Otto Weidt’s face looked worn and wrinkled even before he opened his small shop. Starting a business is never easy, but its especially worrisome to open a business in the middle of a war. Perhaps Weidt didn’t think he had much to loose. He was, after all, almost 60 years old.

His first floor workshop in the Rosenthaler Straße 39 wasn’t much to look at either. Grey and shabby – it didn’t matter anyhow. Most of his employees couldn’t see. They were blind. Others were deaf or mute. Most of Weidt’s employees were not only disabled. They were also Jewish. Day for day they moved mechanically, repeating stupid, minute movements, manufacturing brushes and brooms for the Nazi armies.

At the beginning of World War II, brooms, like helmets and uniforms, had been classified as being ‘critical’ for the German war effort. So Weidt’s decision to sell overpriced brooms to Hitler’s armies, which were handmade by poor cripples, looked like an excellent business opportunity. It might have been too. However what appears on the surface to be a shrewd business decision was, in reality, Mr. Weidt’s determined choice to make a difference.

Mrs. Inge Deutschkron was one who lived. She survived Nazi Germany – thanks to Weidt’s brooms.

Everyone revered Otto Weidt: the blind, the mute, the seeing workers. Those who worked for him included former salemen, lawyers, bank directors, pharmacists – and us, who became eye-witnesses to his confusing but usually successful manipulations. We followed his never-ending efforts to protect us from the pain of our oppressors with a thankfulness we could hardly express in words.

Of all the objects Hitler’s army needed to slaughter millions of people, brooms seem like an unlikely weapon. It was a stroke of genius that led Weidt, a pacifist, to chose brooms as his sword. They were on a list of items needed for the war effort, and Weidt saw a loophole. Combined with bribes, he exploited this opportunity to protect his employees from being sent to concentration camps. When in 1942 a group of employees were rounded up by the Gestapo secret police, Weidt personally went himself to the deportation station they were being held at – a few streets over – to win their release.

Deutschkron was one of Weidt’s healthy Jewish (but still illegal) employees. In her early 20s she worked in the front office and described what happened next.

I don’t know remember anymore when Weidt came back from the Gestapo. But when he entered the office, his face twitched. He didn’t pay any attention to us, rather he went, with overcoat, straight into the workroom.

“It’s been taken care of”, he said to Levi, who was waiting fearfully.

“Taken care of?” Levi mumbled the word incomprehensibly.

“Yes”, said Width and with a wry smile on his face he added, “How should I fulfill my quota for the German army, when my workers are taken away from me?”

The people began to laugh – quietly at first, then growing louder. They understood. Levi wanted to kiss Weidt’s hand, but he decisively disallowed this and disappeared.

Weidt not only won back his Jewish workers on several occasions. He also organized hiding places. Even in his 1st floor workshop, in a secret room in the back, Weidt kept the Horn family for nine months. With the profits from his workshop, he secured food on the black market and organized counterfeit documents. Still, despite all his efforts, Weidt lost most of them. Of the 20 people pictured with him in his Berlin workshop, only 5 are known to have survived, Inge Deutschkron being one of them. Weidt himself survived the end of World War II and led efforts in bombed out Berlin to create shelters for senior citizens and orphans returning from the concentrations camps.

More than 50 years later in 1994, Mrs. Deutschkron’s own efforts resulted in Weidt’s original workshop being turned into a small museum.

We want to show the world that even during an inhuman time there were still people – however few – who’s guiding principle was always caring for others.

Today, this forlorn former factory is but a token to honor Otto Weidt, one of Germany’s truest heroes. Instead, modern Germany has cast Claus von Stauffenberg as a better Hollywood-type role model for new German generations to imitate. Stauffenberg, a privileged Nazi officer, attempted to blow Hitler up with a bomb in 1944, when the war was obviously lost. Each year Stauffenberg is elaborately celebrated by Germany’s army and Federal Ministers. Otto Weidt – who started his rescue efforts when the Nazis were winning – is all but forgotten.

The simplicity of his former workshop only magnifies the giant shoes of a man, modern Germany hasn’t yet been able to fill.

Thanks to Mrs. Inge Deutschkron for permission to use excerpts from her autobiography, “I Wore the Yellow Star“.

When the media refer to the ‘White House’ they’re naturally talking about the President of the United States – just like Downing Street refers to the British Prime Minister. But turn on the television today and you’ll never hear reporters refer to the “Wilhelmstrasse”.

The historian, Dr. Andreas Nachama is Director at Berlin’s Topography of Terror. Dan Wang spoke with him in 2007 and Dr. Nachama explains the historical importance of the street and why it was a synonym for German power before the Second World War.

An interview with Dr. Andreas Nachama – Wilhelmstrasse in Berlin

Wilhelmstrasse was comparable to Downing Street. Most ministries had their home in the Wilhelmstrasse – as did the Foreign Ministry and Reich Chancellery. Wilhelmstrasse was, at the end of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century, identified as the street in Berlin where the government power was located. So for instance the New York Times asked sometimes, if they wanted to know what German foreign policy was going to do, ‘What is the Wilhelmstrasse going to do?’. So this shows that there was almost a kind of shared identity between Wilhelmstrasse and the institutions of the German – of the Federal German government.

Whilhelmstrasse was always the street where the central institutions of the German government had their home. That means at the time of the Emperor you had the Reich Chancellery and the Foreign Ministry, as these were the two ministries which were very important for a central government. During the time of the Weimar Republic you have even more Ministries which were located in the Wilhelmstrasse. The Nazis, the National Socialists, when they seized power in 1933, just used these structures for their purposes. They added some new buildings, but the buildings were government buildings before. So in that sense you have continuity since the 19th century. Some of the buildings might have even been there in the 18th century, but let’s say primarily 19th century when the German imperial state was being formed.

After liberation in 1945 there were a few buildings in the Wilhelmstrasse which could still be used. One of them was the Reichsluftfahrtministerium, the Ministry of Aviation, which had only to be reconstructed in parts. And as of course a new administration, be it of the four powers, be it of the GDR, had to use these buildings which were available. So the House der Ministerien the House of the Ministries of the former GDR moved into the former Ministry of Aviation. But as it turned out on the one side you had the Berlin Wall, the border to the West, and to the other side – for example on the 17th of June 1953 - you had people demonstrating against the government, so that people in the building were blocked. On the back side there was the class enemy. On the front side there were the demonstrators. And so the GDR decided to move with its central government to other places in Berlin, even though this building was used as a government building until the Wall fell down in November 1989. Later it was again used as a central building. Today it is used as the Federal Ministry of Finance.

I’m no so certain that the average German who is not a specialist in the field of history would really know what the Wilhelmstrasse meant. Today as you can see when you walk though it, people are living here, you have school buildings. Yes, you also have some government buildings, but its no longer a place which is identified with German politics of the 21st century or the new government which we have – the Federal Government of Germany.

I think it’s more important that students learn today what structures of the fascist government were and who did what. Who was responsible for what was going on there. It’s not the street – but people. Its not the building, but the people working in the buildings.

Today, faster than you can lick a stamp, electronic messages fly around the world. At the the former Imperial Post Office in Berlin, messages were written as letters and they were moved by horsepower. Around 1880, when Berlin’s economy surged during the industrial revolution, the number of letters and packages that came in and out of the city exploded. Bulging sacks of mail arrived on horse-drawn carriages to this post office in the center of Berlin, the Postfuhramt. Around the back is where the 200 horses – like delivery trucks today – dropped off their goods. However, because horses are harder to ‘fill up’ than trucks, there was a humongous two-story stable in the rear courtyard to house them.

The post office was built to be a kind of state temple, an expression of Prussia’s new place in Europe. It was also built to keep up with the Jewish Synagogue a few houses down and which also has a huge dome. It would have been unheard of for the Prussian Kaiser’s new building to be any less in statue that that of the Jewish community’s symbolic structure – a religion that the state at that time tolerated at best. The post office back then wasn’t just a simple functional building. It represented Germany, the Kaiser and the country’s values. In a similar spirit as the Brandenburg Gate, the architecture of the Post Office was designed to demand respect and show off a little, saying Prussia has now arrived in the top league of European countries.

For everyday visitors, four sculptures set into walls above the main entrance doors advertise what Berliners once came here for. They could send a letter, a package or even dictate a telegraph. That’s the cherubim with a ticker wheel in its hand. In addition, electricity was just being rolled out for household use. The post office was also the stop for paying your electricity bill.

After World War II, the Post Office was patched up and was contented to be used as a part of the Eastern German mail system for a number of years. Later parts of the building were additionally used for a medical clinic.

What visitors can’t see from outside are 400 kilometers of pipes below ground once used for sending letters all around the city in pressurized air tubes. Across the street from the Jewish Synagogue was the main switchboard for the air tube system. Even up until 1976 letters were blown around the city in tubes. It might have even gone on longer – like Prague until 2002 – except that the Berlin Wall was built and naturally disrupted the system.

Only two buildings survived World War II at Potsdamer Platz: House Huth and part of the luxury hotel Esplande. Today, you have to look hard to find them because of all the traffic and newly fashionable buildings. House Huth – at Daimler City – houses the Daimler corporation’s Berlin political lobbyists as well as part of it’s art collection. What was left of the luxury hotel, the hotel Esplande’s breakfast room. Parts of it were reincorporated into the Café Josty and in one corner the former interior walls were turned inside out. That’s what visitors see, standing in the Sony Center

In the 1920s, Potsdamer Platz was just a major traffic intersection – a huge circular intersection, cars, buses, horses-drawn buggies, streetcars, pedestrians, all competing with one another to find the fastest way to the other side. Because of the chaos, Berlin installed Europe’s first traffic light. The authorities weren’t sure if anyone would really pay attention to the light, so two policemen also stood next to the light, directing traffic the old fashion way, by waving their arms. A copy of the original has been added back to the square.

Back then, as the city was expanding, traffic heading out of town flowed from the Brandenburg Gate in the direction of the suburb Potsdam. That’s how the street cutting through the intersection became known as Potsdamerstrasse or “Potsdamer Street”. Slowly, the land on the street to Potsdam developed into its own right. Tiny country cottages dotting the side of the road were replaced by larger elegant city residences. Berlin’s upper class moved in: rich German bankers, artists, and writers like the fairy-tale Brothers Grimm. Such extravagant personalities also brought with them extravagant tastes. To serve these customers, specialty shops and fine restaurants opened up in the Potsdamer Platz neighborhood. Soon Potsdamer Platz was the in place to go window shopping and turned into one of the city’s major transportation hubs – which explains the traffic congestion.

Jump forward in history to the Second World War. By the end of all the bombing and street fighting, essentially every building at Potsdamer Platz had been destroyed. Not to mention that Hitler had a number of buildings here purposely torn down here. He had planned to build an entire neighborhood as part of his “world capital”. The beginning of the Cold War left the Potsdamer Platz divided between Soviet Union on the one side with the Americans on the other. A huge illegal market flourished. If a dealer was on the run from the police, he’d only have to go a few meters into the next zone, where he’d be home free. The authority of each zone’s police ended at the border so dealers simply ran from section to section to avoid being caught.

When the Cold War turned hot, the Berlin Wall was built. The wall is gone, but cobblestones embedded in the sidewalk still show where it once stood. Finally the Wall came down and there was a huge gap of space right in the middle of the city. Berlin started building. The result is a modern entertainment district, today’s Potsdamer Platz, home to the Sony Center where you see the glass tower and Daimler City where the dark brick building with golden highlights stands. Potsdamer Platz has become a postcard for Berlin’s almost unimaginable rebirth from a city that just fifty years ago was a pile of rubble.

Unfortunately, window shopping is rarely noted as being one of the world’s great inventions. Worst still in Berlin, the Wertheim family’s department stores are all but forgotten. One of their very first stores in Berlin is the somewhat restored building in the Rosenthaler street. Today it houses a German health insurance conglomerate. The Wertheims were the first in Germany to pick up on the concept of department stores, a shopping innovation that originated in the United States. When it opened in 1905 it was still as radical an idea as today’s internet shopping. Department stores introduced for the first time an organized shopping experience with goods ranging from exclusive ladies dresses to dish rags all under one roof. The goods weren’t hidden behind a counter or in the back, but hung on racks so that customers could pick out what they liked. If something didn’t really fit, clothes could even be returned. The Wertheim family had other department store competition, like KaDeWe in the western part of Berlin, Harrods in London or Lafayette in Paris. Nothing, however, could compete with their grandest store. It stood at today’s Potsdamer Platz but was destroyed in the war.

With a joyful but wrinkled smile, Mr. Junge remembers the first Wertheim at Hackerscher Markt. He and his pals were just kids back then. They lived in the surrounding streets that the Wertheim store in the Rosenthaler targeted – a multicultural, working-class neighborhood.

I grew up in Berlin’s Mitte district. The department store Wertheim in the Rosenthaler street was part of the neighborhood we ran around in. Now of course, only part of a department store – the toy section – is of any interest for children. Any kind of toy imaginable, for a girl or a boy, was on display. Books too – children’s books. Everything was on display – from doll houses to toy stores, steam engines, trains and so on.

The secret of Wertheim’s department stores was that they transformed shopping from a chore to a form of entertainment. Entire neighborhood families came in just to stroll and window shop – men & women, old & young, rich & poor. Only one group was left out, bared from entering without adult supervision: kids.

It was difficult for kids to get in on their own. We always kept an eye out for married couples or some other adult to get close to and tag along into the department store – right past the watchdog doormen. Once inside we were off on our own.

While age did determine who could come inside, religion and politics didn’t – at least not when Wertheim’s opened. Everyone’s money was welcome. After the Nazis took over and their power grew stronger the atmosphere on the street changed.

It was common back then for people to hang flags outside. Black, white and red was for the [conservative] German National People’s Party. More flags in the side streets had the sickle and hammer, communists, and then the black, red and gold for the Social Democrats. Everyone was mixed up together but you could tell who stood behind which ideology.

Despite the differences between them, the people in this neighborhood had lived largely in harmony together. With Hilter suddenly gangs of strictly dressed Nazis walked the streets, some carrying flags with the swastika. They’d force normal citizens passing by on the sidewalk to give the Heil Hitler salute.

And in their group there were a few individuals designated to kick or punch in the face anyone who didn’t salute their flag. That led to the regular occurrence where people who didn’t want to give the Heil Hitler salute, would duck into the entrance of nearby residential buildings – as if they were going to visit someone. It was easier then than it is now because all the houses were unlocked. Today you can’t get into any of the buildings. But back then what happened was that three or four people stood around inside the building on the ground floor acting like they were looking for someone. When the group of Nazis had passed by, they went on their way.

Later in 1937 the Nazi’s stripped the Wertheim family of their department store empire. George Wertheim was Jewish and died in Berlin only two years later. Not only did the Wertheim’s department stores crumble during World War II – so did Mr. Junge’s neighborhood.

Art is normally nailed to the wall, hung over a fireplace or displayed in a gallery. Erika and Rolf Hoffmann’s private collection, on the other hand, is outside, built into the building at the Sophie-Gips-Höfe. When the complex was first built, the rooms and courtyards at Sophie-Gips housed a sewing machine and bicycle chain factory. Before German reunification, medical devices were manufactured here, but it was in poor repair. In 1995, the Hoffmanns bought it and moved their private art collection inside. During renovation, the Hoffmanns commissioned several artists to create works which were incorporated into the building’s skin.

One example is a series of words painted along the entire facade in one of the courtyards. It reads for example: “secretly or publicly”, “cheap or expensive”, “active or passive”, and so on. The work by the German artist Thomas Locher is titled ‘Wunsch und Wille – Entweder/Oder’ (Wish and Will – Either/Or). Erika Hoffmann describes it this way:

It’s [made up of] pairs of antonyms which are not connected with an “and” – rather with an “or”. Thus Either/Or suggests that a person could or should make a decision for one or the other word. When a person has lived a long time in a society, where free choice wasn’t always a given, this could be a provocation. Since Greek philosophy and only in Western dialogue, is there the dialectic of an “either – or”, which influences our entire thought process. On the other hand, the concept of a clear “yes” and “no” doesn’t exist in Asian philosophy or everyday life. Rather, there’s always both possibilities, which would mean that there would be an “and” written there.

Another – untitled – work is even more unusual. Its by the Polish artist, Theresa Murak. Most visitors never recognize it as a work of art. They just assume it is an oddly-shaped courtyard lawn. With a little imagination, however, Mrs. Murak’s different geometric planes of closely cropped grass are the result of a cosmic collision.

When you take  closer look at the space, it’s a geometrically formed spiral, a kind of fallen star for the artist.

Directly above the star’s crater is another typographical work this time by the American Lawrence Weiner. It’s painted into the wall of the top floor right under the roof. Written is the sentence, “Milch und Honig weit weit weg gebracht” (Milk and Honey come a long long way).

Without question these different works dress up a well renovated but otherwise extremely typical Berlin brick courtyard. If art is suppose to inspire and motivate us, however, what is the Hoffmann’s abstract art collection trying to provoke?

Whether or not art can change anything, that is obviously – and understandably – completely questionable. What it can possibly lead to – rather than an ascetic awakening – is that a person observes with somewhat more determination than is normally the case. One gains a different perspective for certain political events and – let’s say – calls these critically into question.

The artworks presented in the Sophie-Gips’s courtyards are just a small sample from the Hoffmann’s larger collection. To see the rest of this private collection, sign up for a guided tour on Saturdays.

It used to be that sundials were used to tell time. The sun would cross the sky, the light cast a shadow across metal hands and the hour of the day was obvious to all. Now sundials – at least Jörg Herold’s – goes one radical step further. His instillation at the German Bundestag uses light to reinterpret history.

Lichtschleife mit Datumsgrenze, which translates as Ribbon of Light with Dateline, belongs to the German Bundestag’s art collection. Fixed to the roof of a courtyard in the Paul-Loebe House is a small mirror, directing the sun into a green courtyard below. The reflected beam points a finger at targets scattered along the courtyard’s floor, as Mr. Herold describes:

In the courtyard I’ve placed circular discs made from concrete, all of which have dates inscribed on them. There are 87 stones. Four of them are set outside the green area. Throughout the year sunlight travels across and illuminates the surface of the courtyard, which is the fundamental element in Ribbon of Light with Dateline – engaging fragments of history.

Most of the dates inscribed in the concrete disks aren’t historical dates children learn in school. They aren’t events history books consider to be pivotal. Instead Mr. Herold chose dates like the 2nd of July 1505  when Martin Luther was almost struck by lightning and decided to become a monk. There’s also the day in 1828 when Einstein’s wife, Mileva, describes her joy, anticipating finishing – together with Albert – “their work on the Theory of Relativity”.

The discs and these seemingly unusual dates are scattered across the courtyard, but they’re not arranged in chronological or any other kind of order. As the seasons change, sunlight is reflected into the courtyard and it charts each day a slightly differing course, connecting the dates in new patters.

This historical sundial asks, for example, could there be overlooked significance in the the day that Mr. Piccolomini discovered the world’s first printed book, the Bible created by a certain Mr. Johannes Gutenberg? Could there be a sunlit connection between the dates in the courtyard that historians have previously ignored?

Jörg Herold grew up in the former Eastern Germany. It was a state which taught it’s children a much different version of history than children learn today in reunified Germany. The historical events didn’t change, but the interpretation of these events did.

In the back of my mind I’m suspicious of history. We should question that what we’re taught and research in detail historical events. After the boarder was opened in 1990 and Germany was unified, I discovered that [comparing Eastern Germany's version of history] there are similar blemishes in the Federal Republic of Germany’s historical narrative. I decided to create a sculpture for the Bundestag which calls historical relationships into question. History is produced. How is this done? History is present and is created every second. Even in front of this sculpture, history comes into existence. How does history work and what dates stay in the history books? Which ones should always be questioned?

Can the causality of these dates be called into questioned as easily as the changing of the seasons, as governments are voted in and out and as time marches on? At least here in the courtyard, because the dates are presented randomly, historical interpretation is totally free from any kind of hierarchy or value system. Each observer is free to create their own version of history.

Moments of history, if I may postulate, are like a ribbon of light. If we believe astronomers, the sun and sunlight will extinguish in 5 million years time. History is a kind of randomness. The universe isn’t interested in our insignificant lives, conflicts and friendships. We think that the historical process moves forward but I think it turns in a circle.

For all the scandals, broken election promises and secret government programs – it’s hard to remember what the founding principles were which governments are supposed to be based on in the first place. Dani Karavan’s reminder is an instillation titled Grundgesetz ’49 (Basic Law 1949). It’s incorporated directly into part of the Bundestag, the Jakob-Kaiser-House. Andreas Kaernbach, curator of the German Bundestag’s art collection, describes the instillation and what motivated the Israeli sculptor Dani Karavan to inscribe all 19 of Germany’s Basic Laws
into a wall of glass.

[Visitors] stroll here, along the bank of the river Spree, and suddenly, without any warning, the German constitution appears intensely, lifelike and right before their eyes. I see it in the people who pass by there, who spontaniously stop and suddenly begin to read. Who point out individual sentences to each other which they had once learned in school, have since forgotten and now comes back to memory. And all of a sudden they experience again this elegant language and thus also the meaning of the constitution, which stands quite literarily in front of us to be experienced as the fundament of our legal system.

For security reasons, the Bundestag’s Jakob-Kaiser building needed to be protected. However a thick impregnable wall wasn’t an option for Dani Karavan, who designed the courtyard. Rather his work strives to make the division between members of the Bundestag and Germany’s citizens as transparent as possible.

And this is expressed first in that he set up this transparent glass wall rather than a fence. One can see the offices who belong to the representatives in the Bundestag through the German constitution. This sets up a very close relationship between the work of these Representatives – work that orientates itself towards the Constitution. And then he created the structure in the ground which goes from the courtyard under the glass wall up to the riverbank and captures a connecting element in order to dissipate any kind of division. Another example of this here is the row of trees. Exactly the one tree, in the row of trees, that should stand in front of this installation is missing. It’s kind of jumped through the glass wall into the courtyard and rooted there.

The division between the people and political power is translucent. Dani Karavan is famous for this type of creative creation of public space.

And with this artistic language – with expressive symbolism – Dani Karavan strives to express the meaning of the German constitution for the work of representatives in the Bundestag as well as the challenge for citizens and representatives to together make each of the Germany’s Basic Laws come alive in a transparent fashion.

Hidden away in one of the German Bundestag’s courtyards (Paul-Loebe-House) are two sculptures with slightly mischievous names: German 1 & German 2. Both sculptures – one yellow and the other pink – look more like ceramic insulators on high voltage electrical towers than art.

Else Gabriel and Ulf Wrede are known as the art duo Twin Gabriel and created the work. Else Gabriel explains that the German-ness of the two abstract figures:

German 1 is Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and the second is the profile of a Alsatian, a German Shepherd.

You might not guess this straight away but hold up your thumb and block out only one half of each round object and you’ll see the sculptures’ profiles.

The two are tied together in that they both represent German monuments. They pretentiously claim to embody Germans: Goethe as the last true Renaissance man, who combined science, art, medicine and politics – and the German Shepard, who is the loyal servant and friend, dependable, alert. Both have many sides to them but loyalty and dependability, in particular, are major characteristics.

Being true German monuments, the two sculptures were naturally made of a material that will stand the test of time. Ulf Wrede, the second part of the artist duo describes what they are made from:

Teflon. Nothing sticks to it and most associate it with kitchenware or space technology. Of course it has the great advantage that it just sits there, is clean, probably easy to take care of, hard to destroy and last a long time. If we ever experience a true disaster, these sculptures will -in all probability – still be standing intact.

When Teflon is thrown away it’s supposed to be disposed of as a hazardous material because it doesn’t naturally degrade. Quite the opposite: It’s one of the most indestructible synthetic materials ever invented – which is another thing the pink and yellow sculptures share with Goethe and Germany’s famous canine according to Else Gabriel.

The German Shepherd not only a search and rescue dog, sniffing for drugs or the missing but at the same time he was also the Eastern Germans’ secret police dog, guarding the former border – just like he was under the Nazis. And we were taught that Goethe was the greatest  German thinker, just the same way he was considered by the Nazis to be one of the greatest of scholars.

The artists Twin Gabriel aren’t only trying to point out what is specifically “German” in German society. They’re also poking a little fun at the basic idea of monuments and memorials – establishing an image in stone for generations to come. So Else Gabriel:

A public sculpture has to be designed to exist more or less for eternity. So naturally we are playing with the question, what is forever exactly? Sculptures and buildings tend to be revered by the public as something which will never die.

The Italian artist Renato Bertelli, who also created 360 degree forms, served as an inspiration for the figures but also the idea of what  Goethe might say after being transformed into a round globe of pink abstract art…

If Goethe had even a small inkling of how the world is today, he’d be spinning in his grave (Ulf Wrede).

Two stone statues face each other on Hamburg’s Trostbrücke. Each look on the other with noble regard for the other’s accomplishments.

St. Ansgar

Saint Ansgar wears a clerical robe and is holding a small church in his right hand. It’s St. Mary’s Cathedral, Hamburg’s first church – a mission church to be exact. Although settlements around Hambug date back to the early 9th century, it was only a simple swamp during the life and times of Charlemagne. So Saint Ansgar was sent to these Hamburg swamps as a missionary to extend the Church’s reach into northern Germany and on up into Scandinavia. His church, St. Mary’s, was the launching point for Ansgar’s missionary activities and also formed the nucleus of Hamburg’s origional settlement called the Hammaburg. Ansgar fought to convert the slavs and local vikings to Christianity. However, these soon burned the church and settlement down. Today, nobody knows exactly where the Hammaburg remains of are, although they’re suspected to be near today’s St. Peter’s Church. Because of his role as one of the founding fathers, Asgar was given his own statue – here close to where his earlier church might have been.

Adolf the III

400 years after Ansgar, a second figure continues Hamburg’s story. It’s the middle ages and Adolf III comes on the scene with knee socks and a sword in his hand. He founded the trading post on his side of the side of the river. This is the settlement from which Hamburg now sites as being the birthplace of its port in 1198.

A poodle perched top of the Laeiszhof

One final statue in view of the bridge still barks for a little attention. It’s the poodle perched at the top of the old, very serious-looking building, the Laeiszhof. In the 19th Century, this was the headquarters for the Laeisz family’s shipping dynasty. The Laeisz family had their own fleet of ships and each ship was christened with a name beginning with the letter “P”: Pamir, Passat, Beijing, Potosi, Prussia. But the head of the family, Mr. Laeisz, had one more p-named pet. It was his wife, who he nicknamed Poodle for her pretty curly hair. Perhaps the little dog perched on the rooftop was placed there in her honor.