Berlin:  Selected Field Trips

Yet, "Berlin is a new city; the newest I have ever seen" (Mark Twain in 1891)

HISTORY 3053 Berlin, Germany: From Empire to Republic

  • Find echoes of early Berlin during a stroll down Unter den Linden, the city’s elegant main thoroughfare. Visit the Museum Island, wander through the attractive Gendarmenmarkt, and see the site of the Berlin city palace.
  • With participants in Ger/WLCS 3025, spend the day at Potsdam, where Prussian kings like Frederic the Great built a series of impressive residences linked by magnificent gardens. Tour Frederic’s delightful “Sanssouci” palace and se the Caecilienhof, where Churchill, Stalin, Truman and British Prime Minister Clement Atlee met to discuss Germany’s future after the Second World War.
  • Visit the Jewish Museum to learn about the thriving German-Jewish culture of turn-of-the-century Berlin.
  • Shop at the Hackesche Hofe, an elegant courtyard shopping center today, whose linked buildings with remarkable tile decorations were at the center of Jewish Berlin in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
  • Enjoy dinner and maybe some dancing at Clarchen’s Ballhaus, built in 1913, and one of the only surviving dance halls of the Weimar era.
  • Cruise the Wannsee, a lovely lake in Berlin’s southwest that has been a popular beach and outdoor leisure center since the 19th century, and also became the site of the sinister 1942 Wannsee Conference.
  • See the Berlin Olympic Stadium, a remarkable piece of Nazi architecture still standing, and the place where Hitler showed the Third Reich to the world in 1936.
  • Learn about dictatorship and genocide at the Topographie des Terrors, an open-air museum at the downtown Berlin site where the Gestapo and SS once had their headquarters.
  • Tour Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, just to the north of Berlin, which held political prisoners and racially-persecuted individuals during the Third Reich, and then became a Soviet special camp after 1945.
  • Visit Tempelhof Airport, built in 1923, which was used extensively during the Third Reich and for the famous post-war Berlin Airlift.
  • Walk where the Berlin Wall once ran, dividing Berlin's citizens, sometimes even members of the same family, for 28 years.
  • At the Berlin Wall Memorial, get a bird’s eye view of what East Germany’s extensive border defenses looked like before they were torn down in 1989.
  • Travel the Berlin subway, passing through “ghost stations” that were closed for 40 years while Germany was divided during the Cold War.
  • Pass through Checkpoint Charlie, one of the main border checkpoints along the Berlin Wall, and learn more about everyday life in East Germeny at the DDR Museum.
  • In the heart of former West Berlin, eat “Currywurst”, the tasty sliced sausage with curry sauce that’s been made in Berlin since 1949.
  • Take a traditional poled boat cruise in the picturesque Spreewald, enjoy local pickles and the pastoral scenery in this favorite Eastern Germany holiday destination.
  • Visit the Reichstag building, which housed the German parliament in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, burned to the ground in 1933, and was rebuilt after reunification in 1990. We’ll tour the building and climb the transparent roof dome, a symbol of democracy that lets you see right into the parliamentary chamber.

 GER/WLCS 3025 Berlin: Castles to Graffiti

  • Visit “The Story of Berlin”- an interactive museum about the capital. Explore 800 years of Berlin’s history and see an original nuclear bomb shelter from the Cold War. Stroll along the elegant Kurfurstendamm boulevard in the west of Berlin.
  • Walk through quaint Nikolaiviertel (district), the mainly reconstructed area of the old Berlin. Continue to Alexanderplatz with its modern buildings: the television tower, an accomplishment of GDR architecture in the late sixties; the stylish Haus des Lehrers and Berlin Congress Centre.
  • Tour Charlottenburg Palace. Originally built by Elector Frederick III as a summer residence for his wife Sophie Charlotte in 1699. The ensemble of rooms and saloons - artistically as well as historically impressive - is a living testimonial of courtly culture and life from baroque times.
  • Explore the trendy neighborhood Friedrichshain and see the East-Side Gallery, a 1.3km-long section of the wall. Approximately 106 paintings by artists from all over the world cover this memorial for freedom and make it the largest open air gallery in the world. Relax in Volkspark Friedrichshain, the oldest public park in Berlin with Fairy Tale Fountain. Examine stalinistic architecture on Karl-Marx boulevard.
  • Visit the beautiful Brohan Museum, state museum for Art Nouveau, Art Deco and Functionalism (1889-1939); Relax and see Berlin’s highlights from a boat tour on the river Spree.
  • Take a journey through film history in the Deutsche Kinemathek, museum for film and television at Potsdamer Platz. Marvel at the stunning post-modern architecture of the Sony-center at Potsdamn Platz.
  • Visit the Museum of Modern Art, Photography and Architecture: Berlinische Galerie, located in an industrial building complex formerly used as a glass warehouse. The Berlinische Galerie is one of the newest museums in the German capital and collects art from Berlin dating from 1870 to the present day. Enjoy lunch at Café Dix, the museum restaurant.
  • Learn about Berlin's Jewish community. Berlin-Mitte is the quarter where Berlin's Jewish community had its centre from the 17th century until the Nazi era. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, a variety of institutions have resumed the tradition of this part of the city. Learn more about Jewish everyday life, yesterday and today in this walking tour including the New Synagogue Centrum Judaicum, kosher cafes and restaurants, Jewish High School...
  • Visit the New National Gallery, the famous “temple of light and glass” designed by Mies van der Rohe. It houses the collection of 20th century European painting and sculpture. View the new exhibition “Divided Heaven. 1945-1968. The collection. Neue Nationalgalerie.”
  • Tour the Museum for Contemporary Art: Hamburger Bahnhof, housed in a mid 19th century terminal station of the rail system; its permanent collection at the Hamburger Bahnhof is dedicated to the major directions in art from 1960 to the present.  
  • Go to the event venue Kulturbrauerei, located in the historical Schultheiss-Brewery. Have lunch or dinner in one of the patio cafes and restaurants; Explore the site on foot or bike through the nearby area of Prenzlauer Berg.
  • Immerse yourself in Kreuzberg: explore one of the most happening parts of town, characterized by diverse culture and counter culture. In this center of Turkish immigrant life in Berlin, strongly conservative, ethnic inhabitants share space with new population of the young and trendy. Visit the Turkish market

Possible cultural outings:

  • Take in a show at the Komische Oper, known for its innovative and provocative stagings. See The Abduction from the Seraglio, a musical comedy in three acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, staging: Calixto Bieito.
  • See Berlin's largest show, "Yuma": A spectacular mix of glitter, dance, acrobatics, and eroticism, performed in the Friedrichsstadtpalast, Europe's Show Palace located in Berlin's theatre district. The massive structure is the last magnificent building of the German Democratic Republic, erected by the regime while it was already caught up in the process of slow disintegration, and this makes it an exceptional monument to Germany's overcoming of its former division.
  • Berlin Philharmony: Wildly controversial at first, today universally regarded as an emblem of the city of Berlin: Hans Scharoun's Philharmonie. Tour the site of the world-renown Philharmonic orchestra.

Day trip to Potsdam, together with History 3053

  • Aside from touring the Sansoucci Palace, there will be opportunity for an introduction to the University of Potsdam. Meet students and representative(s) of the academic exchange service. Have lunch in the student cafeteria.

Language is not a barrier - many Germans speak English, and will gladly help you. Also, an orientation session on location will enable you to communicate essential requests and phrases. Part of the excursion program are encounters with students in Potsdam and Leipzig through the Academic Service centres, a lunch in a university cafeteria, as well as a visit to the Academy of Arts in Berlin. Further, we will involve native doctoral students in selected tours. For your intercultural learning experience, we designed a questionnaire for you to record and refect on your expereinces in Berlin and with Berlin's diverse population.