the plotki magazine (pdf) - Moving Baltic Sea

← S T O R I E S F R O M T H E S E A S I D E 〈 〈 〈 〈 〈concrete block extending in one interminable stretchparallel to the coast, making us feel very small and soft.With the standard holiday lasting ten days, it was largeenough for two million vacationers to enjoy the Balticseaside between spring and fall every year, for two millionpairs of eyes to look out of the windows every bedroomfaces the sea and take in the view, for two millionpairs of legs to cross the stretch of sand and plungeinto the blinking bracing water, for two million mouthsto open and close around forks in the vast dining hallsplaced at regular intervals between the dormitory wings.Everyone together, everyone the same, everyone happyand strong and joyful, thanks to the Baltic Sea, thanksto the air and the sand and the seagulls, thanks to therobust Aryan blood in their veins, thanks to the buildersand the architects one of whom was appropriatelynamed Clemens Klotz (German for big heavy shapelessblock) , thanks to the party. Generous funding of KdFprojects meant that the workers would only be charged2 Reichsmark a day, covering everything from room andboard to bath towels.All of this was hard to imagine as we stood in front ofthe empty shell of a building that spring morning, theweeds all along it crunchy with broken glass, slim treesgrowing on the roof, the 150,000 cubic meters of woodthat were felled to make room for the building slowlywinning back territory. Signs were posted at regular intervalswarning of risk to life and limb, the doors boardedup, but we finally found an unsecured entrance andwandered around the decimated insides of the place,stripped of every removable object, except for someposter scraps on a wall here and there (Tom Cruise andJohn Travolta who on earth hung those up?). On oneof the landings we found a neat pile of black fire stonesfrom the beach, each seemingly chosen with great careand left there, full of some kind of meaning we couldnot decipher. Otherwise the endless hallways and nakedrooms contained nothing but shards of glass, bits oftrash, and the unreal, gorgeous view of the sea throughthe windows. A quote attributed to Gorbachev waspainted onto the pocked plaster of one of the walls (“Inthe nuclear age, saving the earth from nuclear destructionis the responsibility of all of humanity, the concernof all peoples”). We had to pick our way around puddlesof black water ominously standing in the hallways andwe were cold, the thick walls having a refrigerating effect,so we didn’t linger long and were glad to be outsideagain in the sunshine.But then were drawn right back in, unable to resist thehysterically advertised private museum (“500 meters tothe museum!” “400 meters to the museum!” “300 metersto the museum!”) in one of the wings, which, alongwith a floor devoted to motorcycles made in the GDR,includes an exhibition on the history of the matchlessKdF project. Building began in 1936, we learned, andcame to a halt in 1939 when Germany went to war andall resources and manpower were diverted to what hadbecome the nation’s only cause and purpose, leaving notime or money for working-class leisure. The half-finishedconstruction was used for military training untilthe Soviets came and dismantled parts of it for buildingmaterials. They also interned dispossessed propertyowners, whose seafront villas were “refunctioned,” andhoused refugees from the East in the wings that remainedintact. We wondered if any of these involuntaryresidents knew or appreciated the fact they were livingin a holiday resort.The exhibition also boasts a continuously loopingdocumentary film in which every contemporary witnesswaxes nostalgic about the war (“Those were goodtimes,” a radio operator instructor reminisces, and seeingthe photo of him, one grinning young man and acheery gaggle of young women in a we’re-away-fromhomemood, we thought, “sure bet it was”), and a modelof what the finished 4.5 km-long structure was intendedto look like. Yes, that’s four point five kilometers. Eventhe model is overwhelming. The tiny trees and bushesneatly lining the cardboard paths are interspersed withlittle red and white flags, red with a blank white circle inthe middle, scrubbed clean of those indecorous swastikas,giving the impression the KdF Seebad Prora was aJapanese development, only backwards. The museumis an information overload, screaming block letterseverywhere, pointing you this way and informing you ofthat, reams of photocopied texts and newspaper clippingson every square inch of wall. But it wasn’t until wedid some research back at home that we confirmed forcertain that the “Colossus of Rügen” had never actu-17