Into the Woods: Exploring Berlin's Grunewald
The Grunewald is an enormous, 32 square kilometer patch of forest between the rich Western suburbs of Berlin and the Havel River. Originally deer and boar hunting territory for the royal family, it has pretty much recovered from the years after World War II, when desperate Berliners raided more than two thirds of its trees for firewood. The well-maintained tracks that crisscross through the trees are teeming with healthy locals striding out with their Nordic walking sticks or fiddling with the gears on their 20-speed mountain bikes, on their way to tuck into piles of hearty German food in gemütlich tourist restaurants. German forests always have a sinister side to them though -- they're the places where Hansel and Gretel are lost, and the fairy tale wolves lurk -- and the Grunewald is no exception.
At one end is Teufelsberg, "Devil's Mountain," constructed from the rubble of World War II. At the other is the Wannsee bay, overlooked by the notorious villa, where the bureaucratic technicalities of the Final Solution were hammered out. On the eastern fringes are the Wilhelmine mansions of Berlin's wealthy, where the super-rich Landauer family in Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories lived. And most recently, artist Chloe Piene filmed an eerie short called "Stummfilm" ("Silent Movie") at night among the trees, with a spotlight cutting through the dark and sinister areas (you can see some of it here). The Grunewald is a funny mixture of art, darkness, money, and bumptious rustic-style Germanity.
Schloss Hotel im Grunewald
Brahmsstraße 10
14193 Grunewald, Berlin, Germany
[link]
Schildhorn Monument
Straße am Schildhorn
14193 Grunewald, Berlin, Germany
[link]
Reinhard's Landhaus
Koenigsallee 56
14193 Grunewald, Berlin, Germany
[link]
Rathenau Assassination
Erdenerstrasse and Koenigsallee, 14193
In 1922, Weimar Foreign Minister Walter Rathenau was machine-gunned by three far-right assassins as he was driven from his home at Koenigsallee 65 to his office in …
Wilhelmstrasse. The head of giant German engineering firm AEG, he was an anti-Zionist, anti-Socialist Jew and a leading figure in the German Democratic Party who had played an important role in the industrial organization of the country during the World War I. His failure to condemn the Treaty of Versailles outright (he preferred Germany to obey it while attempting to renegotiate the terms) had made him less than popular with the sort of goons who'd make up the Nazi party in a few short years. A plaque on a chipped stone pillar marks the spot. [link]
Museum Jagdschloss Berlin
Hüttenweg 100
14193 Dahlem, Berlin, Germany
Here's a 16th-century hunting lodge that was gussied up by various Prussian kings and is now a small but perfectly formed museum with some Old Masters (Rubens and …
Cranach the Elder) and a collection of hunting memorabilia. I've included it for future reference, despite the fact that the main schloss is closed for restoration until 2009. Hopefully it won't be a victim of Berlin's screwy economy and will re-open on schedule. In the meantime, you can still see a small exhibit about the building and hunting practice over the centuries. [link]
Museumsdorf Dueppel
Clauertstraße 11
14163 Zehlendorf, Berlin, Germany
The 20th century hogs so much of the tourist program in Berlin that it's easy to forget there were any human inhabitants here before the Nazis arrived. This "museum …
village" is a recreation of the 14th-century settlement that's being excavated on the same site, complete with staff in costume, busily whirring their spinning wheels and shoving plows about among the low-roofed thatched huts. [link]
Grunewaldturm
Havelchaussee 61
14193 Grunewald, Berlin, Germany
[link]
Deportation Memorial
Grunewald S-Bahn Station, Platform 17, Berlin
[link]
