Not exactly a Reagan or a D-Day post, but related.
During my sojourn to Berlin in the eighties, I was greeted with this image upon setting foot to the city’s famous Kurfürstendamm (in German).
The irony of the destruction of a church that existed in a fascist state isn’t lost on me.
Kaiser -Wilhelm - Gedächtnis Kirche (Remembrance Church) was the recipient of Allied bombs in 1943. The first site of it is a slap. Set against the glitz of the Ku-Damm, the view of the devastation rained upon the landmark was jarring. (I’m told that, since the Reunification, the Ku-Damm has become rather seedy. Unter den Linden, the street located in what used to be the gray, bland East Berlin, has been accorded its former stature as the place-to-be.)
With repeated viewings of the church while partying on the Ku-Damm, one becomes a bit inured to its starkness, however. After being stationed in Berlin for a couple of years, I had begun to ignore it. (It didn’t help that I was often *not* sober when running the Ku-Damm.)
One of my little sisters visited me there, however, and her gasp at first sight of the bombed-out church brought back to me how ugly it was.
“A gaping, rotten tooth” was the metaphor that someone once used to put a face on the church. Rotten, indeed. It was preserved in its pocked and ruined state as a reminder of the consequences of embracing fascism.
