Vintage Colour Postcard for sale. Berlin - Wasserfall im Viktoriapark.
At the Golgotha Biegarten in Viktoria Park, the gothic spire of Schinkel’s monument is mercifully invisible. A T.V relays sports shows and idents for the sponsoring beer brands. Phones ring above the minor hubbub emitted by various groups of families beneath the trees and the large umbrellas protecting us from the sun.
There is thin piped music (easy listening) and a barbecue. The huts, set on concrete at the edge of the Sportplatz make a passing nod at a kind of German rustic kitsch, a provincial Wienachtsmarkt.
The wood-panelled interior of the café, with its huge disco mirror appears to date from the 70’s but on closer inspection the furnishings appear to be new.
The twisting spiral paths which make their way inexorably to the top of the contour line, are capped with Schinkel’s gothic memorial to liberation battles fought at the end of the Napoleonic wars and traverse a contrived landscape. Remodeled at the end of the nineteenth century and then again, just before the first world war. Successive visions of der Wäld are superimposed on one another.
This is fundamentally a Nazarene filmset. Kaspar David Friedrich stares bleakly out of the frame. Families and tourists admire the waterfall which falls in orchestrated splendor from the summit. An idealized scene from a mythic Germany. Deutschland. A strange theme park situated, then, at the edge of the city.
Viktoriapark.
Viktoriapark.