Pages

Session 2: Stories - Berlin Groups

  • Group Alexanderplatz:

    Emil and the Detectives 

    It is a 1929 novel for children set mainly in Berlin, by the German writer Erich Kästner and illustrated by Walter Trier. It was Kästner's first major success. It is  his best-known work, and has been translated into at least 59 languages. The novel was made into a film more often - for the last time in 2001

    The novel is set to in large parts around the Alexanderplatz.

     Emil and the Detectives is an evergreen story of a lost child in the big city and he finds friends who help him.

    The fist film was from 1931:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFNnzX1hPx0

    The story:

    The story begins in Neustadt, a provincial German town which is the home to young schoolboy Emil Tischbein. His father is dead and his mother raises him alone working as a hairdresser.

    She sends Emil to Berlin with 140 marks (a hairdresser's monthly salary then) to give to his grandmother and 20 marks for himself, sums that have taken some months to save from her modest earnings.

    On the train to Berlin, Emil meets a mysterious man who introduces himself as Max Grundeis. This man gives Emil mysterious chocolate and Emil falls asleep.

    When he wakes up, the money and Herr Grundeis are gone.

    When he spots Herr Grundeis, he follows him. Emil dares not call the police since the local policeman in Neustadt had seen him paint the nose of a local monument red, so he feels that he is "a kind of criminal" himself. However, a local boy named Gustav offers to help. Gustav assembles 24 local children who call themselves "the detectives".

    After following Grundeis to a hotel and spying on him all night, Emil and the gang follow the thief to the bank.

    Herr Grundeis tries to exchange the money for smaller bills. One of the boy detectives follows him into the bank and tells the bank teller that the money is stolen. Emil comes in and tries to tell the bank teller his story. He proves that the money was his by describing the holes left by the needle he used to pin the bills in the lining of his jacket.

    Herr Grundeis tries to run away, but Emil's new friends cling onto him until a police officer, alerted by Emil's cousin Pony Hütchen, arrives. Once arrested, Herr Grundeis is found out to be a member of a gang of bank robbers.

    Emil receives a reward of 1000 marks for capturing Herr Grundeis.

     

    Group Potsdamer Platz:

    The first traffic light for cars on Potsdamer Platz.

    Traffic lights are the same all over the world and comprise three different colors, all having the same purpose in every single country on planet Earth: green – go, red – stop, yellow (or amber) – be cautious. The first traffic light in the world, if it could be really named so, saw daylight in 1868 in London and was exclusively used to control railroad traffic at the intersection of George and Bridge Streets. The first traffic light for cars in Europe was installed on Potsdamer Platz in 1924. A replica of the traffic light tower can be seen there today.

    In the 60th the first „Ampelmännchen“, or “little traffic light men,” “ was born in East Germany and have since gained cult status.

    The first Ampelmännchen found his home at the corner of Unter den Linden and Friedrichstrasse, two major streets in East Berlin, in 1969. They proved so popular that they were woven into children’s cartoons and comic strips.

    The Stop and go men from East Germany. It ist called "AMPELMÄNNCHEN"

    After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, an attempt was made implement the West German traffic lights everywhere in Germany.

    But many people loved the “Ampelmännchen” so the Ampelmännchen have been installed on traffic lights across West Berlin, as well as in some West German cities and they also now decorate t-shirts, coffee pots or towels… The men are easily some of Berlin’s most recognizable symbols.