The landscape around the Maxim Gorki Theatre is charged with history. Millions of tourists flock past here every year in search of history, of traces. In his directed walk through these historic sites, Hans-Werner Kroesinger links the current metropolitan reality with that of 1914, when Germany was a world power in the sciences, economically well situated, and equipped with a state-of-the-art military. Kroesinger's tour weaves through the symbolic landscape of this pride that pulled the world into war: University, Neue Wache (New Guard), Palais am Festungsgraben (Palace on the Moat). The luminaries Koch, Planck, Einstein, Harnack, Haber made the University of Berlin a symbol of the German sciences and therefore enlightened Germany— many professors took an active part in the Propaganda chorus of 1914. Schinkel's Neue Wache presented the Prussian Military tradition and served as the Background for euphoric crowds in August 1914. The elegant, secluded Palais am Festungsgraben was the Prussian Ministry of Finance at that time—the economic heart of a country at war. The course uses documentary texts to reflect particles deposited in the architecture's sandstone filter.
