DENKMAL (a short clip for C-G)

by Alison Boland

After studying abroad in Berlin in 2005, I devoted my studies to learning as much about the city as possible. My primary focus was on the architectural and memorial landscape of the city and its relationship to a complex discourse on the definition of German national identity. I found the subject interesting because of the intense insecurity Germans expressed about their fascist past as well as their future standing in the European Union and the world. For me, Germany's questioning self-image stood in welcomed contrast to my own experience of the United States' blind optimism about its role in global affairs.

In the summer of 2006 I returned to Berlin to make a documentary about the city's memorial landscape. I intended to definitively capture the current state of the symbolic landscape on film and to predict where the German identity debate was heading in the 21st century.

I arrived just as the city was gearing up to host the 2006 FIFA World
Cup. What I saw was not something that I expected to see: widespread German patriotism.

For me, this opened up a crack in the academic discourse. If this was a nation defined by self-doubt, how could so many of its citizens be patriotic? Were they reacting to the stifling insecurity that had described them in years past? Was the youngest generation of Germans trying to redefine its homeland as a place to be proud of? Was it okay for Germans to want to be German again?

Many people that I talked to said that the flag-waving was about the celebration of the event more than the statement about nationalism. But if they were waving German flags, how could they not be making a statement about national identity? It seemed so complicated, and some people on TV were talking about how wrong it was that there should be a resurgence of German nationalism. They said that it reinforced neo-Nazi ideals. But the flag-waving continued, despite these accusations. The general public didn't seem to care.

Did the people waving flags on the street know more than I did? Or was I just thinking about things too hard. Maybe they were cheering for Germany, or maybe they were just cheering for a soccer team.

These questions about patriotism hit close to home for me and answering them immediately became more important to me than mapping the urban memorial landscape.

Denkmal is a movie about Amy, an American girl who has come to Berlin to make a movie about monuments and to learn more about the city. Disenchanted with her own country, she wishes she was a real-Berliner. The movie follows Amy's semi-romantic encounter with Jonas, a native East-Berliner. As their story unfolds, we also witness Amy's parallel struggle to reconcile her academic experience of Berlin with that of the city she explores with Jonas.

Monuments act as the primary metaphor in the film. In relation to nationality, monuments signify an official definition, engraved into stone and unable to change as the mindset of the people around it change. In a similar way, when Amy meets Jonas, she already has an idea of what Germans his age are like. As a result, she misses the opportunity to really get to know him. Therefore, just as a monument cannot eternally symbolize the opinion of an entire nation of people, neither can a single person be a monument to a generation.