The last day in Germany

I’m standing in a public park looking out over the city of Hamburg. A brisk wind threatens to whip my baseball cap clean off and expose my face to the summer sun. I clutch it to my scalp and stand still, taking in the air.

I am loving being here in Hamburg. I am loving this park in particular. I’m trying to enjoy this moment, even though it’s pregnant with “the last, the last, the last,” and thoughts of departure gather at the gates of my consciousness like battering rams. 

I’m anxious about returning to the States.

I’m anxious about the once-in-a-decade five-alarm-fire terrible things that are now happening daily, and how so many people, me included, seem to be numb already—less than six months in. I’m anxious it’ll be worse once I’m home—both the barrage and the numbness. I’m anxious about the future of my country and planet and people I love.

But I’m not home yet. So I’m trying to focus on the here and now: the warmth of the sun’s rays on my forearms, and how cool this place is.

Because this is no ordinary public park. This is the green roof of the St. Pauli Bunker.

Hitler ordered bunkers built in 60 German cities to serve as both bomb shelters and air defense systems against Allied bombardment. The bunker on Feldstraße in Hamburg was one of the largest: it rises more than ten stories, occupies a full city block, and was designed to shelter 18,000 people. It was built largely with slave labor—people from Nazi-occupied countries—who weren’t allowed entry when the bombs came. It was staffed by schoolboys firing anti-aircraft artillery from the rooftops.

After the war, the Allies couldn’t destroy the bunker. The explosives needed to demolish its meters-thick walls would have leveled much of the surrounding neighborhood along with it, rendering it effectively indestructible—just as designed.

I’m grateful for that. Or, at least, for its resulting brilliant transformation.

Just one year ago, the roof of the bunker reopened to the public as a park. It’s Hamburg’s answer to New York City’s Highline: This concrete mass now bursts with the greenery of life. From afar, it looks like a forest reclaiming the ruins of a fortress. Up close, it’s clear that this is careful cultivation, not chaos. A wide outdoor staircase adorned with plants and shrubbery winds around the façade all the way up to a new green roof with a lawn, trees, benches, and a kiosk selling beer and ice cream.

Underneath the new park is the old roof. It holds some of the original crumbling fortifications from the war, a cafe and shop, and, most interestingly to me, signage that outlines the future intentions for the space. Right now, people are designing exhibits that will soon be installed here, and all along the stairs to the top. They’ll tell the history of this place, interpreting it for future generations, ensuring that it can’t be forgotten.

I’m exploring this place two days after the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled once again to weaken the republic’s system of checks and balances, and Congress has declined to require its own approval for a warmongering president to activate the military. I’m feeling the fragility of liberal democratic society more than ever before. And I’m overwhelmed by the knowledge that, as I stand here and marvel at the transformation of this site into a public park for all, somewhere else, there’s someone who would hate what it’s become, who’d prefer, even, that it be returned to its original purpose.

Standing on the roof, I’m looking out over St. Pauli, a neighborhood known above all for its “punk” activism-oriented pro soccer team. FC St. Pauli’s stadium was among the first in the world to permanently fly the gay Pride flag, and its exterior features a giant mural with the words “Gegen Rechts” (Against the Far-Right) next to a larger-than-life fist smashing a swastika. That mural is unmissable from where I stand. In fact, it dominates the view from one side of the building, meaning every visitor who takes the winding staircase up to the top sees it.

It’s perfect, I think. To take this horrible past, to not destroy it, but turn it into something the Nazis would have abhorred, and make it wonderful—while not letting anyone forget. This is how it should be done, to honor and learn from the past. How fitting that anyone who comes here—and any Nazi ghosts still haunting these impossibly thick walls—can’t avoid seeing that Pride flag flying and that fist smashing a swastika.

And I know that all of this exists because of individual people. Although I don’t know who they are, I know there must be someone who had an idea for what this place could become, someone who designed the staircase and green roof, someone who’s researching and writing the coming historical signage, someone who decided to fly the Pride flag over the stadium, someone who painted the mural. And so on and so on and someone and someone and many someones.

Danny and I look out at the view for a little while, then get an Apfelschorle from the kiosk and retreat to a sunny bench away from the edge, sheltered from the wind.

“Look!” I say to Danny. “Apples!” I point at the sapling above us. A couple of little green fruits dangle from its branches. They won’t be ready for months. The idea that a place of destruction like this could produce nourishment tickles me.

“Look!” Danny says to me. “Fungus!” He points at tiny mushrooms sprouting in the grass. “Fungus, eating away at the rot of this place.” The fungus is doing a good job. The sun on my nose feels hopeful. The breeze feels energetic. Full of life.

I don’t think the U.S. is in the same place, politically speaking, that Germany was when this tower was built. But it’s easier than ever to see how we might get there. It’s important to me to stay clear-eyed about both the path we’re on and the ways we’re not there yet—the ways we still have the power to turn this ship around. And for the U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and asylum-seekers who’ve been abducted by masked ICE agents, the distinction probably doesn’t feel so relevant.

There are two ways this story might proceed, I think.

In version 1, ten years from now, maybe sooner, the tide of authoritarianism has risen all over the world. The trees and apples and flowers are gone from this building. Heavy artillery is fired from its roof once more at the planes of one autocratic nationalist government attacking another. It’s uncomfortably easy to imagine—to hear the whistle and crash, to see the planes approaching, to feel the crush of humanity waiting in the parking lot below for their turn to shelter inside.

And then there’s version 2: This bunker stands as it is now—a monument to the world we outgrew. In this version, the mushrooms grow bigger, the apple trees grow taller, the apples fall to the ground and decay and nourish the soil, and more apples grow, for generations; and across the Atlantic Ocean, our own flirtation with autocracy crests and collapses, and we come out of it stronger.

It’s time to head home. We have friends to meet for our last dinner here, then final packing and early bed before we leave Hamburg tomorrow.

As we board the U-Bahn, I realize I feel less anxious leaving than I did when we arrived at the bunker. 

I haven’t figured anything out, really. I don’t know what our future holds. But soon I’ll be home. And then, I hope, I’ll join the ranks of the someones doing what we can to push us toward version 2.