the ghosts in the closet

The most interesting part about the Ghosts of Berlin reading this week was the use of architecture and its destruction as a means of creating a new present and closing the door of memory onto the past. Previously, I have learned of the Nazi regime through personal diaries, such as that of Anne Frank, and learning about the impact of the regime on the people through both acutualized and proposed architecture provided a new angle that I hadn't previously thought of. It is an interesting and surprisingly accurate supposition that the buildings we are surrounded by shape us just as much as we shape the buildings through our interactions with them. Another part of the book that struck me was the use of monuments after the Nazi regime in an effort to both shut the door on the past while remembering it at the same time. It seems as though Berliners are caught in a constant juxtaposition between wishing to remember and wishing to forget and learning how to reconcile both. This might be a gross oversimplification or over generalization, but it seems pertinent to both Ghosts of Berlin and what we have learned so far in the seminar