obvious historical reasons.

The introvert, on the other hand, is often a thinker, a creator. Introverts have given us great works of literature, music and visual art. Makes me think of John Belushi’s impersonation of Beethoven. Cain points out that Steve Wozniak invented the Apple computer, not Steve Jobs. I am a grant writer, not a fundraiser. I don’t enjoy taking people to lunch and convincing them to write a check. I like holing up with a challenging writing or research project and fine tune my work until it is perfect.

Having moved back to Germany, I feel to a degree I have escaped the noisy US extrovert culture, the glorification of leadership and the exhibitionist aspects of social media. Even though I am in a big city again, the noise around me has quieted down.

However, many facets of that culture have been adopted here in Europe as well. Especially if you are trying to reinvent yourself professionally, you sort of have to locate yourself on the intro-extro spectrum and act accordingly. The competitive job market favors the extrovert, just as in the US. So, how many extrovert “qualities” does one have to demonstrate to land a job? How much do I gush and shine and brag in the job interview?

I decided I am too old for this bullshit. The bullshit of buying into the extrovert culture and playing someone I am not. So I went to a few job interviews, and was just myself. The grant writer, not the fundraiser. The thinker, not the leader. Eventually, it paid off. I got a gig where I can be me.

Uneasiness

P.S. to the last post on dysfunctional governments: The Italian government didn’t dissolve, apparently reason prevailed and Berlusconi’s former allies are starting to defect from his agenda. Also, this week Italians were dealing with the aftermath of the terrible drowning deaths of hundreds of African immigrants near the Sicilian coast.

The Germans are still negotiating (the terms of the coalition for their new government). Everyone is sort of bored with the whole thing by now.

The US government is of course still shut down, and now threatening to plunge the world economy into another financial crisis by defaulting on its debts. Contrary to the smug observations that the world isn’t ending without the government, innocent little children are affected. So now US billionaire oil philanthropists are being lauded for stepping in by throwing 10 million to emergency-fund Head Start. One step closer to plutocracy.

Meanwhile some people are questioning the overall functionality of the US political system, and wondering if a European style parliamentary system with less separation of powers might not be more efficient. I think the question is moot. What ails American democracy is not the separation of powers. Sure, this system is what makes the political process vulnerable to gridlock. But the gridlock occurs because those elected to office are now guided by those who pay their campaigns, and no longer by the electorate. As a result, they have forgotten their oath to uphold the laws (including the Affordable Care Act) of the United States. And instead they work to undermine them, make them unworkable, to then argue, correctly, that government doesn’t work. It reminds me of the strange logic of the virus that kills its host, and then perishes itself.

I do have to say that in a parliamentary democracy, in light of prolonged dysfunctional government such as currently in the US, someone would by now have issued a vote of no confidence, dissolved the existing government and initiated early elections to start over. If the elected people don’t have their shit together, lets’ fire them and start with new ones. It doesn’t always work, but it sure puts on a little pressure.

This P.S. ended up being much longer than planned. This post was supposed to be about something else: Discomfort and preoccupation with where the internet is going, increasingly evident in conversations on- and offline. As I observe this, I am grouping these collective feelings and thoughts into two larger groups:

The first is discomfort with social media and what techno-consumerism does to people. This video in a somewhat oversimplified, pseudo-scientific art school end of the year project kind of way describes how being “connected” makes people lonely, allegedly.

The second has to do with the invasiveness of internet tech companies, and the whole lack of privacy thing that just snuck up on us. We always knew that e-commerce companies were surveilling our consumer behavior, and sending us ads based on what we search for and what we like on facebook and what we read on twitter. Now we also know that the US government is surveilling every single communication we are having online.

The two discomfort groups are related: the interconnectedness of your social media platforms with each other, and with your email, with GPS and with e-commerce sites has already created a world in which nothing is private anymore, not what you eat, what you read, who you love, who you communicate with and what you say to them, what you purchase, and where you are and have been at any moment in time. Google will now show your name and profile in an ad next to an item that someone might purchase, if you have shared or +1’d that item. It sounds like a small thing, but is just an example of how you do one little thing online and it has reverberations in 17 different other virtual places. No conspiracy theorist or science fiction author could have thought of a more sinister system of observation.

The discomfort is shared by people from all arenas: 

Journalists - Roger Cohen, in one of the last issues of the International Herald Tribune (and btw, what is up with that - The International New York Times, really?)  last week wrote about his fear to lose touch with the “real” things and felt experience. "Echt" in German means real.

We have an "echt" deficiency these days. Everything seems filtered, monitored, marshaled, amelioreated, graded and app-ready - made into a kind of branded facsimile of experience for easier absorption. 

Funny. I read this in the "real" IHT, purchased at a newspaper stand in Certaldo, Italy. Now I can't link to it, because the newspaper doesn't exist anymore online. 

Frank Schirrmacher, editor of the FAZ also has written extensively about "das digitale Ich” - this other person out there, that is sort of you, but you are not really in control of it anymore. And its identity is relentlessly exploited commercially and for secret intelligence.

Politicians - the German president (and no, it’s not Angela Merkel, remember, parliamentary democracy… our president is the head of the state with no political power but a figure with high moral integrity and authority), Joachim Gauck, spoke about this new age in his much-quoted speech on October 3rd (the German National Holiday aka Day of National Unity). Gauck praised the innovation, progress and possibility of the internet. But he also warns we have not thought about the consequences enough. Then he makes the link to German history:

Ausgeliefertsein und Selbstauslieferung sind kaum voneinander zu trennen. Es schwindet jene Privatsphäre, die unsere Vorfahren doch einst gegen den Staat erkämpften und die wir in totalitären Systemen gegen Gleichschaltung und Gesinnungsschnüffelei so hartnäckig zu verteidigen suchten. Öffentlichkeit erscheint heute vielen nicht mehr als Bedrohung, sondern als Verheißung, die Wahrnehmung und Anerkennung verspricht.

Roughly translated: There is no line any longer between involuntarily exposure and self-exposure. Citizens’ privacy from the state, which our ancestors have fought for to combat totalitarian spy systems, vanishes. Public exposure is no longer viewed as a threat, but as a promise for being noticed and recognized.

Gauck goes on to say that your digital “twin” makes you transparent, calculable, exploitable and manipulable ( I know, that’s probably not a word).

Writers - Another,  manifestation of unease includes Dave Eggers recently released book “The Circle”, and many of the reviews and the reactions to it. Guess what, one person even quit all social media for an entire week after reading the book. 

And finally, another great American author, Jonathan Franzen, just published a new annotated translation of the works of Karl Kraus, influential early 20^th century satirist from Vienna. Franzen discovers that Kraus’ disdain with modernity back then mirrors his own angry rejection of techno-consumerism now. And does he go on about it in this essay published by the Guardian. And then he got a lot of pushback from online commenters.  

The historical perspective illustrates that this debate has been going on forever, is probably as old as humanity: on one side people worried that the manifestation of progress, modernity and the related new forms of communication specific to their time and age are the end of everything, or the end of whatever they hold dear - literature, silent films, letter writing, conversations over coffee, music that the composer is paid for, etc., etc. (These folks are often called Luddites, which is stupid, because they are not destroying anything.) And on the other side the people who engage in new forms of communication, profit from it, enjoy it and are part of, or born into the new culture. In 1964 Umberto Eco described the actors of this cultural division as the apocalyptics versus the integrated.

But then there are those of us who feel in between the two. Those on the fence. So Google “thinks” it is the best thing since sliced toast, that my email, google+, where I am located, and my blog are all connected. I think it is sort of convenient, when it works, but it’s also creepy.  Technology has moved forward, as many times before in history, but our ethical and moral thinking and subsequent rule-making has not caught up.

Being on the fence, I don’t have answers, only questions:

Does technology serve to reinforce what is already evil in our society and economic system? Or has it become an evil force in itself? Can technology, progress, innovation ever be neutral? (answer: no)

Is this time and age really as revolutionary as we think? Or are we freaked out/enthusiastic (take your pick) victims of "Gegenwartseitelkeit"? Who's not exited to live in sea-changing times. But how much of this great new world will still be significant 100 years from now? 

Or are we simply using new tools for the same ends?  Tom Standage  just published a whole book about the parallels between modern and historical social media. 

More pragmatically: Are the big shots of the internet – Google and the social media companies - going to address the privacy concerns of their consumers? Or are they going to barrel on, just losing the concerned folks on the way as they choose to drop out of the whole thing?  Or in other words, will there be a space in between, where you can take advantage of the internet as information source, communication and business tool, and still maintain privacy and control? Is the US government going to change its surveillance practices?

And on the other side, are people, the “users” going to self-teach a sensible practice of social media? Michele Filgate, the woman who quit facebook (which, I think, might just be slowly slipping through the bullshit filter of history, dropping down there with MySpace) and twitter for a week is back on, but she created some new rules for herself – to preserve her non-digital self, and her relationships.

I’ll quote the German president again:

Wie noch bei jeder Innovation gilt es auch jetzt, die Ängste nicht übermächtig werden zu lassen, sondern als aufgeklärte und ermächtigte Bürger zu handeln.

As with every innovation yet, we have to not let fear take over, but we have to act as enlightened and empowered citizens.

FAQs Month 4

Are you acclimated yet?

Mmmh….I totally enjoy being here, love the mix of the familiar and unfamiliar, the old and the new. It's all very interesting, engaging, and challenging. And somewhat puzzling, especially how I'll fit in here as a professional. I mostly see family, and not very many friends, but so far I am fine with that. And guess what: There is such a thing as fall here. Autumn! Incredible colors, fresh earthy smell, golden days. That said, I don't think I'll ever completely acclimate anywhere. But that's just me. I like having the view all around from on the fence. Part of the global homeless tribe. There are lots of us in Berlin.

How are the kids?

Ruby, unexpectedly, is having the hardest time. She got handed the worst school deal, too: Her 8^th grade class is one of two classes to form a the second public international school in Berlin, because Nelson Mandela School has reached its limits in terms of size.  But now no one feels responsible, the district hasn’t hired people or made plans for new the school, and the mothership school doesn't seem to care.  So they're stuck in subleased rooms in another school, with no perspective and no connection to the great big school community over at the main Nelson Mandela building.  Parents are now in the process of organizing and advocating – for what I am not sure yet. Ruby’s classmates took some getting used to for her - more girly-girls than Ruby's friends in Silver. All the time she spends on facebook is not helping.

Rory is doing very good, he is attending the college track (IB) program at Nelson Mandela, and it's structured like college, and he'll be able to go to the university anywhere in the world after two years. He has lots of time he can choose how to structure. It's a little scary but seems to work so far. And he has been hugely creative, both with music production, and with working on his longboarding skills. Both count towards school. He also volunteers in a cat shelter, which also counts towards school. Right now he is down with a sprained ankle.

Ben misses his father (not this month, because Charlie is with us), and his friends, but enjoys it here otherwise. He loves his school, and he is starting to make some friends in the hood and gets play dates through other family and friends. He is playing baseball and is on a swim team. He has lots of catching up to do academically before he can enter 4th grade (and not because school is in German), as we feared. I get to do childhood memory things with him, like collecting colorful autumn leaves and chestnuts, and making little animals out of chestnuts and matches.

Is the US officially the most dysfunctional democracy in the world?

Certainly in the eyes of its citizens. But if it’s any consolation, Italy (where we are headed for fall vacation on Friday) is doing worse. Somehow this week they managed to get their whole government to crumble over the power games of ex-head of government Silvio Berlusconi - a convicted felon and crook, who not only owns most of the media outlets but also many politicians. Where the US suffers from the two-party system, Italy suffers from too many parties, and the subsequent intrigues and constantly changing alliances. Germany just had elections two weeks ago, largely unnoticed by the rest of the world, because the results will keep Chancellor Merkel of the Christian Democrats (CDU) in power. That’s the only thing staying the same, though: Her new government will be a new coalition (yes, as in, representatives of different parties agreeing to govern together, sharing cabinet and committee appointments). The coalition will be composed of either CDU and Social Democrats or CDU and Green Party. Very different from the previous partner, the neo-liberal FDP which voters kicked out of parliament with a big bang. So the coalition talks are starting, and may take quite some time. Even though Germans are complaining about the related political posturing and how long the whole thing takes, it seems to me that this is pretty functional democracy at work.

Back to the US: The news we get from there (thanks to NPR Berlin) sounds like reruns from a year ago: Mass shootings and Republicans trying to repeal Health Care Reform. Really? A law that was passed three years ago, by a president who was since re-elected. Don’t get me started.

Are you working?

Little by little. Mostly I am still learning, reading, attending workshops, talking to people. I have a few consulting engagements, and I am working with an awesome consulting firm to put together a series of seminars on strategic philanthropy. There is a word here which describes the prevalent German grantmaker approach: Projectitis. More on what I learned about the German NPO sector will be a separate post soon.

Can we come visit?

Be our guest. You can see this:

Autumn sun going down behind the botanical garden greenhouse - see the guy on top? He is dancing.

..and then there was this little helicopter thing buzzing around. What is it?

A Walk into the Past - Fichtenberg Part I

"..being curious...it's one of the best things about life, don't you think?" comments my dear friend from Silver City, who is a curious person herself. I owe her a curiosity trip to find her roots in Sicily one of these days. Meanwhile, I am rediscovering my own old stomping grounds.

I went to high school on the Fichtenberg, Spruce Hill, walking or biking up from "regular" Steglitz where I lived age 15-18.  Regular Steglitz, as in, the other side of the main street, aka Schlosstrasse, where it's more densely settled. Here at the foot of the Fichtenberg, the village of Steglitz grew into the largest community in Prussia before it was incorporated as a district into Berlin in 1920. In the 1980s, I biked to school here every day, hung out at the park, and breathed the clean air of the hill. And never wasted a single thought on how and why this hood was so different from the rest of the area. I guess I wasn't curious (about local history that is, I was sure curious about other things then....)

I am curious now. And so appreciative of our little garden, the quiet neighborhood, the tall trees, the hedgehogs and the fresh forest air. So after moving back, for a few months now I have been walking, taking pictures, and reading about the Fichtenberg. This is definitely a place with lots to discover for the local history nerd. I'll share a little bit of what I found.

Steglitz has been around since the 1300s. Located on the highway between Potsdam and Berlin it quickly grew in importance during the years of the Prussian empire. They didn't start intentionally settling the hill above it until the early 1870ies. Before that, the hill was a park, with intentionally planted pine trees (not spruce = Fichte. So first, it was know as Kieferberg, rather than Fichtenberg), part of the Schloss property (not really a castle, more like a nice country hangout) built by Count Carl-Friedrich Beyme, and later owned by Marshall Friedrich Wrangel, today known as the Wrangel-Schlösschen.  The owners also tried to grow wine here, fruit trees and later mulberry trees for silk production.

Since this is the only elevation for miles around, you had a breathtaking far and wide view across the fields of Dahlem from the hill. As if that wasn't enough, at the top of the hill, right outside where our house is today, somebody in the late 1700s had built one of those fake ruins, a Belvedere with a tower. When things started to get serious, it was dismantled in 1865 and the bricks given to local developers.

So in 1872 the Domänenfiskus (this was sort of the property management department of the Prussian State) subdivided the hill into 89 lots and started selling. The lots were small, so the buyers, since they could afford it, bought several adjoining lots at once and erected representative villas. 13 years later, there were 24 villas surrounded by huge parks. Yes, parks... with fountains, ponds, stables, green houses, and additional buildings housing carriages, cars and staff. The first big, impressive villas were built for scientists, educators, high ranking public employees, artists, military men, and a little later, up-and coming industrial tycoons. They were truly the "High Society", not just of Steglitz, but of nearby Berlin, creating their little high-end suburbia here. Berlin was only a short train ride away since Steglitz had become a stop on the Potsdam-Berlin route in 1839. More about a few of the interesting characters who lived here later.

a view of the hill in 1903

First, the streets had the same names as in Prussian villages everywhere. Wilhelmplatz, Schillerstrasse, Kaiser-Wilhelm-Strasse, Friedrichstrasse. When Steglitz was swallowed by Berlin, along with Lichterfelde, Lankwitz and Südende, people had to come up with new names, so there wouldn't be 20 Wilhelmstrassen. So today many of the streets here and in other parts of Steglitz are named after important local residents - Friedrich Schmidt-Ott, Carl-Heinrich Becker, Paul Henckels.

Let's take a little walk. This map section was created by using OpenStreetMap, © OpenStreetMap contributors.

The map shows the hill, bordered by Grunewaldstrasse on the northeast, Schlosstrasse on the south and the botanical gardens on the southeast sides . Our house is right by Paul-Henckels Platz, on Schmidt-Ott-Str. 5a, where I put the arrow. That spot is very close to the top if the hill, marked by the number 68 (meters, that is). If you increase the zoom on your browser, you can see the details better.

We'll walk down Carl-Heinrich-Becker Weg, across Henckels-Platz.

Paul Henckels was an actor and director, as well as a co-founder of the post-war version of the Schlosspark-Theater, on Wrangelstrasse. It's located in the buildings of the old Wrangelschlösschen. It is still one of the most active little theaters in Berlin, providing lighter entertainment these days. Henckels didn't live on the hill. Carl Heinrich Becker, the Prussian Minister of Culture did, but not on the street named after him (go figure), so 'll tell you more about him when we come by his place later.

A big eyecatcher on our right is this beauty:

The Villa Anna was built by Architekt Otto Techow for himself and his family in 1884. Techow is also famous for the Water Tower (around the corner on Schmidt-Ott-Strasse) he built a few years later.

It was later refurbished to house the offices of the Institute of Meteorology, where today students maintain the Free University's weather monitoring sequence day and night.

The Henckels square is somewhat unkempt these days, apparently public park funds and personnel are not sufficient.

And also the Tree of Heaven on our property is sending shoots everywhere. I hated those stinky invasive trees in New Mexico and I hate them here.

Walking down further, we notice a spacey-looking building on the right. It was built by the Free University and houses more of the Meteorological Institute and the Institute for Space Science. There were protests from residents when this was built, because it does not fit in architecturally. I don't mind the mix of architecture, that's what Berlin is like everywhere - heterogenous and messy.

The rest of Carl-Heinrich-Becker-Weg illustrates architectural messiness perfectly. We see everything in between the fairy tale Villa Anna and the space building: 19th century high end rentals, classic, clean Bauhaus style, 50ies atrocities and a few hints at romantic 1800s Villas which are no longer there, or have been altered to a point of being unrecognizable in their grand old beauty.

Erich Pommer lived here, on C-H Becker Weg 16-18. The house is long gone, replaced by 1970s little boxes. He was a film producer, responsible for many of the expressionist silent movies of the 1920s, such as "Metropolis" and "Faust". He produced "Der Blaue Engel" with Marlene Dietrich in 1930. After 1933 he got the hell out of here and continued his career in Hollywood. He is credited with rebuilding the German film industry from ashes after 1946.

As you walk, guide your eyes to the ground: the typical Berlin pave stones actually have a mosaic pattern here, with a dark stripe and curved openings where each driveway used to be. Today, we can see that after the pavement was torn up for pipe work or such, the city crews didn't make the effort of recreating the stripe, but instead scattered the black stones about. Bummer.

Dietrich Schäfer was a tenant, along with his partner and six kids, in Nr. 27-29, the last house on the left before the street dead-ends into the park. The 1896 villa has been drastically altered and built onto. Today it houses a residential facility for people with severe mental illness. I didn't dare take a picture, because the residents alway hang out on the front porch. Schäfer was a historian with strong anti-semitic views and in favor of total war. He died in 1929, but the Nazis loved his writings, and because of this he is a controversial figure. Becker-Weg actually used to be Schäfer-Weg when I went to school here. A group of students from my high school back then started to advocate for changing the name of the street, and the initiative finally succeeded in 1992.

Becker-Weg leads to what we used to call the Fichtenberg as kids - which is the park.

At the entrance of the park, if you move the weeds and autumn leaves a bit with your foot, you'll see a weird square stone plate.

It covers the opening to a bunker system, which the Nazis, or actually I should say, Nazi prisoners, built into the mountain in 1944. In the late 1970ies, several sections of the tunnels caved in and had to be filled up and covered.  The bunker was built for the employees of a large administrative SS office on Schlosstrasse. I don't think it was ever used.

Next you enter a large flat area bordered by a curved wall, with benches to sit and enjoy the view. Except there is no view anymore. The trees are too tall today. This is what it used to look like.

And today:

If the trees weren't there at the other side of the lawn, you would look across the same area, then the wheat fields of Dahlem, today the Botanical Gardens.

The rest of the park covers the south slope of the hill - softly descending lawns surrounded by paths slowly overgrowing with blackberries and weeds. On the way down we meet this gentleman:

Friedrich Paulsen

Paulsen was an influential educator, philosopher and pedagogue. He is considered the inventor of the modern German high school, the gymnasium, at which modern languages and the natural sciences are given the same importance as the ancient languages.  He lived on Lepsiusstrasse, half way down the hill until his death in 1908. Streets and schools in Berlin and elsewhere are named after him. His philosophical works were translated into many languages and were widely read in the US. He is buried at the St. Matthäus Cemetery over in Schöneberg, along with the Brothers Grimm, and a few, dear, recently passed members of my family.

Two playgrounds flank the park, and next to one of them in the bushes, I found what I think might be the original Bäkequelle, the spring of the now buried river Bäke,  discussed here, housed in by a brick enclosure.

Circling around the park and back up the hill, we find the memorial stone of prolific writer and journalist Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, after who the park was named.

Ruth and her partner, the conductor Leo Borchard, were important figures in the anti-Nazi resistance movement. Their group, called Onkel Emil, helped many persecuted people get out of the country. They operated it out of their home in Steglitz. The district of Steglitz, by the way, was an early and solid bullwark of the Nazi movement. Ruth Andreas-Friedrich later published her diaries from these years, which today are considered one of the most important time witness reports of the period. I have been waiting for  a copy to become available at the library for two months now....


We'll walk back up to the platform and turn to our right onto Zeunepromenade. This little foot path is the border between Steglitz and Dahlem (you can see the red dotted line on our map). On the left is the fence to the Botanical Gardens, and we see the back side of the big green house.

On the right, and in both directions around the corner, we can still see the remains of the original 1890 iron and brick fence of the Carl Schlickeysen property.

I love that name - it's like someone made it up to fit a Gründerzeit German industrial tycoon. Which is what Schlickeysen was.  He worked his way up from modest circumstances, and later perfected and successfully marketed the steam brick press, taking brick making from a hand craft to an industry.  I can only imagine how the old elite of professors and government officials on the hill felt about this rough new kid in the hood, and about his parties and the braggy property. His big villa and park, as the one of his next door neighbor Weber, are long gone though, replaced by dense 1950's condos. Only the fence and its base of stamped bricks, probably from his factory, remind us of the glorious 1890s, when Berlin, the capital of the new German empire was growing exponentially, and you could make millions with bricks. Today they are covered in graffiti.

At the end of the promenade, in a minute we will turn right onto Arno-Holz-Str. This street is not as architecturally messy - it still features more of the old turn of the century grandeur than Carl-Heinrich Becker-Weg, as well as some surprises...

You'll find out about the people who lived here, among them Carl-Heinrich Becker and Friedrich Schmidt-Ott. We'll walk down Schmidt-Ott-Strasse towards Lepsiusstrasse, and you'll hear about a present-day actor who saved his historic home, a 1930s actress who died very young, and of course the dying Franz Kafka, and a bunch of early anthropologists, and why one always runs into blind people on the hill - for the last 100 years, and, and..... All of this in Part II of our walk, which will appear here in October. Thanks for sticking with us!