The highest church tower in Hamburg is no longer part of a church. Since “Operation Gomorrah” in 1943-44 it is a ruin. The memorial has a variety of interesting art, there is an elevator in the tower so that through the blackened stone arches, buttresses, and gargoyles, the city of Hamburg is laid out below you, and in the former crypt of the church, there is a moving exploration of the history of the church, and the experience of the destruction as Allied bombs rained down on the city, creating 1000 degree heat and fire storms (I believe these to be like the “fire tornados” we sometimes read about in fire situations.).
Germany does not, in this memorial, flinch from their own complicity. They refer to the firebombing of Coventry, and the Blitz in London, and they especially focus on the utter destruction of the firebombing of Warsaw, Poland. They make it clear that there were people who opposed the firebombing, and that the people who carried it out, in at least some cases, had regrets. It explores how the pilots (in all these cases) were given targets, not knowing that these were residential areas, and that even women and children would be burned alive.
37,000 people died in Operation Gomorrah. Another 180,000 were wounded.
The Coventry bombing killed 176 and injured another 680.
The London Blitz, of course killed many more, as did the firebombing of Warsaw!
It chronicles the movement to leave the ruin of the church as a memorial, and the process toward that goal.
And there was a carillon concert in the middle of my visit, and I got some recording done (albeit over the construction going on next door.)
Americans don’t do that. 9/11 memorials remember the fallen, lift up the heroes, identify those directly responsible, as they should, but fail to investigate the historical events and trends that lead to it, an follow from it. Americans, unlike Germans, seem unable to admit any kind of fault in their country and their history, even though, objectively, it is clear that we have not always acted justly in our history.
Maybe we can’t. I have recently been introduced to the work of Max Weber, a sociologist who traces the rise of capitalism to reformed theology. I have not yet read his work (which dates from over 100 years ago, but I will when I have time and I return home..). But, per Wikipedia, basically his argument is, in part, that the desire to prove that one is elect spurred the Protestant Work ethic. Because we really believe that our success proves us to be more loved by God than others, at least to ourselves. We laugh at it taken to extremes in the Gospel of prosperity, but we look down at homeless and blame them for their homelessness base on character traits we imagine. So this is a compelling idea to me, at least at this moment in time.
Germany is primarily Lutheran. Luther lifted up our sinfulness, complete depravity. Maybe that is why Germans, formed by that theology, can confess and even memorialize the errors of the past, even as Americans are trying to avoid teaching American error, like slavery and violent colonialism and destruction of native populations, not to mention foreign policy that has for generations been so self-centered as to inspire the kind of hate in us that led to 9/11. Let me be clear, there is indeed no excuse for 9/11: it is a horrible crime and those who came through on that day: police, firefighters, normal citizens on Flight 93, are truly heroes. That is a story that should be told, and we should always remember. But we should also examine the context, the rise of anti-Muslim sentiment in the country afterward. We should be honest about all of the story.
The Germans are as complete as they can about the whole story. And their memorials are moving, and touching, and real.
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