Old
and new—Marienkirche and the
Television Tower at Alexanderplatz
(Courtesy Alexandra and Wikimedia Commons)
trip to Berlin is on most people’s agendas when they pay a visit to Germany
from abroad. It may be your starting point before going off to explore the
rest of the Lowlands. Although Berlin lies outside the current Lowland area,
this was not always the case. To get you in the mood for the rest of your Lowland
experience there are at least two places which will be of interest to you,
both near Alexanderplatz and thus on a typical tour of the town.
Your first place which should really prove that Berlin was once in the Lowlands
is the Marienkirche (St. Mary’s Church) just in front of the Television Tower
in Alexanderplatz (Alexander Square). This beautiful church was founded in
the second half of the
13th century and
is thus one of the oldest churches in Berlin. There are a number of things
to see within the church, but the most interesting for Lowlanders is directly
in the lobby before you go into the church. On the walls is a 22m long fresco
from the year 1485. The fresco demonstrates what is called a ‘Totentanz’ or
‘Dance of Death’ (usually called ‘danse macabre’ in ‘English’). It is unfortunately
in a rather poor condition, as it had been whitewashed at some point and only
rediscovered in the 1870s. Accompanying the display is a poetic text which
is surprisingly written in Low Saxon, showing the importance of the language
in the town at this period of time, and also showing which part of the country
Berlin really belongs to.
A
postcard with a reproduction of Zille's
Nicolaiviertel (Fischerstraße)
scenes of 1923
(Courtesy Wikimedia
Commons)
Your second visit is just a few minutes away in the Nikolaiviertel (Nicholas
Quarter). This part of town was ‘restored’ during the East German period, although
as a whole it is not very well done, it is nevertheless worth a visit. In the
centre on Propststraße is the Zille Museum. Heinrich Zille (1858–1929) was
a cartoonist who quite uniquely captured life in Berlin at the turn of the
previous century. The drawings are often accompanied by text given mostly in
the Berlin dialect. Looking at the drawings you get a flavour of what life
was once like in the town and also experience the heavily Low Saxon influenced
dialect of Berlin.
And if you haven’t had enough of the Berlin dialect it’s worth enjoying
a raspberry (Himbeere) or woodruff (Waldmeister) Berliner Weiße beer in your closest corner
pub on a warm summer’s evening. Here you will almost definitely hear that the
Berlin
dialect is still very much alive!
The
original inhabitants of Berlin spoke Polabian, a now extinct West Slavonic
language that may have given it its name (from *b(e)rl ‘swamp’). Under Germanic rule the language of Berlin was Brandenburg Low Saxon (“Low German”), which is still spoken in some neighboring areas. Eventually, German rule and
massive immigration from many places put an end to that, and Berliners
switched to German. However, their homegrown German dialects have strong
Low Saxon influences due to what is known as a “linguistic substrate.”
Contents
trip to Berlin is on most people’s agendas when they pay a visit to Germany
from abroad. It may be your starting point before going off to explore the
rest of the Lowlands. Although Berlin lies outside the current Lowland area,
this was not always the case. To get you in the mood for the rest of your Lowland
experience there are at least two places which will be of interest to you,
both near Alexanderplatz and thus on a typical tour of the town.
The
original inhabitants of Berlin spoke Polabian, a now extinct West Slavonic
language that may have given it its name (from *b(e)rl ‘swamp’). Under Germanic rule the language of Berlin was Brandenburg 
