Green, brown or blue, depending on the light, running parallel to the river Spree, cutting through the heart of the city for ten kilometres. The shadows from the surrounding
scenery, change with the times, but the water stays murky
DEATH:
ROSA: It is the 15th of January 1919. I can still take note of the date, although I can no longer move or breathe. I’m good at remembering dates. On the 9th of November
1918, Karl had declared the arrival of a new world. I became Princess Rosa of
the Proletariat. Trouble was, others down the road had gotten there first. Thing
became crowded. Our republic lasted about as long as the first snow. It was a pretty common ending for a revolutionary when you think about it. Karl was taken, unnamed, to the morgue. He was suffering from a bullet to the back. They didn’t shoot me. Maybe they meant to but they got carried away in their enthusiasm and beat my tiny Slavic body
to death. Now they are throwing me from the Lichtenstein Bridge, and I go right
under the murky water. They won’t find me until the summer, bloated with canal.
They will place a plaque to mark the spot where I eventually wash up.
LIFE:
FRANZISKA: It is the 27th of February 1920. It is a time of toppling princesses, a time of toppling entire dynasties. I heard that Rosa was a Polish leader mourned by some as a hero. No one cares about a Polish factory worker. They sneer at my accent. My love hasn’t come back from the war. Our child is dead. The new Republic isn’t going so well for me. I am nineteen. I jump into the Landwehr. The gloomy water closes over my head. However, I am saved by well-meaning spectators who pull me out and beat my stomach, (more gently than my father ever did) and pound the water out of my lungs. I don’t explain why I wanted to die. I don’t say anything at first and I become Fräulein Unbekannt, Miss
Unknown. Everyone knew Rosa’s name, but that didn’t help her. Silence seemed to
work, People tell me that I am a lost princess of Russia. Who would have thought? I never have to return to the factory. I have a job for life. Everyone knows my name now, everyone, although it is not the name I entered the canal with. The Landwehr has rechristened me, Anastasia.
DEATH:
ERMA: It is the 27 April 1945. It is the time of catastrophe. The silhouettes on the water are jagged and incomplete, sculptured from the sky by allied planes. The land between us and the Russians decreases every hour. They use the u-bahn tunnels. There hasn’t been a train in a year. We are also using them, to nurse the wounded and to hide from fire overheard. Scorched earth. The Fuhrer’s direct orders are quoted on a continuous loop, ‘blow up the tunnels, destroy in fire, and destroy in flood’. The Russians are kept out, for a day maybe, and the canal is let in. We are not warned. The injured and the helpless, all hiding, all washed away. The number is never determined. There is a lot happening at this time. I am just one of many.
LIFE:
PETRA: It is the 8 June 1962. The canal has been repaired since the war. A knife went through and halved the city. Fourteen of us, thirteen and a baby, want to be on the other bank. We take a boat, the star of the East’s “White fleet,” the steamer Friedrich Wolf. The night before the voyage we invite the captain and his engineer out for a drink; several drinks in fact. Their glasses are never empty until they pass out. We place them carefully and comfortably below to sleep, and lock the door. We leave in the morning, down the Spree. We travel under the Rosa Luxemburg Bridge. We turn suddenly, before the Oberhaum bridge. The penny must have dropped by then, or rather come flying from all sides, in the shape of 135 metal bullets. We lie on the deck. We have armoured the wheelhouse with steel plates in anticipation. Then we have to jump. We are helped out of the murky water to the other bank. Not the most spectacular escape compared to some others, but it is enough. The baby sleeps through it.
After us, for as long as the city remains in two parts, all passenger ships are guarded and, the steering wheels taken away every evening. I hear that the poor, sleeping captain is transferred to handling freight.
It is November 8 2002. The surrounding silhouette changes daily with construction. The canal is no longer divided. It looks like a plain stretch of dirty water you could swim across in minutes. Our guide sits down beside it and maps out the history of Berlin in
the sand with a stick. He talks for a while. Then we all leave to go to lunch which is included in the tour price.