//
The Documentation Centre features exhibits, library and testimony archive about forced migration and expulsion of people in the 20th century. The main focus is on the fate of German refugees in the course of World War II, but that issue is presented in the context of the German attack on its neighbours in the war and the prior displacement and expulsion of other ethnic groups on the orders of the German government. The museum was controversial before it was even opened as it was championed by Erika Steinbach, a controversial right wing figure in the German expellee movement which is dominated by the political right. Steinbach and her idea of a "centre against expulsions" were particularly controversial in Poland, but the finished museum has seen no input from Steinbach and tries to strike a balance between portraying the suffering of expellees (German or otherwise) while also not ignoring the greater context and the fact that the expulsions were the direct result of German military aggression.
Brandenburger Tor
The only surviving Berlin city gate and a potent symbol of the city. This is the point where Straße des 17. Juni becomes Unter den Linden. The gate was designed by Carl Gotthard Langhans in 1791 and was intended to resemble the Acropolis in Athens. The Brandenburg Gate now symbolizes reunification, after dividing East and West Berlin for decades. This is the site of Reagan's "Mr. Gorbachev open this gate, Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall" speech.
The large square in front of the Brandenburg Gate contains the French and American embassies, the rebuilt Hotel Adlon, and the new building of the Academy of Arts.
Russian Embassy
A vast wedding cake of a building, built between 1949-1951 in the best Stalinist style and meant to symbolize the dominance of the Soviet Union in East German affairs before 1989.
Former Deutsche Guggenheim
This former German Guggenheim branch is run entirely by Deutsche Bank since 2013. Compared to the Guggenheims in New York, Bilbao and Venice, it is a relatively small exhibition place. It usually hosts a temporary exhibition and is free on Monday, with a free guided tour starting at 16:00. Since the place is small and the name "Guggenheim" a very famous one, the place is often very crowded.
New Guardhouse
Erected in 1818 to a classically-inspired design by Karl Friedrich Schinkel as a guardhouse for the imperial palace, since 1993 this compact building has housed a small, but extremely powerful war cenotaph, the Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany, continuing its use under East German rule as the primary "Memorial to the Victims of Fascism and Militarism". The interior of the Doric column-fronted building is intentionally empty, but for a small but moving sculpture by Käthe Kollwitz depicting a mother cradling a dead child. The statue is positioned beneath a round hole in the ceiling, exposing the figures to the rain and snow.
formerly Opernplatz
Nazi Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels made Bebelplatz (then called Opernplatz) infamous on 10 May 1933, when he used the square across from Humboldt University to burn 20,000 books by "immoral" authors of whom the Nazis did not approve. Their list included Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Arnold Zweig, Kurt Tucholsky and Sigmund Freud. Today a monument is the reminder, though it blames Nazi students for the episode. When entering the square it's easy to miss the monument. It is in that part of Bebelplatz bounded on one side by the Opera House and on the other side by Humboldt University. Look dead centre: the monument is underground. A piece of plexiglass allows the viewer to look underground into a large, white room, filled with entirely empty, blank white bookcases. The room is large enough to hold the 20,000 books that were burnt. The absence of books reminds the viewer just what was lost here: ideas. But the event did reveal things to come, as ethnically Jewish author and philosopher Heinrich Heine, whose books were burned, let one of his characters say in an 1821 play: "This was only the foreplay. Where they burn books, they will also burn people." He was correct.