Description
Continuing the week's theme of Germany's floating frontiers, Neil MacGregor visits two cities now beyond Germany's present borders, but which played important roles in Germany's intellectual and literary history.
Kaliningrad, on the Baltic, became part of the Soviet Union in 1945, and is now part of Russia. But for centuries it was Königsberg, a major Prussian city, and birthplace of the philosopher Immanuel Kant - and so central to the intellectual history of Germany.
Neil also visits the Czech city of Prague, once home to a large German-speaking community, which included Franz Kafka, one of the most acclaimed writers in the German language.
Today neither Russian-speaking Kaliningrad nor Czech-speaking Prague are in any sense German - but what is their place within the memories of Germany?
Producer Paul Kobrak.
Neil MacGregor began his journey through 600 years of German history at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, and ends it at the Reichstag, seat of the German Parliament. These two extraordinary buildings, only a few hundred yards apart, carry in their very stones the political history of the...
Published 11/07/14
Neil MacGregor focuses on Ernst Barlach's sculpture Hovering Angel, a unique war memorial, commissioned in 1926 to hang in the cathedral in Güstrow.
Producer Paul Kobrak.
Published 11/06/14