Teaching Geography Workshop 7: Europe – Part 1: Berlin
JIM BINKO:
Today, we begin by exploring the city of Berlin. In Europe, the effects of
World War II significantly altered several national boundaries, dividing
Germany-- and its capital city, Berlin-- into East and West, Communist
and capitalist. Though spanning the length of one city, the wall served as
a symbol for the cold war dividing the entire world.
We will see how the re-selection of Berlin as capital city and the
refurbishing of the Reichstag symbolized Germany's reunification after
the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Effectively, the process of unifying two
groups from different political systems proves to be more of a challenge.
Standard 10: The Characteristics, Distribution and Complexity of
Earth’s Cultural Mosaics helps us understand the difficulties of
achieving unification, despite shared language and cultural history. The
division, mutual isolation, and resulting development of separate cultures
over 40 years pose an impediment to unification far more complicated
than the physical wall itself. One of our objectives is to identify how
culture shapes a region's character.
Standard 13: How the forces of cooperation and conflict among
people influence the division and control of the Earth's surface lends
insight into the strong feelings and deep convictions involved in both the
construction and the deconstruction of the Berlin Wall.
Lastly, Standard 17: How to Apply Geography to Interpret the Past
and Standard 18: How to Apply Geography to Interpret the Present
and Plan for the Future help us understand Germany's spatial
organization as a function of history and as a determinant in its future.
These standards point us to another of our objectives, that is, explaining
how geography can be used to interpret the present and plan for the
future. Later in the program, we will see how high school teacher Craig
Cogswell uses Amsterdam as a model for exploring past city organization
and future city development.
NARRATOR:
During the cold war that followed World War II, Germany existed as two
antagonistic countries, East Germany and West Germany. Berlin, the
historic capital of the nation, located deep inside Communist East
Germany, was also divided into east and west sectors. For nearly 30
years, this division was marked by a wall built right through the city. The
wall went up in 1961. Then in 1989, Germany was reunified and the wall
was torn down.
GUNTRAM HERB:
The wall comes down, there is great euphoria. Finally the two cities can
be connected again and made one-- it is a new symbol of the unification
of Germany, \the\symbol of unification of Germany. People are euphoric-¨ they go to the wall when the wall opens up, and they visit and they hug
and everybody seems to be very happy, but once the euphoria settles a
little bit, it becomes very clear that between the two sides, there is
fundamental differences.
NARRATOR:
An entire generation had grown up on opposite sides of the wall under
radically different political systems, with different social values. Now
everyone would live in a capitalistic market economy-- in effect, the West
had won-- but it hasn't been easy to bridge the 40-year gap.
Isabelle Aflalo studied the urban geography of Berlin just after the wall
was demolished. She starts her journey in what was West Berlin, near
what the locals call the "Ku'damm," or the Kurfurstendamm. This avenue,
often compared to the Champs-Elysées in Paris, was a showcase of
western consumer goods-- and the capitalistic lifestyle-- when the city
was still divided.
AFLALO:
(\speaking French\)
TRANSLATOR:
We have just seen the Ku' Damm district, a very rich area with a lot of
commercial and cultural activities. When the city was divided, this area
was very heavily financed by West Germany.
HERB:
In the West, this was the symbol of the success of the capitalist system.
We have the construction of Ku'damm, building up with beautiful shops,
with department stores that showed, really, that this was the promised
land, this is... \all\the goods could be had on the western side.
NARRATOR:
The train takes Isabelle toward the center of Berlin, through a
neighborhood called Kreuzberg, right beside the former wall. Because of
its location, rents here were cheap, attracting young people and elements
of alternative culture. It was also the home of 50,000 Turkish immigrants.
After reunification, many expected Kreuzberg to become more desirable
and expensive, but that hasn't happened. It's still the poorest
neighborhood in Berlin.
As Isabelle continues eastward, she enters the station for the elevated
train, just at the place where the wall once cut the city in two. When the
wall was built in 1961 by the Soviet Army, the official reason was to
create a barrier to protect the East from its capitalistic enemy, the West.
In fact, the wall was built to stop the uncontrollable flood of emigration
from East to West Berlin. For 28 years, the blunt and brutal wall divided
not only streets and families, but also symbolized the cold war dividing
the entire world.
AFLALO:
(\speaking French\)
TRANSLATOR:
At the time when the town was split, this place was an intermediate zone
which was no longer in the West, but not quite in the East either, since
the border was, in fact, defined by the river. The wall was quite rough; it
was not painted, since it was situated in a zone reserved for transit
formalities. In fact, there were three types of passage, very regimented:
those for foreigners, those for West Germans, and, like here, only for
West Berliners. (\speaking French\)
TRANSLATOR:
And now I'm entering East Berlin.
NARRATOR:
Now Isabelle is in Friedrichshain, in the former East Berlin. This was once
the historic center of the city, but with the wall running through it,
Friedrichshain became a run-down neighborhood. Like the adjacent
Kreuzberg, it also attracted young people, artists and even squatters who
paid no rent at all. Friedrichshain, and especially Kreuzberg, were
expected to become more desirable-- even expensive-- places to live
after reunification. But the process of putting a city back together again is
complex, and can be very hard to predict.
HERB:
Now with the wall gone, there'll be investment into the city center area.
This will bring the two sides together, there'll be speculation, and actually
the less affluent sections ~of society will move out, because they will not
be able to afford the new rents which will go up with renovations left and
right. And this hasn't happened to the degree that people thought it
would.
NARRATOR:
If the neighborhoods providing a haven for lower income residents have
been spared the disruption of upscale development, another district has
been created, almost literally, out of the rubble of the wall.
Potsdamer Platz is an ambitious attempt to build an entirely new
corporate and commercial magnet, right in the heart of what was prewar
Berlin. International corporations like Sony, AT&T and Daimler-Benz have
invested in major construction, which also includes a vast shopping mall,
hotels, and movie theaters. Perhaps because it is so totally new and
shows off a commercial, global culture instead of the city's own past,
Potsdamer Platz has become hugely popular with Berliners. This is one
place where residents of the former east and west can mingle freely and
comfortably.
As much as Potsdamer Platz has changed the face of Berlin, the most
significant development in the city's new identity is not commercial but
political: the decision to put the capital of a reunified Germany in its
original, historic location-- Berlin.
(\speaking German\)
TRANSLATOR:
We are now entering the bend of the Spree river. This is the site that was
chosen for the future chancellery and the new parliament building.
NARRATOR:
The new Federal Strip literally straddles the site of the old wall and
includes a new chancellery and parliament building. Like so much else in
today's Berlin, both its location and the design of the buildings are meant
to express the spirit of a reunified city and country.
MURPHY:
The fact is, of course, that after reunification, East Germany, in economic
and social terms, is considerably behind West Germany, and the decision
to move, or to designate Berlin as the capital, is in part a reflection of a
commitment to trying to show East Germany that it is indeed part of the
new Germany.
NARRATOR:
Also symbolic was the decision to refurbish the traditional seat of the
national legislature-- the Reichstag. In part, this was intended to make a
statement about Germany's democratic government.
HERB:
Here we have this old German symbol that is transformed by this glass
dome over this, and transforms the building, and you can now go upstairs
in the dome and not only see all of Berlin right around you; you can see
Potsdamer Platz, you can see over to Oranienburger Strasse, where the
old synagogue used to be, which has been beautifully restored; you can
see the Alex, the old Eastern TV tower and you can also see into the
chamber. The light from the dome feeds actually into the chamber where
the debates are. So this is what... for the Germans, it is a representation
of the transparency of their new democracy that they're having now.
NARRATOR:
For a national capital, Berlin is not ideally situated. Instead of being in the
center of the country, it is far to the East. Yet, if some of the former
Eastern Bloc countries-- like Poland and the Czech Republic-- were
admitted to the European Union, Berlin's location would suddenly make it
more central in greater Europe.
HERB:
Berlin is a very exciting city because of the construction, because it's in
flux, and it's not just a small town somewhere along the former Iron
Curtain. Berlin is where the East and West meets in a real substantial
sense. And I think that's why Berlin can go out of the slump it has right
now because it has that kind of unique situation of being at the cutting
edge, right there at the meeting place between the two sides of East and
West.
GIL LATZ:
Since the fall of the wall in 1989 and the end of the cold war rivalry
between the West and the Soviet Union, Berlin is being transformed into
one city as the capital of a unified Germany. The collapse of the Soviet
Empire also reshaped Europe itself.
Berlin has once again assumed a physically central location within a
greater European region that includes several Eastern European
countries of the former Soviet Bloc. Berliners are hopeful that their city
will soon attain a more central functional location within Europe as well.
But the institutional and physical infrastructure that shapes the patterns of
economic and government activities changes much more slowly than
borders on a map.
One important characteristic of cold war Western Europe was an intricate
and efficient web of transportation and communication links. This physical
infrastructure helped promote relatively steady growth in much of the
region for decades. In contrast, Eastern Europe's transportation links are
much more primitive and generally oriented toward Moscow.
Today, the European Union is investing billions of dollars in transportation
and communication projects aimed at overcoming this gap. In the
decades to come, their success will be measured in an Eastward shift of
Europe's economic core and the emergence of Berlin as a city whose
relative location is at the center of a new Europe.
SUSAN HARDWICK: What's striking about Berlin is how quickly the symbols of political power
can be turned upside down. It also seems as if economic rules, here as
elsewhere, can change rapidly. But the deep-seated attitudes and
networks of personal relationships-- the fabric of human culture-- often
remains more resistant to rapid change.
As we look at the changing world, we can see the differing time scales of
political, economic and cultural transformations. In South Africa, Nelson
Mandela swept into power and celebrated the end of 40 years of
apartheid rule, but culture change on the ground is happening much
more slowly. The land claims filed by black Africans to give land back to
the original owners is scheduled by the courts of the new South African
government to take 50 years to resolve. And in long-contested areas like
Israel political leaders might be able to move a border in a day, but the
underlying divisions and a long history of conflict assure that change will
continue to happen very slowly.
One thing is clear. Political systems that control and divide territory on
earth continue to impact on people’s personal lives, making change
inevitable.
BINKO:
Geographers are preoccupied with the idea of place. For instance, what
do you know about the place where you live? Well, for nearly a half
century, Berlin was a divided city. In the following lesson, Craig Cogswell
has his students look at another European city-- Amsterdam-- in order to
explore the human and physical features that define it. Craig begins by
teaching his students some important concepts about their own city,
Denver-- how it is organized and how it functions. These concepts give
his students a basis for comparing and analyzing an unfamiliar city,
Amsterdam.
Craig uses maps and slides to develop his students’ background on
Amsterdam. These graphic representations become the basis for their
mental maps. Through guided inquiry, Craig’s students understand how
Amsterdam’s past has influenced its present, and can speculate on
developments in its future.
Now, as you watch, think about how inquiry learning can be used to
promote student understanding of complex features of these urban
centers. Also, notice the way Craig uses a preponderance of questions
to focus the students’ attention in their investigations, and at the same
time discourage them from settling for premature or faulty conclusions.
As an assessment of their inquiry findings, these students will create
brochures advertising the advantages of life in Amsterdam, as well as
write a letter with suggestions for future improvements. In creating these
documents, they reveal what they now understand about the nature of
cities.
NARRATOR:
Craig Cogswell teaches geography near Denver, Colorado. His class has
been studying urbanization. Today is part two of a three-day lesson on
Amsterdam and how it functions as a city.
COGSWELL:
Review for us, please, what it is that we’re working on here. Jeff.
JEFF:
A brochure about Amsterdam.
COGSWELL:
Okay. A brochure about Amsterdam about what? Jordan?
JORDAN:
It has to have positive things-- just... everything that goes along with the
city of Amsterdam.
COGSWELL:
Right, and the brochure, which is mostly positive, is aimed at what
audience?
YOUNG WOMAN:
Tourists.
COGSWELL:
Tourists or... or businesses or perhaps some combination of those.
NARRATOR:
Working in groups, students will act as consultants, designing the
brochure and also writing a letter to city leaders outlining suggestions for
improvement.
Yesterday they got some background information by comparing maps of
their city, Denver, with Amsterdam.
COGSWELL:
First we looked at industrial models with the different zones that the
industrial model of a city has and then we specifically looked at Denver,
something they were familiar with, to help them gain a greater
understanding of how those zones exist in the real world. And as I
introduced Amsterdam, I talked about this as a non-industrial model, so
we need to think in different terms.
NARRATOR:
They also saw a number of slides taken on Craig’s visit to Amsterdam.
COGSWELL:
As they looked at those slides, then they were to sort of analyze them.
They were to figure out what was in them just to give them some basic
data. They are amazed when they see those houses that are, you know,
one-room wide and five-stories tall. They’re used to big, wide open
spaces. And so when I talk about Amsterdam, I think they’re more willing
to listen and to take what I say as having some possible validity because
I’ve actually been there, I’ve actually experienced it myself.
Let’s take a minute to talk about... what are some of the characteristics
that you saw, when you were looking at the slides, for example? What
are some things that you noticed about Amsterdam? Jaime, you said
something before.
JAIME:
Canals.
COGSWELL:
The canals. In fact it’s called the Venice of the North. Why were the
canals built there originally?
GIRL:
Transportation. They were for transportation. Right. Are they for
transportation anymore?
STUDENTS:
No.
COGSWELL:
Generally no. Janet?
JANET:
The roads were little.
COGSWELL:
Yeah. Transportation as we think of it, with big roads and stuff like that, is
not as likely to be happening.
I know you’ve seen them before, but maybe this will help to give you
some ideas about how you can use the information to create a brochure.
And remember, if you look at this, for example, you see that it’s visual.
You know, there are pictures. There... there's certainly information but
there isn’t always information like, you know, you’re writing a fiveparagraph essay here. So you might think about how the information is
organized as part of how you’re going to be dealing with that.
I’ll be coming around to check on how you’re doing and kind of see what
you’re thinking and maybe help you clarify if you need it but, otherwise,
you can go ahead and get started.
YOUNG WOMAN:
Are we going to open it like this and write here and here or is this page
going to be blank? And then just write boom, boom, boom, and then...
YOUNG WOMAN:
Don’t you have to write on all of them?
COGSWELL:
I chose a brochure because if a student can take information and
translate it from one medium to another, it’s an indication that they really
understand it.
YOUNG WOMAN:
Okay, we’ll have general info here, with a picture down here; and then
tourism, or what would attract the tourists; and then over here we’ll do
businesses...
COGSWELL:
Then I asked them to write a letter to the City of Amsterdam because, to
me, that format is just more realistic for "here are some problems, here
are some solutions." I was hoping that that would then force them to look
at what are the characteristics of, in this case, Amsterdam, but also what
are the good things about cities and what are the not-so-good things
about cities.
YOUNG WOMEN:
I don't know, they look like they have room to expand but their houses
are like this. Remember they said that... But what about the suburbs?
Where’s the North Sea? Where’s the sea they were talking about? North
Sea. All right. So where's that beach they were saying...? Is that up here?
So we could use that as a positive thing-- the sea, beach.
YOUNG WOMAN:
And you know how... That white bike, what was that?
YOUNG MAN:
The white bike thing where they... like, they put... They have a bike that’s
painted white. And then you ride it... If you need one, you just take one
and ride it and then leave it there and then whoever else wants to ride it,
they can ride it to wherever they want.
COGSWELL:
What we’re really trying to understand is: one, cities as regions, and then
to look at how do those work, but also how do our perceptions of them
change over time; and also that aspect of, you know, understanding the
past and present as one of the geography standards and then sort of
planning for the future-- because I think most of my students have lived in
cities their whole life, but they never think about cities. They never think
about what they are or how they work or the possibility that they could be
something different from what they are.
YOUNG WOMAN:
Is it just, like, an informational thing?
COGSWELL:
Yeah, what we just... You mean in terms of the project itself?
YOUNG WOMAN:
Yeah, like, the brochure and letter and stuff.
COGSWELL:
Right, but it is informational, but you have a purpose and your purpose is
that you want to get businesses and/or tourists attracted to Amsterdam.
YOUNG MAN:
What is the letter? Is that, like, what they can work on?
COGSWELL:
Right. You say, "Dear Mayor of Amsterdam," or whatever... Um, "Here
are some issues or problems I see with your city" "and also here are
some suggestions I have for how you might make that better."
Remember, they’re hiring you to help them out. Tell me about your
strategy a little bit. What are you thinking?
YOUNG MAN:
So far, I have: "To whom this may concern, "I am a 24 year-old American
who has lived in Amsterdam for seven years. I am writing to you in
regards to some problems that are occurring in the city."
COGSWELL:
I believe very strongly in inquiry-based education and in constructivist
education. And, to me, they are figuring out: What is it we need to do
here? How do we go about doing that? And so they’re constructing their
own education.
YOUNG WOMAN:
So, we were going to do general info and then, like, something for
tourism and then something for businesses. Okay. Is that right?
COGSWELL:
That sounds great.
YOUNG WOMAN:
But what would there be for businesses? Like, all I found was tourist stuff.
Drawing a blank.
COGSWELL:
You might think about in terms of... you know, businesses, especially
these days, like to locate in places where it will attract people because it’s
a nice place to live. And think about: Well, what do businesses need in
order to conduct business? What sort of infrastructure do they need?
What kinds of systems do they need so that they can be successful at
conducting business?
YOUNG WOMAN:
There’s cheese.
COGSWELL:
Cheese, yeah.
(\chuckles\)
YOUNG WOMAN:
Good job, Sarah. That’s a business!
COGSWELL:
It is a business. It is a business.
NARRATOR:
Students use maps at different scales as they gather data. The visual
information found in wall maps and atlases along with the slides helps
students develop mental maps of a new location.
YOUNG WOMEN:
It looks like it starts right here and then it just goes outward. Yeah. Yeah,
there is a lot more... Like, this would be the business district and then the
industrial area and then the suburban zones.
COGSWELL:
We’re going to pull together some of your ideas, some of the data that
you’ve collected, and see what kinds of conclusions we can make about
it. But we’ve got some ideas here about what it’s like there. How, then,
could those things be assets? How, then, could those things be things
that would make tourists or businesses want to come to Amsterdam?
YOUNG WOMAN:
It’d be cool to live there just because you’d have, like, space to live.
COGSWELL:
Okay, what about it would make it a cool place to live?
YOUNG WOMAN:
The fact that it was developed before the Industrial Revolution.
COGSWELL:
Right, so it has... almost a romance to it that we would not find in a
modern American city, for example.
The purpose of the lesson today was to have students begin to sort of
examine the function and the functionality of cities; to try and think about
what is... what is the essence of Amsterdam, and to think about that, if
they could, in geographic terms. How is the city organized? What is it like
as a place?
COGSWELL:
What is it about Amsterdam that would-- the physical city-- that might
encourage it to have a slower pace than, say, a modern American city?
YOUNG WOMAN:
The city wasn’t really built for cars. I mean, that’s why the streets are
more narrow.
COGSWELL:
And if you looked on the map, there are highways and freeways and
things like that but when you get into the center of the city, the heart of
the city, it’s just not really very possible unless you want to start ripping
things down.
I think that once they can think about some other place objectively maybe
they can also think about their own place objectively.
BINKO:
In this lesson, Craig Cogswell led his students on a path of inquiry about
how a place is defined by its physical and human features. Part of this
inquiry process involved students being able to transfer learning from one
situation to another. In this case, they applied what they knew about
Denver to the analysis of another city: Amsterdam.
To facilitate student learning, Craig incorporated map reading and mental
maps, giving his students a spatial orientation to the features of the city.
Creating brochures and writing persuasive letters permitted students to
reveal what they know through two forms of performance assessment,
neither of which requires memorization but, instead, demand serious
investigation of information and issues related to the primary question:
What are the characteristics of a city?
Craig works effectively as a learning facilitator. Recall from the video how
he worked closely with students in small groups and individually during
their collaborative investigations, moving from group to group, frequently
working at the students’ eye level, using probing questions to direct and
redirect the focus of their learning.
The teacher-directed inquiry approach does not result in a laissez faire
classroom, or a do-as-you-please learning environment as some critics
fear, but relies on a disciplined and informed reply from each student to
the basic question: What do we do next? That is the approach to learning
that I think reflects the intent of geography inquiry in the hands of a very
skilled teacher.