Feurwerk

Berlin touts itself as having the biggest New Year's Eve party in the world. London and New York also make claims to the title of Grand Fete, so I am not sure if Berlin's is truly the biggest, but it is definitely quite the party. George and I went to the Brandenburg Gate, the central location for the party, and we found ourselves trapped in a mass of people stuck between Tiergarten and the Gate. At first we thought that it was going to be a long and uncomfortable night stuck in the middle of a million people, but it ended up being quite pleasant and festive. Aside from the occasional pushy drunk person, or anxious tourist, all the other partygoers were in such good moods and enjoying themselves so much that the close quarters were pretty communal. And the fireworks at midnight were spectacular! They lasted at least a quarter of an hour and went right above the statues atop the gate--it was truly beautiful and exciting.

Since we knew that the public transportation would be completely packed as the night wore on, we decided to head home as quickly as possible after the fireworks display. We walked as fast as our little legs could carry us to the S-Bahn station...and during this walk we made a strange realization. In Berlin, it is legal to shoot off personal fireworks for a few hours on New Years, so just about everyone in the city sets off their own fireworks displays. Every side street and alleyway was full of people with bottle rockets and sparklers, and the roads were already littered with paper from the spent fireworks by 12:15. (One of our friends warned us that this paper litter would cover Berlin for three weeks after the holiday--the street sweepers just can't get it all fast enough.) All of these mini-explosions filled the air with a smoky haze and the popping and cracking sounds from thousands of fireworks. As we were rushing through the throngs and rockets, George and I began to feel as though there was a bizarre irony in the Berliners' celebrations. All these fireworks had the effect of making Berlin seem like a movie-set war zone, the cracking and popping sounded a bit like live ammunition and the smoky haze made everything appear as though the city were burning.

From the little I've read on the subject, I know that the firebombing of Berlin is still a relatively new topic for discussion in the philosophical, political, and journalistic circles of Germany. Only recently has there been any real address of the atrocities that affected the German citizens themselves during the Second World War (Sebald's work is especially interesting here). The irony to me was that this barrage of fireworks (more than I have ever seen anywhere!) appeared as though it were a subversion of collective history--as though the Germans, through their unbelievable display, were turning the atrocities of war into a communal celebration. I am not so bold as to claim that this sort of Freudian act was done consciously, or that the Germans are reliving their history with every fireworks display. I merely found it remarkable how like a war-zone the celebration became, and how, given my own limited understanding of the experience of war, the fireworks made me feel simultaneously nervous and celebratory.