1,000 Years of Pots. Damn!

Part I: Wannsee and Sans Souci

Potsdam has fascinated me ever since I was a swabbie in World War II. The conference ending the European war had seemed to me then an irresistibly interesting historical turning point.

But as long as it was a part of Eastern Germany, I saw it only from the train taking me from Frankfurt to West Berlin. It seemed decrepit from the main station, ever more run down between my trips from 1972 on. It hardly seemed worthy of Frederick the Great.

So as soon as the Wall fell, it was at the top of my Big Three East German "must visit" venues: Potsdam, Dresden, Leipzig. Last spring I finally made it to Potsdam, and I wasn't a bit disappointed. I especially recommend a visit there in 1993, the hypothetical 1,000th anniversary of its founding (a bit of tourist industry ledgerdemaining), because the Potsdamers are really turning on the charm in organizing concerts, art exhibitions, conferences, sports contests, whatever, to commemorate this once-in-a-millennium opportunity to gloat over the Prussian Versailles and its surroundings.

But strange as it may seem, I urge you to begin your visit in nearby Wannsee, at what I've come after several astonished visits to regard as architecturally the world's best youth hostel. The word Wannsee had bad vibes during my last visit, the 50th anniversary of the nefarious Wannsee Conference which set the agenda for the Nazis' "Final Solution."

That lakeside manor house is now a museum honoring the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust as well as those who helped Jews survive. You can reach it by a half-hour's walk around the shore from the youth hostel.

I make such a big deal of so minor an architectural genre as the youth hostel because it seems to me emblem of what great strides the Germans have made in the last half-century away from their Nazi past. It's worth recalling that the youth hostel movement was a German invention--1909 in Altona, and rapidly developed during the Weimar era.

It embodied the German ideals of healthy outdoor recreation and the widest possible support for youth movements. Mostly, youth hostels are architectural recyclings, usually of mediocre quality, except for rare exceptions like the new New York center on 103rd and Amsterdam, a brilliantly reworded Richard Morris Hunt residence for "respectable young ladies."

For a start, the Wannsee building avoids those onerous (and often odoriferous!) dorm-style accommodations. You rent (for about $15, generous breakfast included) one floor-level bed in a suite of four, with your own lock-up wardrobe and a private bathroom and shower for each suite. (Such a setup is ideal for a family or two couples who value their privacy in their search for travel bargains.)

And my confidence in the viability of German democracy rests not a little on the conversations I've held there with a savory mix of college students, families and retired people. (Four-star hotels don't even begin to offer such opportunities for discussion across ethnic, gender and class lines.) The respect for the person evident in this brilliant design is a symbol of how much the Germans have learned in their recovery from the Hitler disaster.

To kill time, and practice my criminally crude German, I chatted up two students waiting to visit Frederick the Great Land, a kind of pre-Disney theme park of Prussian Enlightenment aspirations. Both were students at Hannover University, but in theology and chemical engineering.

Their disparate disciplines led first to my teasing them for their odd academic coupling and ended with some fairly searching conversations about science, religion and the states of belief in contemporary Germany: Immigration. Neo-Nazism. BMW complexes.

As a former college teacher of 25 years' experience, I'm always amazed at how thoughtful and articulate European students are--especially the young Germans. They're a joy to palaver with: informed, open-minded, serious without being agit-proppy. what a serendipity to accompany two such guides through Frederick the Great Land.

You traipse through San Souci--"without care," Frederick named it, to try to forget the pain of military adventures and misadventures which characterized his reign--by linguistic groups. I accompanied a German platoon, leaning on my two students for timely translations when I couldn't get the go-for-Baroque on my own.

When I was near the point of Rococo exhaustion, we came upon the last suite of rooms--which had been designed for Voltaire, whom the monarch defended and encouraged when the French were giving their skeptic superior a hard time. It's as different from the rest as can be. Its aviary theme was parrots and other colorful birds in 3-D high relief gracing the walls. I like it.

There's more to Sans Souci than the main castle, of course. Most of the other structures are undergoing a fast rehab. And the many-terraced landscaping is super, too. Had I known, I'd have brought a picnic lunch. As it was, empty-handed, I hugged the two young ladies thanks and goodbye, and started off on my own adventures in the city proper.

(More on Potsdam in the next Hazard-at-Large.)

from Welcomat: Hazard-at-Large, June 2, 1993