Oddities and paradoxes of the Berlin park Tiergarten

Tiergarten Park can not help but like. One of the largest parks in the world, covering an area of ​​210 hectares, located in the center of Berlin, with many monuments from different eras, is simply doomed to increased attention from tourists …

Oddities and paradoxes of the Berlin park Tiergarten
However, after a long walk through the Big Tiergarten, mixed feelings arise – admiration coexists with surprise and even bewilderment.

Tiergarten. Victory Column
Just want to say: it is beautiful, this huge modern descendant of the ancient Germanic forest, stretching from the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate to the Berlin Zoo. With its countless alleys, canals, lakes, ponds, bridges, monuments and sculptural compositions, Tiergarten itself gives the impression of some magnificent green monument of German diligence, the love of Berliners for their city. But, as they say, you can’t throw a word out of a song …

Tiergarten. Canal Landverkanal
I’ll start with the weirdness of the “official”. The sculptural compositions set up on Fan-Sallee would be called “military-patriotic theme” here. There are four of them, and all of them, judging by the entourage (clothing, weapons), refer to the period of the First World War. Heavily damaged, some figures lack hands and even heads. There are no inscriptions on pedestals, only bullet-like openings. There are no explanatory plates. In Berlin, sculptures can be found literally everywhere, among them there are many real, highly artistic works of art, but there are also incomprehensible avant-garde delights and frank kitsch, but there is always some stand or sign with information about the author and the date of installation.

It can be assumed that these sculptures, which are very interesting in their own way, were previously installed in some other places and appeared in the Tiergarten not too long ago. But this is just my guess, an enhanced Google search from photographs, on my return from Berlin, did not give anything. There are photos of sculptures on the web, but no comments. Agree, a strange “secrecy.”

Traces of the activity of the “forest vandals”, which disfigure trees with bark inscriptions, can unfortunately be found in any part of the world and in any green massif. Therefore, when I saw in the Tiergarten, on the shore of a picturesque overgrown lake, a huge beech, dotted with autographs of some “Hans”, “Brena” and others, was upset, but not particularly surprised. Photographed, but was not going to publish the picture.

Surprise came later, at home, when I was preparing this article, I looked through the Internet about the Tiergarten and came across an article by a certain Lucy Westphal. Judging by the fact that the article is written in German – a resident of Germany. Lucy enthusiastically wrote about the Tiergarten and, in particular, reported that Ben E. King was cut out on the bark of the trees … lyrics by “Stand By Me” Ben E. King! At first she did not believe it, but Lucy placed the photo. This, as they say, does not climb into any gate, even to Brandenburg … Especially since all the trees in the park have been counted, each has an individual number and, they say, even a passport.

The strangeness of the Tiergarten can be attributed to the fact that the park is quite running. And this fact seems strange because Germany in the minds of our compatriots is strongly associated with order and discipline. It must be said that in Berlin during my stay there it was rather dirty on the streets. But such that in the park, the world famous Big Tiergarten, beer bottles lay in streams and plastic bags float (which, by the way, it is forbidden to use in Berlin, and there are no them in supermarkets), and in the thickets there was an uncleaned dead wood and heaps of cut dry branches – not expected. I remember the parks that I saw in other big cities: Moscow, Kiev, Polish Gdansk, the comparison is clearly not in favor of Berlin.

This is all the more strange that I did not see a large influx of people walking in the Tiergarten. Although he spent there almost the whole day, besides, the day off was Sunday, and in Berlin there was a terrible 35-degree heat. Some places in the park, picturesque, with beautiful landscape architecture – bridges, fountains, on the contrary, surprised by its deserted. And this is most likely not an accident, judging by the meager number of benches in the park.

The matter is probably not in the visitors, all these strange and paradoxes are obviously not on their conscience. The entire infrastructure of the park is concentrated on the outer perimeter of the park, along the major highways that cross the Tiergarten – the streets on July 17, the Goffergerallee and others, where there are densely located cafes, restaurants, pubs, attractions and playgrounds, an aquarium, a zoo. There were a lot of people on the day of my visit, in some places there were even long lines. And in the shady cool alleys, a little distance away – rare pedestrians and small flocks of cyclists. Also a paradox. The reason for all the above-described oddities and paradoxes is a mystery to me.