Staying in Cologne, Germany has been very different from my time spent in Venice, Italy. While Venice in July assailed its tourist with sweltering temperatures and stifling humidity, early August in Cologne has been consistently cloudy, cool, and rainy. Venice was crowded with tourists at any hour of the day, and Cologne (without the international pool of visitors) is more residential and local. Venice was a bustling and disorganized array of pedestrian-only alleyways, in stark comparison to Cologne’s wide, straight boulevards and streams of traffic. Many of the differences between Cologne and Venice were also applicable when comparing cities in Italy, such as Rome and Florence, to cities in Germany, including Berlin, Düsseldorf, and Kassel. I found cities in Germany generally have a young and active feel to them that is not present in the cities I visited in Italy. But perhaps one of the largest differences between cities in Italy and cities in Germany was the interaction between each city and it’s history.
History is very physically present in many cities in Italy. In Rome, Florence, and Venice, palaces look almost the same as they did 600 years ago. There are services and weddings held in churches built in the 13th century. Everyday houses and apartments date back to the 16th century. An even more extraordinary feat of architecture is the amount of construction from ancient Rome that still remains in the current city center of Rome. The original structures of the Colosseum and Roman Forum, built almost 2000 years ago, still stand in varying degrees of ruin. The beauty and historical importance of these cities lies in what still remains.
The historical events of Germany are manifested very differently architecturally in its cities than in Italy. Many cities in Germany were almost entirely destroyed by Allied bombings during and at the end of World War II. Streets that bore the weight of merchants traveling along the Via Imperii and victory marches after the Austro-Prussian War, government buildings that witnessed the Berlin Conference and the May Uprising, and palaces that housed Frederick the Great and Frederick II of Prussia were reduced to rubble in a matter of days. The Nazi regime also left its infamous legacy on buildings that remained, charging many of these structures with new, disturbing histories. Governmental buildings where Otto van Bismarck or one of the German Emperors conducted their political affairs had also been used by the Nazis to systematically plan the persecution and removal “enemies of the state.” Apartment buildings built during the Industrial Revolution to accommodate the urban influx of people stood vacant after the evacuation of their Jewish residents. Thus, while the magnificence of Italy’s history lies in what still remains, Germany’s is in what was destroyed.
As a tourist, I was struck by the way I experienced Germany history, especially in Berlin. I can’t imagine what the government of Germany post World War II was faced with in confronting the horrors the previous government figures had committed. In my experience, their response was an entirely up front, honest, no-frills approach to providing information about the Nazi Regime and the Holocaust. Museums in Berlin such as the Topography of Terror (which is free to all visitors) and the museum at the Sachenhausen Concentration Camp provide immense amounts of tortuously recorded and regurgitated information about the horrors of the Nazi regime. There are no excuses made or explanations offered for the behavior of the Nazis. I felt after visiting these museums I more deeply understood the sheer size of the Nazi political and social machine and the amount of people who participated in its beliefs and actions. There were thousands of Gestapo, concentration camp guards, and soldiers who worked on behalf of the Nazi regime that participated in the actions of the Nazis. After visiting these sites, I felt they were successful in their communication of information about the Nazi regime and Holocaust.
Interestingly enough, the history of Fascism in Italy is almost undetectable. None of the sites or museums that are popular tourist destinations discussed the history of fascism in Italy at all. There does not seem to be an effort in Italy to discuss it’s storied political past, despite its recognizable affect on Hitler’s Nazi politics. Italian fascism certainly didn’t have the lethal consequences that German National Socialism did, but I do think it is a topic worth addressing. There does seem to be a current movement to confront Italian’s political fascist movement, culminating in the realization and construction of the Museum of Fascism in the town of Benito Mussolini’s birth, Predappio.[1] After visiting Germany, I now understand the importance of fully confronting history, even when it can be difficult. I hope that Italy, and other countries (including the United States) will learn both from Germany’s mistakes and it’s decisions on how to understand them.
[1] This controversial institution has been dubbed as a “hope of reclaiming… [this] town from supporters of ‘Il Duce’”:
More information about the museum is available at these links:
http://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/fascism-museum-mussolini-italy-predappio/index.html
https://qz.com/993672/a-controversial-museum-is-forcing-italy-to-talk-about-its-fascist-past/